Xbox

Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction

One of the greatest things about video games is that they allow you to do things that you ordinarily wouldn't be able to do. You can recklessly drive 200 miles an hour, gun down terrorists, or lead an army into battle, all from the safety of your sofa. One of the most basic (and enjoyable) things you can do, however, is blowing things up. From Asteroids to Halo 2, games have always let players shoot, smash, bomb, or shell things into oblivion. Now, LucasArts and developer du jour Pandemic have taken destruction to a whole new level with Mercenaries.

Mercenaries is a very addictive game and it is not hard to get hooked on it very quickly. I’ve found it to be a very enjoyable experience for any kind of player, hardcore or casual. Aside from a few minor things with some of the physics, it’s an overall good game.

Nordkoreas nahe Zukunft: Der Staat liegt in völligem Chaos. Nach einem Aufstand sind 52 wichtige Staatsköpfe auf der Flucht. Realität? – Nein, denn dieses Bild der Verwüstung liegt lediglich im neuesten 3rd-Person-Shooter des Entwicklers Pandemic vor: „Mercenaries“. Das Kriegspiel soll neue Maßstäbe in Sachen Action und Freiheit bieten. Wir konnten die US-Version von „Mercenaries“ ausführlich spielen.

Despite not having much of a story or much character, Mercenaries is a wild ride of pure action and destruction. It's a long, deep game that continues to deliver on its promise (it's marketed with the tagline "playground of destruction") with an unending amount of military might, muscle, and variation. You might not care too much about your character, but you will undoubtedly find yourself spending those extra hours fulfilling minor missions, getting lost for the fun of it, and trying out every single air strike possible on the enemy. The vehicle jackings are also superb. Whether you own a PlayStation 2 or an Xbox, you should buy LucasArts' Mercenaries. It's a well-crafted, polished, and distinguished game that offers a new take on the sandbox design, and something very different indeed from the Grand Theft Auto's of the world. In fact, in this category, aside from Grand Theft Auto, which is the best at what it does, Mercenaries is easily the next best thing.

You simply cannot go wrong with Mercenaries. An online component would have been nice (there’s a lesson to be learned here from Mech Assault 2) but this is a stellar effort all around from Pandemic Studios. Xbox owners looking to unload some tension have had their prescription filled in spades.

What can I say? "Mercenaries" is a bloody good fun game! Yes, it's a war game and while most of them are more serious this game is highly enjoyable. Basically because everything but then again everything can be destroyed by you! With 3 different characters there's a lot to do and you'll have your hands and time full before you actually finish all 52 missions and side-missions. Multiple that by 3 (since 3 characters to play) and you're off for quiet some time. This has to be one of the most fun wargames we played lately on X-Box and it certainly deserves its points. If you like the idea of playing with a Mercenary, destroy everything and the ability of total freedom then Mercenaries is definitely the game you've been waiting for ... for ages!

One of the best action games on the Xbox, and the best Xbox game of 2005 thus far, Mercenaries can simply be described as unadulterated fun. Every facet of the game contributes to the overall experience, creating a game that is far more than the sum of it's parts. Highly recommended.

The near future, it seems, is a great place to have a pretend war these days. Mercenaries marks the second imaginary modern military conflict that Pandemic Studios has cooked up over the past six months, though Mercenaries is a much more action-oriented, hands-on experience than last year's Full Spectrum Warrior. It's also a much better game overall, partially because its rather grim premise comes along with a nod and a wink, and also because it provides fiery, visceral thrills at a breakneck pace.

Mercenaries nous donne une certaine idée de la guerre pas si éloignée que ça de la réalité. Alors que chacun tente de sauver sa peau, l'appât du gain conduit à de nombreuses trahisons et à de gros retournements de situations. Finalement, la seule entorse à la réalité, c'est que le jeu parvient à rendre la guerre très amusante. Et c'est bien ce qu'on lui demande.

This game was a lot of fun. I would start playing and before I knewit a few hours had past. It has an easy learning curve, and a goodenough story line to keep a person interested. If some one didn’t likeGTA though, I don’t know if they would like Mercenaries. They aresimilar enough where someone might not give it a chance and say “I’veplayed this, it’s called GTA”. Over all it was a great gammingexperience. At times I wished the missions to be a little moredifficult (especially in the beginning), but I was so busy playing andgetting through them I only thought about it after I had finished. It’smore important to be fun then be challenging anyway.

The next few weeks are looking like some dry ones for the Xbox so the best thing to do is pick up Mercenaries. If you love explosions, feeling like a one man army, car jacking, and 40 hour gameplay do yourself a favor and pick up Mercenaries, the first must own game for the Xbox in 2005.

Once you find the Deck of 52, there isn't much else to do. Sure, there are three characters to choose from at the beginning, but they don't have their own set of missions. The standard game can be completed in about 12-15 hours if you take the time to do everything. With no multiplayer or Xbox Live however, there isn't much replay value. Mercenaries brings you a whole lot of fun, but only for a short time. A weekend of work through a rental is all you really need.

Mercenaries is a chaotic ride at the carnival, an over-the-top action games that borrows a lot from GTA, without adding too much, but does succeed to create its own style. Some downpoints like the A.I., the absence of depth, and the more limited freedom than GTA unfortunately make this game not without flaws and it will probably mostly be loved by those people looking for explosive fun without any added value. If that's what you're looking for (and without a doubt, a lot of people are!), don't hesitate as the game succeeds very well in that aspect. If you look for more: make sure you don't expect too much.

Mercenaries is a lot of fun. It really is still that simple. It's a pretty simple game, after all. It allows the player to experiment and gives a feeling of satisfaction in most regards. Niggling little faults and a ridiculously difficult final mission - especially compared to the relative middling difficulty of the rest of the game - drag the game back from being a true classic. With a bit more time spent on it we could have been hailing Mercenaries as the second coming, but it falls short. Even so, it cannot be stressed enough - the game is fun.

Let's face it, who needs a convincing plot, character development and an interesting environment when you can "blow stuff up", "blow the living hell out of it" and "blow the living hell out of it some more"? LucasArts is quite happy to try and appeal to our basest destructive instincts and hope that amongst the rubble we don't mind or don't care that there's very little of substance holding Mercenaries together. And, given that it has just hit the Number One spot in the UK charts, we're guessing you're all quite happy to be manipulated.

Mercenaries fait partie de ces titres pas spécialement attendus que l'on peut qualifier de "bonnes surprises". En effet, le jeu marie avec talent les combats militaires et la sensation de liberté de mouvement comme d'action d'un Grand Theft Auto. Résultat : on prend très vite goût à remplir les missions périlleuses proposées par les différentes factions présentes sur le terrain et l'argent accumulé permet d'augmenter son champ de possibilités de manière très motivante. Bien sûr, tout n'est pas encore parfait avec quelques soucis de précision ou d'ordres techniques (surtout sur PS2) et des ennemis un peu myopes, mais rien de suffisamment grave pour vous tenir écartés de ce titre de qualité.

Could have been good. Could have been significantly more than good. However, LucasArts and Pandemic teamed up to make Mercenaries not even average. This is a rental at best. I don't see most people playing this for a whole week, unless they're the sort that drove around in all 3 GTA 3 games trying to pick up every little package and find all the easter eggs. There's no reason to play the game through a second time, either, as the other characters won't give you anything different in terms of gameplay, aside from a few different voice clips when they talk. I really don't think the prospect of playing through the game as Dr. Indiana Jones, or discovering where the North Koreans left the Block of Carbonite lying around is all that fun-tastic.