You are a mercenary
In a playground of destruction
Use any weapon
Hijack any vehicle
Blow up anything
Blow it up again
Keep blowing stuff up
Blow the living crap out of it
Blow the living crap out of it some more
Mercenaries, Playground of Destruction.
A multi-platform shooter that is fairly old. Mercenaries has you controlling a mercenary (No, rly?!) who must resolve a major conflict which the politicians can't. HOW CAN YOU DO IT?! With bullets, explosives, cars, helicopters, and cash and connections capable of moving mountains and leveling villages. THATS HOW!
Plot: You are a-- oh wait, i've already said that. Anyway, you control a mercenary from a group called ExOps (Executive Operations) and are inserted into a nuclear conflict in North Korea. You must take out 52 men and women in charge of the operation, and also work with different factions to earn money and weapons. Your main target, General Song, has stolen the throne of North Korea when he found out that his father was planning on switching to Democracy. The dude is nuts, and he has nukes. Do the math. Nuts+nukes=devistation. But we can't allow that. We're the good guys! But authorization and mobility are a problem. So you need to count on someone that makes Kratos look like a pacifist and destroy the N.K. army with everything you can get your hands on.
Graphics: Slightly realistic, but no blood. Though you may not notice it, but there is a very low variety on sprites and animations. You are free to roam around, kill North Koreans, and blow stuff up in a decent looking area. It isn't knock your socks off, but it is good enough.
Gameplay: The big thing you will notice is that your mercenary seems to be completely immune to recoil, your bullets won't stray. So, to make that up, your targeting reticule is complicated, and you can only go into first person view with three weapons. There are three basic frames of vehicles. You have tanks, cars, and helicopters. The controls for the tanks and helicopters gets annoying, especially since they added a bizarre physics system to the flight abilities. For the most part, you carry out contracts to earn cash and favor of a faction, but a lot of times contracts tend to piss off another faction. Strangely enough, despite how much hype it gives you on weapons, you only get two kinds of grenades and a low variety of guns, also no sidearms. But you get a huge variety of air strikes, and you can carry two weapons at a time, giving a bit of strategy to it. But only a bit, you still mostly blow the s**t out of everything.
Music: Decent, but you don't have many tracks to choose from. Guns have their own sound effects though.
Overall: Fun and addictive, but not the best game you will ever play. As far as shooters go my complaint is the lack of a first-person attack ability, making some shots difficult to take. Sometimes the physics system goes overboard also, with some glitches similar to those you find in Halo, like your car suddenly flying through the air. This is definitely a game worth checking out, or at least renting.
Overall: 6/10
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