New Review Posted: Mercenaries

[Daniel Weissenberger]

I review Mercenaries, and, as has become something of a habit wht me, I am disgusted by the subject matter:

"There are few people more despicable than mercenaries. By definition, they are those who have chosen to indulge in acts of violence motivated only by personal profit. Mercenaries don't believe in anything other than getting paid, and while that attitude might be encouraged among musicians and professional athletes, when the person's primary job responsibility is murder, I can't imagine many people would defend it as a valid career choice.

The denizens of this bottom rung of humanity are the primary focus of Pandemic's shockingly T-rated third-person shooter, Mercenaries. Between this game and Destroy All Humans, Pandemic has established itself as an early specialist in the burgeoning field of games that offer Grand Theft Auto-style mass murder without attracting the attention of Senate subcommittees. All the running, shooting, and hijacking that GTA fans know and love is on display here, with a better physics engine and buildings that can be destroyed with a little bit of effort,. This is all wrapped up inside a plot torn from tomorrow's headlines, in which a North Korean madman has both declared war on South Korea and announced his intention to nuke any country who interferes with his plans for reunification."

For those interested, the rest of the review can be found here.

[Asz]

I actually thoguht the characters were fleshed out as much as they should be. I played as Matthias for my run through and by the end of my 20 or so hours with him, I really knew who he was. A few of the other characters (particulary the Russians) were also pretty memorable. But, since this is a game where, as you said, life is cheap, I don't think that the characters really needed any more character than they had. The story also kept things more than just on track, excluding a story, even in a game like this, would kill the game for me. Running around mindlessly blowing the hell out of everything is fun for a while, but completing the missions was more fun (they had you blowing up everything, but for a reason). I don't think I would have spent as many hours with the game without any reason to push on.

[Jerm]

Thanks for pointing out the silliness of being 'spotted' by officers and losing your cover. I never quite understood that one, especially since most missions damn near require you to piss of other factions. I found that airstrikes won't cause you to lose favor with whoever you're attacking, but they are too damn expensive to use all the time.

Speaking of that, did you know that you can pay off the factions to make them like you again? Once they hate you, all is not lost. Just go to the guy in front of the HQ and give him some money. Presto--they'll like you again.

And I never realized it was rated T. He he.

[Daniel Weissenberger]

Actually, I meant to mention the 'paying off' feature as being something of a copout to compensate for a good disguise feature - if any act of violence (even against non-officers) didn't cause you to lose your cover, you'd never need to pay off the base guard.