Considering how wildly, freakishly, money-rakingly successful the Grand Theft Auto games of this generation have been, it's surprising how seldom they've been shamelessly ripped off.
Activision's bland True Crime: Streets of L.A. was probably the closest thing to an outright GTA clone we've seen, but if you're looking for a game that really captures the virtual sandbox feeling of those carjackin' and crime-spreein' titles, Mercenaries is it.
Which isn't to say this slick and ridiculously fun third-person shooter should be called Grand Theft Army. Just that it shares some of the best qualities of the GTA games: a big, open-ended world to wreak havoc in, non-linear missions and rewards for being creative and thinking outside the box.
If not for the fact you spend most of the time gunning down enemy soldiers and blowing the bejabbers out of half of North Korea, Mercenaries would make a great teaching tool for the little 'uns. It still could, as long as you don't mind them growing up seriously warped.
The game casts you as a soldier of fortune who has set up shop in the wake of a military coup that's thrown a serious kink in the reunification of the two Koreas. Not only has the United Nations (or Allied Nations as they're called here) established a military presence in the country, but the Chinese, South Koreans and Russian Mafia are all vying for a piece of the chaotic pie.
As a mercenary with no loyalty but to yourself, you can accept missions from any of the four factions, carried out either against the North Koreans or against other factions. As you carefully balance your reputation against your ability to rake in dough, you'll eventually track down and capture 52 of the maniacal North Korean General Song's closest henchmen, presented as an Iraqi-style deck of "most wanted" playing cards.
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What sets Mercenaries apart from Pandemic Studios' radically different previous hit, Full Spectrum Warrior, is the way it encourages you to fulfill your mission objectives by any means you can dream up. Virtually every vehicle you see, from jeeps to tanks to mobile anti-aircraft missile batteries to helicopters can be commandeered or hijacked for your own use, and any weapon you find can be picked up and used, though you can only carry two at a time. The vast countryside is wide open for you to travel, and you can even disguise yourself as any faction's own forces, as long as you remain in one of their vehicles and don't get spotted by an eagle-eyed officer.
If that didn't give you enough toys to play with, completing missions and bonus challenges also unlocks a variety of new vehicles, supply drops and devastating airstrikes that you can purchase. But really, $41,000 for a surgical smart-bombing is a bargain at twice the price.
So let's say you accept a contract to kill six North Korean officers stationed on rooftops in a dockside warehouse district, then capture or kill a high-ranking member of Song's inner circle, who is hiding out among shipping containers in the seaport. You could commandeer a tank and roll in with guns blazing, levelling the buildings that the officers are on before crushing Song's man beneath your treads. Or you could lay out a whack of cash for a couple waves of B-52 bombers, pound the place into rubble in no time and go home, albeit with a reduced bounty for killing the primary target instead of taking him in alive.
Here was my approach: I sniped a North Korean chopper pilot in mid-air, stole his ride after it spiraled to the ground and flew it undetected to the docks. I set down on a roof far enough from the officers not to be seen, picked them off one by one with my sniper rifle, buzzed over Song's henchman's position and took out his bodyguards with my chopper's cannon, then landed, stunned the dude with a flashbang grenade, took him into custody and loaded him onto an Allied Nations evac chopper. Done and done.
It's this kind of freedom to get creative that elevates Mercenaries from a typical run-and-gun shooter to something much more sublime. On top of that, the graphics are great, the voice work is exceptional and the missions are surprisingly varied, considering that the world itself isn't as detailed or as interactive as Vice City or San Andreas.
But with enough C4, artillery strikes and bunker-buster bombs, you can blow up or knock down pretty much anything you want. Let's see Tommy Vercetti or Carl Johnson try that.
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BOTTOMLINE
Creativity can be one of the deadliest weapons in your arsenal in this free-form third-person shooter. Playing with toy soldiers was never this fun.
