Mercanries-Playground of Destruction

Mercanries-Playground of Destruction
Platform: Xbox
Rating: 16+
Type: 3rd person shooter/RPG
Graphics: 9/10
Story: 6.5/10
Gameplay: 7.5/10
Multiplayer: No
Sound: 5/10
Overall: 8/10

There are a lot of different views on this game and I am going to add my view on it, i
I know its late and this oppinion won't be notticed but I hope you will use it. I have selected XBOX because that is ther version i have.

In mercenaries, you are, as the name suggests a merc. General Song is the main bad guy, he killed his father when his father was about to take north and south Korea into peace, he then stole some missiles and is a major world threat. And you mission overall is to kill him. Along with 51 other people, they are given names from a card. But just because at some point you should catch these doesn’t mean that on the way you can blow up every bridge in Korea does it!!

The graphics in this game are amazing, even for Xbox, which normally delivers excellent graphics, they certainly rival if not beat Halo 2 graphics. Having said this there are places where you can look at a barrel and suddenly Mario looks good, and if you look really closely at the cliff faces, you can definitely see a repeating pattern. And of course, as with any modern game the trees are so bad there not worth the ink on the page in the original sketchbook. But graphics are defiantly one of this games strong points; those explosions blow your mind as much as it blows the un-fortunate Koreans in the blast radius.

The story line is good, if a bit un-imaginative. Evil guy wants to blow up the world with a huge stockpile of nuclear warheads, you, and you alone have the power to stop him. It has been done before, and Mercenaries has not really done anything to change it. I am not sayings it is a bad storyline, but it has been done before, a lot of times.

I have heard a lot of people referring to this game as a “GTA rip-off.” Don’t listen to them. Sure, it is free roaming and you can hijack cars. However, in GTA, you get money for killing civilians and you are the bad guy, you lose money for killing civilians in this game, and you are here to save the world. Although it could be compared to GTA, you could compare it to fable, or any other free roaming game. The style to me seams to me to be shoot em’ up with a new twist or two.

The game play is very good, with no lag, as you would come to expect from a console. Sometimes the missions can come to be a bit repetitive (one mission was to rescue this guy, and then a couple of missions later I rescued three pilots), but are entertaining (I mean, who can get bored of blowing up stuff with huge missiles). Although there quite a lot of different weapons, they all fall into about three different categories: Missile, automatic and stealth. And they all have similar properties. The health system is different to most games. You never regain all you health just by standing there, but you do not have to pick up a health pack to get your self off one health. I think they did this because they wanted it so you have to pick up health kits to increase your health but they also want you to buy supplies from the mafia store, and if you could only gain health form a health pack, they would need to be quite common. The heath regains to 20(out of 100) and then you have to pick up a health pack. This is not the only thing that is strange about the health. You pull a pin out of a grenade but you “Forget” to throw it, it does not kill you un-less you are on health less than 10. This gives the impression that you are invincible, your not, you die very quickly from gunfire. But in this game one is the magic number, providing your below half health if you are hit from anything from a grenade to a tank cannon, you will be left on one health. That is obviously the toughest part of your body! Also, something that is quite handy is you can call for a medi-vac. You go to the allied hospital for a fee of $1000. Another new thing that has not been seen on the game market is a virtual shop where the Russian mafia send you anything form a health pack to a nuclear warhead, well almost. I think one thing that could be improved on is the money system. Most of the time, if you have a mission they give you the equipment you need for free. And other than missions you do not often have to use stuff, so must of the money is just stored, making great non-save turns where you just blow everything up.

The sound in this game probably is its biggest let down. It tried to build in technology that when you are further away from the person speaking it gets quieter. It works except it is just as if not more of a greater change in volume when all you do is turn around, do not move. In addition, they failed to use this technology effectively with the guns, from your ears there is no way of telling how far away the enemy is. All guns once again fall into those three categories and then make the same noise. Although I do personally love one of the tracks on the sound track, and like all shooting games you cannot import your own sound track. Another bad thing about the sound is the bits that you need to hear are very quite and the bits you do not need to here, I.e. gunfire. Are much louder. So you cannot just turn the volume up on your TV. Although you can change the ratio, you can barely notice the difference un-less you turn the un-important sound effects off.

This game un-fortunately lacks a multi-player, which is a great shame because it wouldn’t be hard to incorporate. Although you can effectively play multi-player by taking it in turns to blow stuff up in as much style as you can. A great time waster.

Overall I think the game is good, but needs to have the finishing touches, which is a shame. Having said this I hope they make a second and the most important thing in the second would multiplayer, you could do anything from heli racing (no rules) to playing conkers with C4 covered cars. If you are choosing a game which will keep you going for a while this is definitely a good choice, and that is not even considering the lack of multi player.

Thankyou, i hope to post more later















Wasn't me