E3 2004: Mercenaries Hands-On Impressions

Sony created a portable so wonderful that Nintendo actually took notice. We get to grips with PSP.

Full of piss-and-vinegar and armed with lofty ambitions, many developers set out to change the world. But as time, money and limitations rear their ugly heads, key features are excised and you wind up with a game that reminds you of what Halo would be like if it wasn't any fun.

Mercenaries is not one of those games. In fact, the feature set in Mercenaries reads like a wishlist of things that would be cool to put in a military action game.

Helmed by stud developer Pandemic Studios, Mercenaries takes place in the near future, where hard-line militants have staged a coup in North Korea and are threatening to unleash their nuclear arsenal against the world.

You play as a member of a mercenary group hired to capture or kill the 52 leaders of the uprising, each represented by a playing card that corresponds to their importance or rank (sound familiar?).

First, the action. The basic mode of waging war is on foot, and in this respect Mercenaries resembles Freedom Fighters, both in the way it looks and in the way it controls.

There are roughly 30 weapons in the game, ranging from a variety of automatic rifles to devastating rocket launchers. This "standard" combat is extremely fun and polished, but it's just the tip of the iceberg.

As a soldier schooled in the art of modern combat, you can call in a variety of air strikes ranging from cluster bombs to laser-guided missiles. When you call for cluster bombs, the game switches to an aerial perspective reminiscent of the "smart bomb" videos shown during the Gulf War. From here you can direct your strike and admire the carnage. With the laser-guided attack, any target painted by a laser sighting will get bombarded by homing missiles. It takes a moment for the targeting to lock in, but the effect is devastating.

You also can call in vehicle support. Short on transportation, we radioed the Russian mafia to airlift us a military Humvee. Moments later, a giant helicopter delivered the goods and we sped off to our next destination.

Of course, air strikes and made-to-order Humvees don't grow on trees. You have to pay for them out of the money you earn for accomplishing your goals.

If you're out of cash, or just plain stingy, there's a good chance you can find a nice ride free of charge. For the most part, if there's a vehicle on the map, you can take it, even if it was deployed by your enemies. All told, the game will include about 40 different vehicles.

In the demo, we hijacked a hostile tank by climbing aboard and tossing a grenade down the hatch. Soon we were razing our surroundings. Buildings, barricades and opposing tanks lit up like the Fourth of July.

Later, we hijacked a helicopter. That's right, we grabbed a helicopter as it swooped in for an attack, shoved the pilot out the door, and began launching rockets at enemy targets. A tad unrealistic, perhaps, but when the helicopter controls this well and kicks ass with thus much panache, who are we to complain?

Virtually everything in the environment can be demolished. We dropped a massive bunker buster on a five-story building and the entire works came crumbling down in a roiling plume of smoke and fire.

Destroying buildings and enemy vehicles isn't just for kicks. You earn money for eliminating targets, and you can reap additional rewards by accepting missions from the various factions in the game, including the Chinese, the Russians, and the South Koreans.

As in real life, conducting too many missions for a particular group (e.g., China) that is aligned against a different group (e.g., South Korea) can ruffle feathers. A meter on the menu screen tells what the different factions think of you - if you make someone too upset, they will attack when you enter their territory; if you please them, computer combatants will fight alongside you against the enemy.

Part of the beauty of Mercenaries is the relatively non-linear gameplay. You can choose for whom you wish to conduct missions, or you can choose not to conduct missions at all. There is always money to be made - say, by stealing a vehicle for the Russian mafia - and enemies to be engaged.

If so inclined, you can traverse the entire map. It will take a good 15 minutes to cover the immense landscape, but no invisible barriers or mission parameters will block your path.

Many of Mercenaries' developers have worked on role-playing games, which they say explains their efforts to infuse the game with a depth of character and gameplay that is often absent from action titles.

You can choose from three different playable characters at the outset of the game (and more may be unlockable), and each possesses distinct differences in speed, durability, and weapon skill, among other things.

Available are a strapping American ex-soldier, a wily British secret agent, a merciless Swedish bounty hunter, and a French diplomat who plans to subdue the enemy using only offensive language (okay, I made that last part up.)

The mission we played was non-stop, in-your-face action, but the developer said we will see a good deal of variety, including missions that call for long-range sniping and others that reward the use of stealth.

You might think that, in trying to do so many different things, Mercenaries would not do any of them particularly well, but this is surprisingly untrue. For example, the helicopter handled so well it felt like it was the central aspect of the game, rather than one of 40 different vehicles at your disposal.

To top it off, the game looks wonderful. Mercenaries features excellent textures, convincing particle effects, and a framerate that never stuttered despite a tremendous amount of onscreen action. If I hadn't seen it for myself, I would say the game sounds too good to be true.

As it stands, Mercenaries deserves my nod for unsung game of the show. Development is roughly 70 percent complete and on track for a January 2005 release. Keep your eye on this one!

Tony Scinta
Staff Writer, Kikizo.com