War is hell, but the money's good.

War is hell, but the money's good.

Mercenaries takes place in a Korea that is in the midst of a fictional quagmire (as opposed to the ACTUAL quagmire.). General Song has overthrown his fathers regime and installed his men into ruling positions within the country. They were fittingly dubbed "The Deck of 52" (Each one of Song's men is represented by a playing card, the rank of the card determines their position within the regime, Song himself is the Ace of Spades.) So now you have 5 factions duking it out in Korea, the North Koreans led by Song, who seek to unify the country, the South Koreans fighting for independance, the Allied Nations trying to stop the war from spreading, and the Russian Mafia who don't really care about who gets what as long as they get to keep running their secret underground... Their secret underground that takes up half a town, is covered in FLASHING PURPLE LIGHTS, and has their logo visible at the top of the building and surrounded by armed guards who shoot at anyone who is not allied with them. Yes, i know. Oh, and the Chinese who are working with the AN but seek to annex the entire goddam country in the process.

You play the standard "one man army" who was sent in from a Mercenary group called ExOps, you do jobs for the factions that will hire you, seeking to claim the 100,000,000 bounty on Songs head. There are 3 Mercs, the American has stamina, the Brit has stealth and the Russian has speed. Other minor story elements come into play, the American understands Korean, the Brit understands Chinese, and the Russian can talk to his fellow ruskies, and has a past with one of the contacts. The game itself has some rather funny moments, especially the Russian Mafia. It tends to keep the tempo up constantly, not really slowing down much. Money you get from missions and capturing face cards can be used to call in airstrikes and various supply drops. airstrikes vary depending on the faction, some are inaccurate, some tend to level a little TOO much of the area, some will have you target a specific object with a laser pointer while others have you use gas grenades to mark an area.

Genocide at an affordable price.
The game structure is rather like a GTA game, you can move freely around Korea as you please, doing missions for the various factions as well as side missions you find along the way. Jobs may decrease your faction standing among one or more factions while raising them among others. Having a good standing with a faction allows you to call in airstrikes and supply/vehicle drops. A bad standing gets you shot at. Missions range from capturing vehicles to defending locations (GTASA didn't have stationary RPG emplacements to fight off invaders) to finding and calling in airstrikes on Artrillery emplacements. Also like GTA, the country is full of vehicles, both air and ground, which can be stolen, or hijacked (including some fun action-hijack animations, but I won't spoil those) These elements, taken from the obvious inspiration, help flesh out the 'mercenary' aspect of the game, you don't really owe allegiance to anyone, you have complete freedom of your actions. Problems crop up when you steal an enemy vehicle, friendly forces will fire at you until you get close enough so they can recognize you from the windows, this, while realistic, is fucking annoying. There's a mission early on where the Russians ask you to steal a supply van for them, since it's a North Korean van, the russians guards shoot at you as you approach the base until they go "Oh, it's just you.".

The main point of the game is to capture the Deck of 52, as you complete missions, factions will give you intel on the locations of the cards. Most can be taken at any time (Some are mission-activated, like the aces and maybe some face cards.), but it's nice to know where the hell they are first, as sometimes you might kill a guy before he has been identified as a card, and the AN only pays half the bounty for a dead body. An identified card is marked as such, once identified you can either take out his men, subdue him, and call in an AN chopper for retrieval (You can only designate an LZ using smoke grenades at a flat, large location. So sometimes a card will have to be transported first. You can pick up and load cards into vehicles.). However if you're sloppy and the card dies, you need to take a photograph of the body for verification. I love this, and it's fun to try and take them alive, but as I said, sometimes you might just be carpet-bombing a North Korean outpost without realizing the 5 of Clubs is sitting inside playing pong, which means it's always helpful to have as much intel as possible before going in to a fight. Intel is organized in your PDA, in the form of e-mails from various factions and ExOps, and a map that marks off mission locations and other important details.

I love the uh....sound of Napalm in the morning.
The music changes situationally, when there's a lot of action the screen, the music picks up, when you're just cruising the countryside in a stolen truck, the music is pretty much nonexistant. But it's there. The soldiers speak in varying languages, they'll speak their own language to eachother, but if they can speak english, they'll use it when speaking to you. (If your character understands the language of someone, you'll see subtitles at the bottom of the screen.) The dialogue is pretty funny, some factions have better dialogue than others. The russians are especially hilarious.