Reviews for Mercenaries

Mercenaries

Strengths: Fun open-ended gameplay, GTA in Korea, blowing up buildings is awesome, cool unlockables, great music.

Weakness: Troublesome AI, wonky vehicle controls, long load screens.

If you're tired of roaming the cities in GTA, take a break in North Korea as you take the role as one of three mercenaries who love to fight for the right amount of money. You can side with the many sides of the conflicts that happen in Mercs, such as the Russian Mafia, China, South Korea, and more. The open-ended world lets you drive across the country in many vehicles, though they don't feel that fast or fun to drive. One of the big features is calling in a many variety of attacks to take down huge buildings or obstacles that you need demolished, which look incredibly cool and are very fun to watch. Your AI comrades don't always seem to do what you want them to do, but they usually get the job done. Loading can take a little longer than you'd like, which the Xbox version fixes that problem. LucasArts did a very good job of making their own GTA clone and making it very fun in it's own right.

80% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Mercenaries is great for the GTA enthusiast

Strengths: Blow up buildings! Your destruction affects landscape over time, GTA-game with military weapons, fun and lengthy single-player campaign. Save anywhere when you’re not in a mission.

Weakness: You can’t swim, so you’re pretty much dead when you touch the water. No parachutes. No multiplayer. Main characters lack personality like GTA characters. No garages to store vehicles.

Mercenaries is like your typical GTA game except you have some extremely powerful hardware at your disposal. The game is by Lucasarts and Pandemic Studios, which is known for creating action-packed and fun games like Star Wars Battlefront 2. You have access to tanks, APCs, bazookas, artillery, several different airstrikes, and of course, helicopters to cause as much havoc as you want. You can even blow up buildings and watch them crumble in a shroud of smoke! The missions in the game are really fun and consist of the usual escort, delivery, or destroy objectives just like the infamous GTA series.
Since GTA is one of my favorite games, I went into Mercenaries expecting very much the same thing. However, Mercenaries differs in that it has a more serious tone because it’s set in a warzone. The characters in the game really aren’t as crazy as some of the characters in GTA, but they’re funny. Not LOL funny, but interesting. You start of the game doing missions for several factions that are trying to deal with the North Korean threat. Each one has their own agenda (e.g. the Mafia or Americans), and, depending on certain things, e.g. killing faction members or hurting citizens, they’ll react either hostile or neutral towards you. It’s kind of like keeping a balancing act among all of them, but it’s nothing too hard, except certain times when things get really hectic and you hit a faction member in an intense firefight accidentally. Believe me, it just happens sometimes.
Since I’m comparing GTA to Mercenaries (because they both play the same), I also wanted to mention that one of the biggest pet peeves I had with GTA was the save feature. In Mercenaries, you don’t really have a “base” that you have to save at. Instead, you just pull up the menu by pressing “start” when you’re not on a mission and press “save.” It really is simple as that! Another pet peeve I had with GTA was drowning (although this was fixed in San Andres). In Mercenaries, you CAN drown, so stay out of the water! One thing I especially liked about the game was the freedom of having the choice to kill or capture high-ranking enemy officers. These guys are wandering all over the map, so it’s really just up to you to find them. There’s no set time limit or anything and it’s fun chasing them down and getting money for it (capturing them gives you a bigger “bounty”). This really is a refreshing turn from the mission structure in GTA. All in all, the game is a must-buy.

75% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Mercenaries

Strengths: Very big environments, good controls, many vehicles and weapons.

Weakness: Kind of long loading times, not very intelligent AI

If you like GTA style games, the Mercenaries is a good games for you. It has very large environments and almost all vehicles can be hijacked in it. It is a very good games and I would reccomend it.

71% of readers found this review helpful. Did you find it helpful or unhelpful?

Mercenaries

Testseek.com has collected 3 expert reviews for Mercenaries and the average expert rating is 86 of 100. The average score reflects the expert community’s view on this product. Click below and use Testseek.com to see all ratings, product awards and conclusions.

Read Full Review

Mercenaries - PS2

A great game if not a little too easy

Read Full Review

Mercenaries

LucasArts’ Mercenaries has been somewhat of an oddity in its development. What initially began its development looking like a GTA clone, with some shiny new weapons and themes thrown into the mix, has actually flourished into a surprisingly fun and intense game. Mercenaries is a great game with engaging action and a sharp sense of humor that will no doubt impress gamers with itchy trigger...

Read Full Review

Mercenaries

Private military contractors have just recruited The Grand Theft Auto antics.

Read Full Review

Mercenaries (ps2)

You've got to hand it to LucasArts. As a company known for creating inconsistent Star Wars games and some very forgettable non-Star Wars games, the last 18 months have been a boon. With few exceptions, you can now look confidently at the Marin, Ca.-based publisher and find something compelling or downright desirable. With Knights of the Old Republic 2: The Sith Lords, the upcoming Star Wars...

Read Full Review

Mercenaries (ps2)

Read Full Review

Mercenaries

Mercenaries is a revolutionary, 3rd person action-shooter game set in the near future and inspired by real world events. On the eve of a historic reunification of North and South Korea, a ruthless general stages a military coup to take control of North Korea and threatens the world with nuclear war. The international community launches a global task force to stabilize the region. However, when...

Read Full Review