It's a Cruel World

The designers and developers went to great lengths to capture the real sights and sounds of North Korea in LucasArts' Mercenaries™. To win the game and amass the sort of cash and reputation every great hired gun craves and deserves, you need to get along with all of the different warring factions in the region as you pursue your primary mission of capturing or killing all 52 of the targets on your hit list. Mercenaries has tremendous replay value, mainly because of this rich playground you get to explore.

North Korea is exploding with opportunity.

The game's structure will be familiar to anyone who has playedGrand Theft Auto Double Pack or Spider-Man® 2. Instead of Vice City or Manhattan, Mercenaries gives players a sprawling virtual North Korea to explore. There are specific scripted missions that advance the story, but there are also hundreds of random freelance jobs waiting for you out in the street. You can play any way you like, roaming around and looking for trouble, sticking to your mandate of capturing the Deck of 52, or mixing it up in any combination. Like Grand Theft Auto,Mercenaries has established "gangs" who control key territory, and if you want to be a true mover and shaker you have to make sure that you don't make permanent enemies out of any one faction.

All three of the playable characters are unique and have different skills, but it's how you play them that really impacts your game experience. Jacobs, Mui, and Nilsson speak different languages and have different strengths, but all three have to interact with all of the warring factions in the game: the Chinese military, the Russian Mafia, the North Korean regulars, and the American-led Allied forces. Money is all-important to your long-term success, and the only way to make it is to complete jobs for one of the factions or your bosses at Executive Operations. Everything costs money—guns, ammo, health, vehicle drops, and air strikes—but there are plenty of ways to earn the cash you need. From the scripted missions to the random challenges along the way to the overarching goal of capturing the Deck of 52, every successful job completed, enemy vehicle destroyed, and bigwig captured means cash in your pocket.

Jobs are dangerous, but the boss really cares.

Along with money, you have to manage your reputation and keep track of who your allies are. You can't do a job for one faction without stepping on the toes of another, but you can always make amends later on. Each of the "handlers" in the different groups is ready to treat the war as a business opportunity, so they usually don't let details like betrayal get in the way of hiring the right merc for the job. They won't hold a grudge if you work against them—to a point. Make sure to spread yourself around and throw each faction a bone every now and then so they're still willing to hire you if you come to them for work. Working for more than one faction also helps keep the heat off you when you're in enemy territory—if you're a confirmed Allied agent, for example, the other armies consider you hostile and shoot on sight. If you mix it up, you almost always have a friend nearby ... or at least enemies that won't shoot you on sight. And, if you do decide to dedicate yourself to one group, make sure it's the Russian Mafia—they're the ones with all the black market goods you need as the game moves along.

The more you explore the virtual landscape in Mercenaries, the more you learn about this dangerous place and the desperate people fighting to control it. Like the other great "sandbox" games that preceded it, Mercenaries lets you take any number of unique trips into its chaotic and violent world.

By Luke Judge