Amazing first impression thanks to a great vertical slice of an opening and a rousing soundtrack but ends up settling into something lesser than those early hours. The fundamentals here- the driving, the shooting, the world design- quickly reveal themselves to be mediocre (straining at serviceable) with the systemic flexibility being its saving grace and binding everything here together. With the exception of being unable to select some of the busted vehicles for delivery on some of the bigger setpiece missions, you’re free to utilize all the tools at your disposal to bust open the game, able to undercut the obvious intent of certain objectives by simply commandeering a helicopter to make a beeline to a target or avoiding incurring any faction penalty by stealthily destroying objectives- the embodiment of that one NakeyJakey video on that GTA III stretched out for an entire game.

Don’t have anything too cohesive to say, so an assortment of stray thoughts:

- Continually appreciated that air-lifting targets is an on-demand invitation for chaos: Simply killing and verifying anyone in the Deck of 52 isn’t much trouble, but the process of going for a non-lethal takedown, of finding a safe area to call in a helicopter, and then extracting the HVT is consistently tense. The chopper can get shot down, enemies can commandeer your vehicle, and there’s the chance that the target will still get killed in the process. Easily one of the best “moments” generators in the entire game.

- Stick with the Russian Mafia missions when possible, there's definite sense that they were authored with a better understanding of the systems at play. Where the other factions send you on generic missions to destroy X number of targets with few complications, the Mob will have you assassinating high-value targets from other factions and dealing with their internal politics, and is far better about throwing curveballs in with its secondary objectives. If the rest of the game was on this level, it’d be far easier to praise it as an underrated classic- the one set of missions that lives up to the title by asking you to do questionable things under unreasonable conditions.

- I played a ton of Mercenaries 2 as a kid and the ability to destroy buildings was a huge draw for me, so it was a little weird playing this, where so much of the action takes place on barren mountain sides and next to humble, single-story structures. The ability to destroy buildings is still appreciated, but lacks a lot of the raw catharsis you’d expect from something framed as a centerpiece mechanic- ends up being more of a tactile flourish in practice.

- Admire the general structural flexibility here as well, as once you complete the initial circuit of missions to get acquainted with the factions, you’re free to work your way to each of the four “Ace” contracts by either taking on missions with the various organizations to get more intel or just combing over the map to get at the scattered members of the Deck of 52. Your approach will inevitably be a combination of the two, but it’s cool to have the freedom to not engage with certain factions or have to be obliged to extract every single member in a suit.

- Forgot there was a time when an open-world was divided up into multiple zones instead of being a single gargantuan one. The game is split into two maps, the first of which ends up being a real pain to navigate, with lots of dead-ends and a lack of easy access to helicopters making your trips between the various HQ’s feel like genuine commutes. Second map is a lot better to navigate, thanks to some more thoughtful road design, but there’s still stretches where your eyes are going to glaze over as you get from A to B. (and in the process, is a great reminder at how load-bearing the radio stations are in the GTA games)

- As with so many game economies, eventually reached a point where money stopped mattering, functionally being able to call in whatever I’d need for a particular mission, and more than enough to bribe officials to get back into the graces of a given faction. Still nice as something to latch onto as a metric for your success, but it’s an element that could’ve been greatly expanded on, with more expenditures to sap from your war chest and less support from your allies- the gear they supply you with at the beginning of missions feeling especially unnecessary given that so many objectives can be beaten with some salvaged explosives and a commandeered tank.

Still, better than most other open-world titles: equal parts a pleasantly-boring podcast game and a genuinely great sandbox, and a reminder that, with a playthrough took a little under ten hours, this genre doesn't have to be a life-consuming timesink. Ended up being weirdly compelled by it, and I’m still tempted to go back- while the different factions and character choices aren’t drastically different from each other, they speak to a better understanding of the chaos and player freedom that should be the main draw of this style of game.

Had a lot of potential but ended up feeling very tedious. The faction system, while good on paper, doesn't mesh will with stealth mechanics that aren't fleshed out enough to warrant making one faction hate you. Friendly faction members get caught in the crossfire and tank your reputation as well. It just ended up being a layer of annoyance on top of a decent game. The shooting and driving mechanics were fine, though there was a lot of old school jank that prevented them from being the best they could be.

Arguably doesn't get enough love for how its open world gameplay and faction-based enemy/ally AI laid the ground work for future games to come. So many interesting options to take that offered a lot of replayability. I poured many hours into this in high school, and it was such a joy to just dick around across the map. All the fun of going on sprees in GTA games, BUT YOU COULD ALSO DESTROY BUILDINGS. And once I found the code to unlock Indiana Jones, I turned into a little anarchistic archeologist.

I had anticipated Mercenaries not holding up like many open world games that were its contemporaries, however I was pleasantly surprised at how excellent it was. Mercenaries may seem limited in its scope compared to modern open world games, but the restraints of the technology created a really tight and fun open world playground. The game never tried to punish you for outsmarting it, and it was always satisfying to use a helicopter to glide right over a gauntlet of machine gun nests, or to drop an APC right in the middle of a firefight when making a frantic escape out of a stronghold. The faction system was implemented well and even if you had to swing a faction from hostile to friend it never felt like a chore. In general, the game economy was excellently implemented. There's so many other cool ideas in this game that were held back to technological limitations. It's a shame that this franchise is dead and that there hasn't been a proper re-imagining.

Mercenaries holds a certain vaunted status among a very particular group of people. Remembered for its bombast and freedom, exemplified by its subtitle "Playground of Destruction," its main claim to fame was being able to call in vehicles, weapons, and airstrikes wherever you are. Helldivers 2 owes a lot to Mercenaries in that respect.

However, the part nobody wants to talk about is how obscenely dull the game is otherwise. Missions are the most boring "go here, plant C4, defend this point" slop imaginable, to the point where they almost feel like they were procedurally generated. Side activities are populated almost entirely by checkpoint "races." Environments are shockingly barren, gunplay feels bad, and it features the most insane crosshair placement I've seen in any game that doesn't have "Halo" in its title. This game feels like it was made by aliens. The dialogue is unnatural and the controls are completely batshit (you also drive vehicles by pressing A to accelerate and X to brake).

The thing is, you could look at all of this stuff, and how it's an original Xbox/PS2 game, and think, "oh, it's just a very early open world game."

This came out in 2005.

TWO THOUSAND AND FIVE. The same year Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory came out. Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay had been out for a year. For more apples-to-apples comparisons, Hulk: Ultimate Destruction also released in 2005, and GTA San Andreas had come out a few months earlier. The Xbox 360 would arrive in November of 2005. This is just straight-up embarrassing.

Mercenaries did have one interesting concept, with the "Deck of 52" system. There were 52 enemies that were "high value targets" and could be captured to get extra money. It was sort of the precursor to the Nemesis system from the Mordor games, in a way, but most of them don't really stand out, and they're essentially just another collectible.

The legacy of Mercenaries, or at least the idealized version of what it represented, would thankfully be carried on by the Just Cause series, the worst entry in which is still far more fun to play than this. There was a Mercenaries 2, released in 2008, and I remember liking it. It was completely busted, and got a lot of flack for that, but I still remember it being much more enjoyable than the first game's utter slog.

3/10

thank you phil spencor for letting me play this shit game in 4k resolution on my x box series x you are a great man dedicated gtoo game presvertaion and i like thatyou wor e a bttletoads shirtgbnnnnn

One of the most underrated unique, fun and original open world sandbox games that is unfortunately completely forgotten due being exclusive to PS2 and Xbox OG.

This game has it all:

- Faction mechanics
- Companion mechanics/recruitable npcs
- Disguise/stealth mechanics
- Completely destroyable cities and structures
- Huge variety in vehicles, cars, tanks, helicopters every single one unique and with a different purpose or utility
- Vast arsenal of guns (and yours favorite glitched silenced shotgun from the devs forgetting to use the sfx)
- Many different airstrikes to make it rain from the sky, with artillery or jet bomb strikes
- Black market system, a very useful way to order the vehicles, guns and airstrikes mentioned, at any time
- Missions that can be completed in multiple unique set of ways, with extra rewards from optional objectives
- Amazing soundtrack composed by Michael Giacchino doing some of his best most unique work

If you haven't yet, please, DO PLAY IT! Also always remember to pour one out to my homies from the defunct Pandemic studios.