Developers Pandemic Studios have lately been showing everybody that they're a company to watch. Last year they hit us with the tactical strategy simulation Full Spectrum Warrior, which though short, I'm still quite fond of. Then Star Wars: Battlefront pleased both fans of the Star Wars universe and casual game players everywhere with a huge game and later this year Destroy All Humans! looks to be one of the standout titles of 2005. However, the studio also managed to find time to create what could be the next big gaming franchise - Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction.

Mercenaries puts you in the role of one of three characters and then drops you right into the middle of a huge war going on in North Korea. These three soldiers work for Executive Operations, otherwise known as ExOps. Various factions are all bunkered down in the area, including the Chinese, South Korea, the Russians, the Allied Nations and everybody's enemy in the game, the North Koreans. Each faction has their own set of goals and you can take jobs with any of the first four to earn yourself cash and get information about the Deck of 52. The ExOps have the advantage in the situation, as they can do what they need to and as long as the Deck of 52 is brought down, no questions are asked.

The Deck of 52 is an interesting idea for a game that I really like. Each card in the deck represents a known fictional terrorist, all of them working for General Song (AKA the Ace of Spades). Throughout the game you'll have the chance to capture or kill every single card, however you may end up missing a couple in the long run. See, Mercenaries may be linear in some areas, but the set up of the game is very non-linear. Your selected character is placed in the war-torn landscape of North Korea and is free to do as you decide. The decision of what faction to go to first is yours to make and you'll most likely end up betraying a faction you once earned the trust of (however, you can easily bribe them and earn their friendship once again.)

The 52 terrorists are all hiding somewhere throughout the huge landscape, but don't expect to find them all until you receive some sort of intel or clues on where they're located (which you get from completing contracts for various factions) and they all have a large bounty on their head. More money is given for bringing them back alive, however sometimes this can be difficult.

There is more to do in this game than meets the eye: you can complete a plethora of contracts for factions to earn trust, money, information, etc. You can complete smaller goals for extra money, which include checkpoint races or helping a faction out with a small problem. Things are hidden throughout the landscape to collect and a card in the Deck of 52 is almost always hiding out there somewhere, waiting for you to come find them and attempt to bring them down. It's hard to get bored in this game, as the contracts have quite a bit of variety in objectives, but also because you can pretty much complete an objective however you like. Weapons, vehicles and other toys are everywhere in the game world and anything you can find you can use on a mission. This may make the review longer than needed, but I can't help but share some of my favourite creative ideas while on a contract...

There is a large wall surrounding a factory that I need to get into and I don't quite feel like creating a huge mess with the air-strike the game suggested. Instead, I blew up a tower inside the compound with a rocket, causing the tower to topple over and creating a ramp that allowed me to run up and jump over the wall. This was never suggested or hinted at by the game and was completely random. One contract wants you to destroy four anti-aircraft trucks, which I completed five times in completely different ways. The most memorable method was getting each vehicle one by one and parking them all together, then calling in an airstrike. Another fun approach was to plant C4 on the hood of your vehicle and plow into the vehicle while bailing out. Almost any mission can be approached with not only any weapon or method, but usually from any direction as well, opening dozens of possibilities. Often times I will find a large hill and just scout the area first before attacking, or maybe I'll snipe some targets from here, call in an airstrike on targets, or just fire an RPG. Grand Theft Auto is known for being able to go about a lot of missions in a variety of ways; now take that and multiply it by 10 and you have the Mercenaries missions; every single one of them.

Another interesting aspect of Mercenaries is the Merchant of Menace, a black market that can deliver almost anything to you whenever you want (don't worry, you have to unlock stuff little by little.) For instance, if you want to approach a contract silently you can order a sniper rifle, or if you want to make a lot of racket you can call in for a supply of demolitions, or simply call in an airstrike, of which there are many different kinds. I once completed a contract by taking out five buildings, each in a different way, and found myself in a bit of a pickle afterwards. Enemies were everywhere and my vehicle had blown up. I found a nice open area and tossed in a smoke grenade signal for a delivery and was quickly supplied with an armoured jeep, which I used to promptly high-tail it out of there. The game never tells you how to complete your goals, only what the goals themselves are. You always have complete freedom to go about every situation, which makes the game challenging, fun, creative and always different, thus making the game worth going back to play again.

Sometimes the Merchant of Menace will be unable to help, however, for various reasons. Sometimes the signal is jammed by a satellite truck and sometimes there are just too many anti-aircraft vehicles for a delivery to successfully be made. This is when you really need to get creative, because chances are you'll run out of supplies or money if you aren't careful. On one contract, I needed to take down a group of satellite trucks but I was out of C4, RPGs and any other explosive device to destroy the trucks with. I decided to hijack the truck and drive it out of the area and away from enemies, so I could better figure out how to take care of the situation. On the way out I noticed I was right on the edge of the landscape with a large body of water nearby. I think you can figure out what I did with the truck... I replayed this mission multiple times and almost every time I came up with a new way to complete it. The Merchant of Menace offers dozens upon dozens of tools and toys to use for each situation and as long as you have money, you'll be free to order whatever is available.

I'm way ahead of myself here, though. Lets get back to the basics of the game. From the start you can select from three mercenaries to play as: Jennifer Mui, a British agent from Asia, the tough California born Chris Jacobs, or the simply phenomenal Mattias Nilsson, from Sweden. Not much changes depending on who you select and they don't talk much outside of the one-liners during the game, as well as before and after a contract. However, oddly enough, the voice acting from all three of these characters is actually very good, featuring Carl Weathers (Apollo Creed from Rocky, Action Jackson and frequent Adam Sandler films) and the amazing Peter Stormare from such films as Minority Report, Chocolat, The Big Lebowski, and, of course, Gaear Grimsrud in Fargo. Mr. Stormare fits this role incredibly well, as if it was written for him specifically.

All of these characters have fantastic abilities, which includes hijacking a helicopter when it is quite a distance above them! Don't expect to feel much for the characters, however, as character development isn't really present. An evolving story isn't exactly here, either, as you'll just move from contract to contract and capture card after card. Thankfully the gameplay and just the pure fun of the missions make up for the lack of story, as well as the fact that the game is actually quite long.

Since driving is such an important part of this game (you can hijack any vehicle you find, or order a variety of them) it's expected that it will have been perfected and implemented as best as possible. Aside from a couple of vehicles that tend to steer a little strangely, most of them are fun to drive and feel noticeably different from each other. Something I was very impressed with was that Pandemic went out of their way to make off-road driving feel completely different to on-road treks. A strong vibration kicks in, dirt sound effects, as well as a shaky camera effect to make the experience enjoyable to the point where I go out of my way to explore off-road trails because it just feels so cool. Driving a tank differs from other vehicles, however, with completely different controls that will probably take a lot of getting used to. Fortunately, a lot of people may come to like how they control, as the situation is reminiscent of the Warthog in the original Halo.

Another great aspect of the vehicles is the fact that they act as disguises; for instance, if you get into a South Korean vehicle and drive around, people will think you're a South Korean soldier (unless you blow your cover.) Be careful though, as other factions may act hostile toward you in this kind of situation, especially if you're under cover as a North Korean! This aspect of the game makes some contracts a lot more fun to complete, as it can buy you some valuable time while inside enemy territory. I've driven through what would normally be a battleground undetected for a while, just scouting the area and planning my attack, before leaping out and blowing everything up.

The ability to get away with that raises a few questions about enemy AI, however. It isn't very smart about certain things, but incredibly impressive about others. They rarely react to you unless you get right near them, so you can scout from a distance undetected. Enemies also tend to forget that you just blew something apart nearby and won't always react until you affect them directly. If an enemy is driving and suddenly discovers your presence, they almost always freeze up and just sit stationary for a moment before attacking you. However, enemies always run for an open turret to fight you with, they jump into nearby vehicles to fire from the mounted gun, or simply brutally run you down (which is often funny and incredibly annoying at once), they throw grenades, fire off RPGs at vehicles or aircrafts, or call in for backup by raising an alarm. When it comes down to it, though, the AI is more dumb than smart and I came to this decision when numerous enemies fired a rocket at me when I was standing directly in front of them (which most of the time will kill them and not me.) Though the AI is dumb, I honestly found it to be for the better most of the time; it just wouldn't be as much fun if you couldn't stand on a hilltop and look over a situation before attacking.

One of the most enjoyable aspects of this game, in my eyes, is exploring the land in my own time and searching for the Deck of 52. They're hard to find without intel; in fact it may not be possible, but even the hints are a bit vague so you still have to do a good share of exploring to find them. When you discover one, you'll have to fight off a large entourage of bodyguards to get at him. You can either kill him and photograph his body, or handcuff him and call in for a helicopter to pick him up. The latter is worth more money, but more difficult because you may think the battle is over, then suddenly as your extraction copter comes in you'll realise three enemies choppers are firing machine guns at it.

Occasionally you'll find very funny but also frustrating events taking place during the capture of a card. For starters, after your card is handcuffed, he's a sitting duck and can be killed extremely easily. I've had my extraction helicopter get blown up while he was lying on the ground (I was attempting to fight off the enemy choppers so I could load him into the escape copter) and he was killed from the explosion, yet I didn't realise this until after I spent a good deal of time eliminating all the targets. Another time I put him into my vehicle to escape with and find a safe place to call for extraction, when I decided the best idea was to simply bomb it off a huge cliff and hope for the best. I landed okay and he was still alive, however I was not aware that I had just jumped into one of the biggest North Korean bases in the game. A tank killed me instantly! I was pleased to find out that the body of this captured terrorist was still lying in the spot I died, though he was of course dead, it was pleasing to see that he actually stayed where I left him.

Musically Mercenaries differs from a lot of other similar titles. Heavy military themes play most of the time, with a taste of classical thrown in. The sound is unique but often feels out of place. Then again, it often feels perfect; it simply depends on the situation you're in, which is a bit of a bummer because the music is mostly the same universally. However, I once went up a giant mountain and took down one of the Club cards, destroying the surrounding environment in the process. After the battle, a helicopter came in and picked up the captured terrorist and flew away into the distance. I stood atop the area looking over a war-torn North Korea with the air full of a thick, orange fog as the sun began to set. Suddenly, very dramatic and slow music started to play that fitted the situation so perfectly I couldn't help but just stand and look at the view for a while.

As I continued to play I noticed other impressive uses of the music. For instance, I was looking over a small North Korean base, watching the enemies wander about with my binoculars. I decided the best way to attack was with an RPG, as there were about five or six enemy vehicles parked in the area. As soon as the rocket propelled grenade impacted two enemy jeeps, a huge movie-like finale theme song blasted in and I found myself in the middle of a huge gunfight. After it was over, it slowly faded away and I stood in the remains, once again impressed.

As I've mentioned, the voice work in this game from not only the three main characters but the supporting cast is great, quality stuff, making the sound even more impressive overall. Though I could nitpick about a few missing sounds, overall it is great and even better in Dolby.

Now, onto the graphics. The game slightly utilises a blur effect to smooth out some edges but not nearly as much as Fable's overdone blur and thankfully not enough to make the game feel like a dream or flashback like Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time's brilliant effect; it just would not feel appropriate here. Certainly the explosions are top notch, as this is the game's main selling point in adverts: blowing things up! You'll be in awe at some of the devastation you can cause, the air strikes and military power you're capable of using is amazing and seeing a building collapse on itself is quite a sight. Even the ground looks noticeably different after a large explosion. Animations are all well done, except occasionally your character gets stuck in a jump pose if you try to jump in a bad spot and enemies seem to be missing one or two frames at times, but it is nothing too major. When taking lots of damage you'll see the screen drenched in a crimson colour (only when you're very near death), as well as a brief slowdown effect. Some games are very bad about not letting you know when you're taking damage, but in Mercenaries there is never any question when you're getting your ass kicked!

As much as I enjoy Mercenaries, there are things to nitpick about. For instance, the camera can create problems while driving, forcing you to fully rotate it to look behind or around you and also forcing you to rotate it back to look in front of you again. Bodies tend to vanish quite quickly, as well as their weapons, so you may end up losing a gun you wanted to pick up. Though this is more of a user error issue, the Merchant of Menace delivery helicopters can easily hit something on the ground and cause a big mess, destroying whatever you ordered and losing your money. They also can be hard to even get to come, as you need a nice open area to use as a delivery spot. I once ordered a sniper rifle crate because I wanted to snipe out a card's RPG carrying bodyguards before I moved in for the capture, however the crate landed beside me and proceeded to tumble down a huge cliff side, landing right next to the enemies!

With nitpicks come little touches that are equally worth mentioning, like driving through North Korea and seeing the factions doing battle in real time with the North Koreans, or the fact that listening posts around the country will update and announce your recent accomplishments. There are so many great aspects of Mercenaries that the little issues are easily overlooked.

The replay value of this game is huge, with hundreds of things to find, do and complete. Since all the contracts can be beaten in dozens of different ways, the fun factor in replaying the game just goes up and up, plus there are more than three different characters to do it with. In an age where online gaming reigns supreme, Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction shines its creative and non-linear rays of light on the single player experience, reminding us just how much fun a single player game can be and showing us what the future should hold for gaming: creativity and unlimited options to accomplish your given goals in your own unique ways. Well done Pandemic, I see bright things in your future!

Reviewed by Christopher Martin for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).