After the articles on Resident Evil 4 and the Grand Theft Auto saga, let’s go back to another 2005 title, Mercenaries. Why this comparison? It’s fair to say that the game borrows a lot to the GTA format. As such, I imagine that many design choices were inspired by, or decided in reaction to GTA3 and Vice City. And, like Resident Evil 4, Mercenaries attempted to reform the action/adventure style. Let’s begin with an overview of the game, then we’ll compare it with San Andreas and RE4, and finally, we’ll apply our quality framework.

Presentation of the game

Mercenaries wasn’t exactly a highly anticipated title such as Resident Evil, and it did not benefit from a massive marketing push. Yet, everyone welcomed it as a very pleasant surprise and it gathered favorable reviews, including some very enthusiastic ones. A few months after the release of the game, Bioware acquired the company, which shows how well Pandemic’s job was appreciated.

driving in the lovely Korean countryside

Enemy vehicles will attack you on sight.

Mercenaries include many excellent ideas. The game statement, which is to offer a GTA-like gameplay in a war-torn North Korea, is a really strong platform on which to build the game. By now, players (and especially those targeted by Mercenaries) are well aware of that mix of free exploration and scripted missions, which the player can start by going on one precise location on the map. It is also pretty exciting to realize that you are wandering in the most dangerous area of the world and that around every corner, you can be attacked by platoons of enemy soldiers, tanks, choppers, you name it. That’s definitely scarier than drug dealers with baseball bats! The settings of the game - a terrorist dictator manages a coup d’�tat in North Korea and must be stop before he can launch nuclear strikes - is also interesting. Propaganda can be heard ni cities, soldiers speak various languages such as Korean, Russian or Chinese, many game elements are inspired by real-world North Korea such as the Ryugyong hotel, the Juche Tower or the bronze statue of Kim Il-Sung. The game even features the current North Korean ruler, Kim Jong-Il (as the good guy, of all things!). So the game environment and atmosphere are there.

Ordering a vehicle

A chopper will bring it in seconds. But it may be shot down.

The greatest feature of the game is the capability to order support from the air, in the form of vehicles, equipment, or air strikes. You can order a North Korean jeep, have it delivered by helicopter, and go unnoticed by North Korean soldiers. Short on ammo? Want to change guns? you can order a crate of supplies. And the air strikes, which come in all shapes and size, are really awesome, from the almost gentle cluster bomb to a devastating fuel-air bomb.

The hero of the game is a mercenary and must fulfil missions for various factions with conflicting interests. While all factions seemingly want the downfall of the dictator, they also fight for the control of the North Korean territory. Especially later in the game, one faction can therefore ask you to fight another one. There’s an indicator for each faction that shows their attitude towards the hero, from friendly to hostile. While this is interesting on the paper, I feel that the developers didn’t push that idea to the end. The game doesn’t encourage the player to side with one faction but rather to complete all missions from all factions, which effectively means betraying every faction in turn. As a result, the player has much less freedom of action and freedom of choice than could be thought. I find it very annoying to have to kill soldiers which are supposed to be your allies in order to move forward in the game.

It is the first time that I play a PS2 game that has not been primarily designed for the PS2, but rather adapted from a more powerful system, in this case the Xbox. Frankly, the PS2 is not strong enough to deliver the same gaming experience as its cousin, and visually, it really shows. The FPS is low, the vision range is surprisingly short... While it is somehow disturbing, eventually, it doesn’t hurt the overall experience as much as I feared.

Stealing a chopper

if a chopper is flying low, your character can jack it! for extra adrenalin, they can even do that in mid-air, from one helicopter to another!

Like GTA, the game features car-jacking, or rather vehicle jacking, for there are very few cars in Mercenaries, but a lot of various war vehicles. The rule is pretty simple and works well: in order to steal a vehicle, it must have no gunner. If there is a gunner, he can always be killed from the outside. Then, each vehicle has a zone from which it is possible to steal it.

Mercenaries, San Andreas and Resident Evil 4

While the three games were based on the same principle, they show remarkably different choices of design. San Andreas is an iteration of the Vice City formula: a bigger playground that is progressively accessible to the player, and more things to do. Mercenaries, in contrast, is rather a critic: it focuses more on the core game elements, and less on the universe. On the other hand, it tries to implement more realistic options (damaging environment, non-spawning vehicles). RE4 took radically different choices: it’s much more scripted, much less open. Yet, there are similitudes in the way combat is handled - after all, they are both 3rd-person shooters to some extent.

In detail:

Linearity

Capturing a criminal

The "52 cards" must be localised, and, if possible, captured alive. A UN transport chopper would then collect the prisoner.

RE4 can be seen as a rehabilitation of linear gameplay: while the hero’s spatial environment is not exactly linear (the player has to make a couple of roundtrips now and again), the plot definitely is, and the order in which the various game assignments must be completed is strict. An interesting counterpoint is the weapon/merchant system, by which the player can build more or less freely their arsenal. In opposition, Mercenaries is very open - even more so than San Andreas, for which completing a short series of missions was the only way to unlock another short series of missions, and which only let the player access the world very gradually. In Mercenaries, the game unfolds in 4 chunks. Within each chunk, the player progresses as they see fit - they are free to accept or decline missions, in which case they will have to capture war criminals hidden somewhere in the game in order to unlock the last mission of the chunk, which is mandatory. Within minutes, the player can roam in half of the game world, and after half of the game, they can access the other half with no restriction. There are plenty of optional content ("challenges") which don’t need to be unlocked, contrary to GTA where every optional mission is only accessible when the hero completes a specific assignment.

Violence

GTA is known for its free-for-all environment, where killing bystanders will only get you a mild police response. In Mercenaries, killing civilians, journalists or allied soldiers will be result in a fine. Is it a better system? Basically, the mercenary pays a fee to kill anyone. That’s hardly an improvement. The mercenary does have the possibility to knock out soldiers as opposed to kill them. This is important for capturing criminals, which are worth more money alive than dead. But on the other hand, some missions require the character to slaughter hordes of soldiers, which may include some of its allies.

Environment

Mercenaries takes place in a wide, open environment which the player can explore at will - provided that they stay out of buildings. San Andreas’s world is similar, although a good part of the game happens indoors. San Andreas’s world features large, complex cities, compared to which Mercenaries’ towns look like villages. This can be explained by the fact that most of GTA gameplay takes place out of the official missions: exploring the cities can keep the player occupied for a long time, and there are many rewards associated (such as power-ups, collectables, optional missions). In Mercenaries, there is much fewer game content available, so expanding the cities would have been a waste of ressources. In Resident Evil, there is a tangible difference between the levels and the collision meshes - the player can only move within a well-delimited part of the gaming world. Contrary to GTA or Mercenaries, there are parts of the world the player can see, but not explore. The world of RE4 is highly detailed and the hero definitely explores buildings.

Another strong difference between GTA and Mercenaries is that in the latter, the player can destroy any building or vehicle, which will stay that way for the rest of the game. In San Andreas, while it is possible to bombard a building with unlimited tank fire, it is not possible to even dent it. On the other hand, GTA recognises that a truck is bigger than a shrub, while heavy vehicles in Mercenaries are stopped on their track when they collide with any form of vegetation.

Point of view

While these 3 games can be considered 3rd-person shooters, Mercenaries offers a much broader view than Resident Evil. Combat in Mercenaries mostly happens at a distance, while combat in Resident Evil mostly takes place in close quarters. In Resident Evil, aiming slightly changes the view - it’s a different game mode. No moving while you aim. In Mercenaries, the crosshair is always on, so you can move and aim. GTA, where combat is not as important as in the other two, is more versatile: you can move and fire or not depending on your weapon, and you can aim manually or let the auto-lock takes care of that for you. Mercenaries also features some weapons that can lock on a vehicle.

Allies

The big innovation of San Andreas is the capability to build a gang to which simple instructions can be given: follow me/stay where you are, fire at will/cease fire. It works fairly well, especially during gang wars. In Mercenaries, allies can be invited on board of your vehicle. Some vehicles have weapons which can only be operated by a gunner. Other soldiers, though, attack enemies on sight, which is not always convenient. RE4 is not really concerned with such questions, as there’s really only one scene with a fighting ally.

Vehicles

Piloting helicopters

is an excellent way to travel quickly in the vast world of Mercenaries

In Mercenaries, there are much fewer vehicles than in GTA, but then again, we are comparing North Korea with Los Angeles. Yet, there is a great diversity in combat vehicles and a wide array of jeeps or tanks which all have different equipments. From a physics point of view, the variety in vehicle behaviour is more apparent in GTA than in Mercenaries, but that can only improve in the next versions.

Real time

In RE4, the game time stops in many occasions: a special hit (a roundhouse kick to a zombie) or a special move (jumping out of a window) will trigger a short cutscene, during which the game simulation stops (enemies don’t move, attacks don’t connect), and after which the hero will be arbitrarily repositioned to a safe location. Because the game stops, those cutscenes are made more dramatic with the use of zooms, slow-motions and other effects, and feature crazy acrobatic moves. In Mercenaries, while there are some longer animations (for instance, when the hero knocks out an enemy or when they try to steal a vehicle), they do happen in real time - the enemies keep moving around the character. With this system, Mercenaries could potentially be opened to multiple players, which is not the case for RE4. GTA, with the exception of the cutscenes that introduce each mission, is even more realtime than Mercenaries, and there are already a few multiplayer mods out there for the PC version (MTA being the most famous).

Mercenaries: a quality analysis

Fairness:

An enemy car

it is possible to steal it if the character moves inside those green circles

IMO, this is where the game lacks the most. Fights are very messy and unclear. Despite all the firepower the hero has at hand, there are times where their death is unavoidable, which is quite frustrating: their vehicle may be stuck in some part of the overly detailed landscape, or it may have flipped, forcing the character to exit it and blow their cover; sometimes, the player can take out a whole battalion of enemy soldiers without being hit, some other times, they can be killed before they pull the trigger. The most infuriating deaths occur when the character’s helicopter is shot, although it is theoretically possible to do an emergency landing; when the hero is ran over by a jeep, especially from behind; and when they drown (they can’t swim). I feel this is a common problem for games that feature gunfight. The game should make the rules by which a character is seen by the enemy clearer, more explicit. On the other hand, the game can prove to be just too easy if the player has the right vehicle, especially North-Korean attack helicopters, with which they can complete even the hardest missions with no difficulty.

Fiction:

the initial scenario is very good. The various targets, the "52 cards", also have an interesting background... if the player bothers to read it, which they probably won’t, given that they don’t have to. Some "genuine" North Korean elements also contribute to reinforcing the game atmosphere. Unfortunately, and this comes as a strong contrast compared to GTA, the game dialogue is underused. There are a few lines of speech at the beginning of the mission, and that’s about it. Compared with GTA, which features more structured cutscenes and missions which are usually divided into several sub-parts, each animated with dialogue, and which takes place in a very dynamic environment as opposed to Mercenaries’ almost empty North Korea, the game sounds silent. The very poor quality of the French translation doesn’t help (Note: all GTA 3 episodes sold in Europe featured English voices with subtitles of the player’s choice, whereas my copy of Mercenaries was, by default, French with French subtitles.)

Depth:

An impressive airstrike

Never before was so much firepower available in a shooter

the game certainly doesn’t lack game options. Not only does it provides the player with one of the most impressive arsenal in 3D shooter history (again, we’re talking 16 different flavours of air strikes!), but the developers have worked hard to convince the player that everything is possible. Nearly all buildings can be destroyed, and if they are destroyed, they stay that way. Likewise, there are enemy positions throughout the game (artillery, vehicles...) that can obviously be destroyed, but contrary to a GTA, they won’t respawn. This adds a challenge: if the player want to steel a rare vehicle, they must be careful not to destroy it, or else it may be gone forever. In terms of super-gaming and hyper-gaming, the game features three optional challenges. First, the player can hunt hidden goodies across the large game map. Doing that unlocks a few extra vehicles and equipment options. Curiously, all of these good options are unlocked towards the beginning of the hunt. The patient player who finds them all won’t be rewarded with much more: extra cash, cheat codes to change the appearance of the hero... Nothing too exciting. The second optional challenge is a series of mini-missions that can be triggered by talking to certain people or entering certain vehicles. The player can only earn money and possibly improve their relationship with a faction with these. Again, contrary to GTA where such optional missions were unlocked throughout the game, here, they are all available from the start, which tends to diminish their interest. The third optional mission is the capture of the 52 cards. In order to complete the game, the player will have to capture 4 "aces". They will be able to do so if they find enough "information" from their underlings. By completing the official "missions", the player is sure to face the king, queen and jack of each colour. Capturing them is enough to get enough intelligence to unlock the "ace" mission. But if the player fails to do so, or if they don’t want to, they can instead go after the lower cards. After each official mission, the player is given hints about the location of one of the card. It is then up to them to try to capture them or not. Even without hints, the player might find the cards if they are close enough while exploring. In theory, this card system is an alternative to completing all the official missions. But in practice, the good things (extra vehicles, weapons and strikes) are unlocked after the official missions, not after the card captures, so the player is encouraged to complete all the missions. Special bonuses are also awarded if the player captures every card. In order to maintain that "mercenary" feeling, that is, the freedom for the player to choose their faction as long as they fulfil their mission, that is the capture of the "52 cards", the reward structure could be reversed: faction missions could just yield money, improve the relationship with the faction, and provide the player with a tip about a card location, while the capture of a card could unlock power-ups. Either mission could unlock access to the optional challenges, which would increase their interest.

Tension:

You’re going down, dear

What would be a shooting game without sniping?

In this domain, the game does well. The character is never powerful enough to be completely safe. Do they ride a tank? Then, they will have trouble evading enemy missiles and the cannons will rotate slow enough to give a chance to the enemy foot soldiers to blow it up with their RPG. Do they pilot a helicopter? Deadly anti-air guided missiles are spread throughout the countryside. Are they on foot? They can only carry 2 guns with very limited ammunition, especially for heavy weapons, with which they can’t fire more than a couple of shells. All of these decisions keep the player on their toes.

Consistency:

Finally, all components of the game complement each other nicely. Despite lots of game options, the game mechanics and game rules are kept simple, which is very good. There is no feature out of place in the game, and there is no feature needed. The game development resources have been well allocated: There’s nothing that feels under- or overdeveloped.