Back In North Korea

I went back to Mercenaries last night. Pandemic's "destruction playground" game never, imo, got all the credit it's due. It was reviewed well, but damn is this game good. Way too many people wrote it off as a GTA clone. It's about as similar to GTA as Zelda: Ocarina of Time. It's non-linear and you can hijack cars. That's about it.

I mean ... after I survived the trap the Ace's troops had left in the jeep (the jeep didn't survive), I had to fight my way to the roadside where I could grab a real jeep. This was just so that I could push a tank to the side of road so that I could steal that and get past the radioactive cloud that had been created by the supergun I was sent to destroy. The tank served as a decent disguise until I had to give an enemy officer a one shell salute. His lackeys didn't take kindly to that and proceeded to try and ruin my lovely tank with RPG fire. I didn't take kindly to that, so I blasted my way to the top of the hill where I could take out the supergun with a clean shot from the prototype supergun. Finally, I stealthly slid the tank down a steep hill next to the Ace's headquarters ... where it might an explosive demise at the hands of his formidable defenses. A couple of supply drops later lowered my patience and I called in a carpet bombing of the whole area.

Which is the point when The Girl looked up and said, "I remembered when we tried really hard to take all these guys alive."

Those days had just met with a very devastating end.

How can you not love this game? Really hope they do a follow up. I love that you can annihilate your opponents with superior firepower, but you have to weigh it against what it will cut into your profits.

Sometimes, though, you gotta just blow through all your money with sweet fireworks and then go back to a previous save...




tagged: game, gaming