Reviews// Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction (Xbox)

Ahhh. Death, destruction and extreme violence: how better than to spend a cold winter's eve. In fact, it's a great way to spend any eve. Blowing stuff up generally appeals to our inner warrior, and the more spectacular the explosion, the more compelling this psychopathic indulgence becomes. Hence, Pandemic's latest blow 'em up, Mercenaries, has us cackling incessantly in a blood-curdlingly menacing fashion. It's a free-roaming stomp around a pseudo-fictional Korean war zone and it boasts a propensity for violence even greater than those kids who hang around launching fireworks at stray cats.

As much as Mercenaries is its own game, if you were to envisage a cross between GTA, Hitman and an actual war, you'd be picturing a similar sort of thing. However, it is more than just a mosaic of proven successes and the idea as a whole does actually feel like something new and innovative. After a seemingly endless procession of sequel releases and shamelessly plagiarised concepts, that is a truly satisfying thing. Although the content of the game itself isn't revolutionary, the richness and immersiveness of the tense atmosphere marks this down as something quite special.

The game takes place over a large chunk of Korean terrain and hosts a near-future war involving the Allies, South Korea, North Korea, China and the Russian Mafia. Military dictators, crime lords, the CIA, hooded gangsters. Even frontline journalists have made it into the wider mix of ancillary characters; and the subsequent mix of foes and friends, with their respective hijackable vehicles (from jeeps to helicopters) lends to a general feeling of absolute chaos. As one of three mercenary characters, the player will find themselves suddenly (and mostly without explanation) thrown into the thick of this sprawling conflict, and with no particular allegiance to guide your actions, it doesn't take long before you understand what being a mercenary is all about.