Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction

Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction is a video game that consists of 5 releases

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Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction is a sandbox game set in a fictional North Korea which has been torn apart by a massive multinational war.

Overview

Things go BOOM!

Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction is an open-world, GTA style action game, where the player has complete freedom to accomplish given tasks in a variety of ways. These ways include on-foot assaults, vehicles, or one of several diverse airstrikes. The game was often cited as Grand Theft Auto: Korea, or a military GTA. Playground of Destruction was, overall, well-received by critics, and its sales reflected that. Pandemic Studios developed the game under LucasArts but soon after release, Pandemic was bought by EA Games.

Plot

Set in a fictional Korea in the year of 2010, the DMZ has become hot and war has broken out across the two Korean countries. The ruler of North Korea, Choi Kim, expands his reach of power to South Korea. South Korea agrees to peacefully reunify Korea under the condition that Choi Kim has the North Korean Army abolished. Choi Kim agrees to the peace offering, but this decision only angers his son, who is the General of the North Korean Military. General Choi Song reacts with force. He rounds up radical members of the existing North Korean Military and attacks the day of the two countries peaceful meeting. Song and his military end up killing a majority of the North and South Korean leaders, including his own father, Choi Kim. He then claims power over the greater extents of Korea.

Soon after his rise of power one of General Songs cargo ships is found carrying a large supply of nuclear warheads. These warheads were bound for distribution to foreign terror cells. With the world held at hostage in the wake of Song's ability to launch a nuclear barrage attack on any of the seven continents, the Allied Nations (The fictional United Nations) declares war on General Song and his military powers. The Allied Nations invade along with other G8 countries such as China and even a band of Russian Mercenaries. Song also declares war on South Korea, therefore, the SK troops would also pledge allegiance to the Allied Invasion. This creates a multifaceted war effort, in an attempt to stop Song from using Nuclear weapons, selling them to other nations or selling them to terrorists. General Song wins over support in North Korea and is thus granted all military hardware and man power to his cause.

The War with North Korea is off to a rough start, and the Allied Nations are having issues with being able to kill or capture Song's flag officers and commanders. The Allied Nations later issue a deck of 52 document on high level targets within Song's hierarchy, including general Song himself. The infamous "Deck of 52" (A common document put out even in real wars to attract Private Military attention) attracts the attention of the Executive Operations Private Military Corporation (ExOps), to come to North Korea and the DMZ where war is near constant. ExOps decides that sending in one private contractor is sufficient (This is were you pick one character). And that Mercenary will help the Allied Nations in the wake of the ever changing war. However, Mercenaries are still considered dirty as they are greedy and often kill or harm people because of dangerous tactics (See: Blackwater in Iraq). The game then opens up to the player selected mercenary being dropped into the DMZ.

Gameplay Features

Indiana Jones!

Mercenaries plays much like a Grand Theft Auto or Saints Row game The gameplay features selectable missions from multiple people and a variety of side quests all the while doing what you want to achieve them and earning cash while doing so. The gameplay is much faster paced than most games. The player can pick up weapons, find secret items, and even drive over 120 vehicles (all of which range from military to civilian.) The player also has access to a variety of small arms including assault rifles, light machineguns, and portable rocket weapons, as well as the ability to call in deliveries. These range from weapon drops, to APC and Tank drops to the almighty airstrikes (Which are the real seller to Mercenaries). These airstrikes are big, and cost a lot of your hard earned cash, but you get what you pay for. Carpet bombs, artillery barrages and more than 16 others blow up, cripple and destroy anything and everything in the fully destructible environments. All these items are accessed from the Russian Mafia's website, Merchant of Menace, accessed through your PDA. You can use this website whenever you want, and use money to get loads of "toys" to assist you in your travels. These also come free sometimes in certain contracts.

Characters

General Song

Colonel Garret

Fyonia Taylor

Christoper Jacobs

Christopher Jacobs is a 35 year old ex-delta force member and he has been with ExOps for 5 years. He is an American who speaks English and Korean, enabling him to understand the side conversations between the South Koreans. Out of the three mercenaries, Jacobs is the most physically fit; enabling him to take massive amounts of damage.

Jennifer Mui

Jennifer is the most experience of the ExOps agents, having been with the company for seven years. She was born in Hong Kong but lives in the UK, she she fluently speaks English and Chinese. She previously worked for the British SIS, so naturally her expertise is her ability to remain out of sight.

Mattias Nilsson

Mattia is the newest member of ExOps, only having served the company for one year. He is 31 years old and hails from Sweden, where he served in the Swedish Army and the Swedish Navy. Mattias speaks English, Russian, and Swedish. His strength is his speed, Mattias is the fastest runner of the three ExOps agents.

Development

Mercenaries began its life as a project developed for EA, a revival of the "Strike" series (A helicopter. Initially set in a fictional Middle Eastern country, over time input from EA greatly expanded the project's scope. Drawing on the popularity of Grand Theft Auto III, the game's design changed drastically, from a game about completing helicopter combat missions to a free-roaming, open world game with multiple vehicles.

Due to the extreme changes in the project's scope, Pandemic and EA met to renegotiate the contract. However, the two parties were unable to reach an agreement, and Pandemic ended the project, delivering all existing Strike assets to EA. EA continued to work on the original Strike game internally, but it was canceled not long after.

Immediately after ending the EA contract, Pandemic began developing the game we see today, recasting the game in North Korea.

General Information Edit

Game Name	Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction
Platform(s)	PlayStation 2 Xbox
Publisher(s)	LucasArts Entertainment Company LLC
Developer(s)	Pandemic Studios
Genres	Add a new genre Action Shooter
Themes	Add a new theme Modern Military
Original US Release	Jan. 11, 2005 need a fuzzy date?
Original US Release	know the real date?
Aliases	Mercenaries
CERO	CERO: 15+
ESRB	ESRB: T
PEGI	PEGI: 16+