this game was awesome i mean awesome if you like shooting games or car games this is the game for you

This game kicks some serious butt!. I would highly recommend this game to another person who enjoys this type of game. One of the best games that I have purchased in a long time.

I played Mercenaries at my friend's house for about one hour and i LOVED it, i just had to buy my own. So i did, and i was captivated by the explosions, open-ended map and memorable characters. I know this game may be a tad bit old, but it is very fun nonetheless. Blowing up vehicles and people never gets old, and neither does capturing the deck of 52. Its also really fun hijacking helicopters and flying into a nearby city destroying everything in my path.
The bad things about this game.
-You can't destroy trees.
-You can't go in water.
-There aren't as many weapons as most people would like to have.
-Being sneaky is necessary in some missions, but it is not this game's strongest point.

Other than those this game is one of my favorites 5 out of 5 stars!

I absolutely love this game! I just got it a few days ago, and I already love it. The gameplay is very fun, and it has a GTA style feel to it. You have to first choose one of three mercenaries, who each have individual strengths. My favorite so far is Matthias Nilsson, the Swedish merc. Anyway, the game is not too short, and not too long, it's just right. There's a personality feel to it as well; if you dislike the Chinese, then you can just work for the Russian Mafia. The only problems that I have with this game is that I've encountered one game freeze so far; towards the beginning where you're heading towards the Mafia HQ in a South Korean Hummer, all I did was make a sharp turn and then it froze. After I restarted my career, I didn't encountered this bug again. Also, it kind of gets annoying when you keep on hearing Fiona's voice telling you things that you already know. But to prevent irritation, just turn off your sound and enable the subtitles. I gave this game a 5 star fun rating and a 4 star overall rating, and please believe me that I'm not lying to you. I highly encourage you to ignore the 1,2, and 3 star reviews of this product. It is a good spending of money.

Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction is another take on the popular open world theme of gaming. Rather than shooting up citizens and police officers you're going after various factions this time. One things stays the same in terms of the open world formula though, and that is that your main goal is to make as much money as humanly possible. But how well does this all work?

Technically, the game is obviously too much for the Playstation 2. I haven't played any of the other versions so I don't know how well they work but I have played the Playstation 2 version and I can tell you it's riddled with technical issues. There's frame-rate drops, short draw distance, pop-in and some of the longest load times I've ever seen. I've heard the load times aren't as bad on the other versions though. It's not a bad looking game at all, but it isn't exactly Shadow of the Colossus either. There's little to no art direction, it just looks like a generic shooter for the most part.

The soundtrack is actually pretty good. The beating of the drums can really get you pumped up and ready for combat. the voice acting is surprisngly good as well. The soundwork as a whole is a pleasant surprise.

The game-play is where this game both shines and fails. First of all, I have a problem with the title. Playground of Destruction. There isn't a whole lot of destruction except for exploding vehicles and it's not much of playground. It's relatively big, but there isn't anything to do if yu're not doing a mission. This leads me to my next complaint. The missions are not only highly repetitive, but the instructions are also terrible. There were several times where I had no idea what I was doing. The dificulty is really unbalanced. It starts out easy and then shoots up greatly in difficulty after about an hour. The combat feels ineffective. You shoot someone, and you see them go down, but you just don't get that solid feeling you do in other shooters. What is really fun though, and sets this game apart from the others is when you get to call in air strikes and blow the crap out of your enemies. It's too bad the environments aren't destructible. The vehicles work pretty well, they have a very arcadey feel. In terms of game-play Mercenaries is pretty mediocre with the exception of blowing crap up.

A pretty slid game that will satisfy your need to blow things up and terrorize your enemies. Not all that much of a standout but it manages to stay afloat with solid soundwork, a good if not uninteresting open world, and allowing you to call in air strikes. It's worth a look if it sounds like your thing.