At the end of a hard day, I come home from work and look forward to my method of meditation -- my little piece of serenity that will allow me to slip from the grasp of the real world. You know, a typical video game experience. I want to draw 100% of my focus away from my non-flushing toilet, bills, and the guy on the floor above me who thinks it's a good idea to practice his "hardcore rap" verses out on his balcony. As I sat down to play another war game, expecting one that satisfies most men's appetite for destruction, gives you an amazing arsenal, and the most cheesy story line since Stallone's 1986 movie "Cobra," I was shocked to find that Lucasarts Mercenaries, despite having cheesy commercials, was not your stereotypical war game. It had the destruction, the arsenal, and all of the bloodshed you need, but added a few twists and turns that made the game a blast to play.

The first thing I noticed about this game was the backstory. Instead of a made-up story about some country that doesn't exist on some continent that's fake, or not telling you where you are at all, Mercenaries takes place in North Korea. In the not-so-distant future, the current ruler Choi Kim is overthrown by his only son and, as the first act of revolution, the son Choi Song assassinates his father. North Korea is now in a crucial state and all major players on the globe are now playing for control to make sure Song doesn't get out of hand. In all honesty, I thought this was a sweet introduction because it seemed so real. It is not far fetched and I like the idea of putting North Korea on the hotbed. So the CIA, Allied Alliance, South Korea, The Russian Mafia and the Chinese government (who are no longer in control of NK with Song in power) are all pushing for control. This is where you come in. You are one of three mercenaries working for a company called Executive Operations and your goal is to track down and collect the bounty for 52 of the most wanted men in North Korea who are represented by a deck of 52 cards. To do this you must work with all of the factions, building up their trust first, and then using them to get the information that you need to capture the bad guys.

For all intents and purposes, this is a really cool system, making sure that you are working all the angles and not neglecting any of them. You basically run from faction to faction doing missions for them, and then collecting clues and Intel into the whereabouts of the men you are looking for. You follow up the leads and capture them. The other great thing is making sure you keep the factions happy. If they get too upset with you for killing their men or crossing them, you will find yourself cut out of the loop. (It is hard to keep the Russians and Chinese happy, one of them will be mad at you.) This relationship ranges from friendly, to neutral, to unfriendly and enemy. Getting the clues and finding the different cards are a lot of fun. Everything you do has a purpose it seems. You gain trust, get info, bust the bad guys, and collect the bounty.

The game plays a lot like GTA or Getaway. With those games, however, you get more in-depth in the story than Mercenaries, which is basically mission-to-mission. To be honest with you, I like that a lot. You are given information as you play, as opposed to going into long cut scenes where you must watch what is going on, bored out of your mind (especially when they try to throw some romance in there). This game keeps you going. It takes a little getting used to. You almost crave to be fed in-depth stories but, the great thing is, you don't need it. You just want to play and that is what Mercenaries allows. In comparing it to GTA, one thing that is much different is how you grow in power, and not just status (although you grow in that as well.) I mean military power. The more contracts you do, and the more you please the factions, more options open up in terms of weapons and vehicles. You unleash a world of military strength like no GTA or Getaway game possess.

You can tell that Pandemic (Full Spectrum Warrior, Star Wars: Battlefront) and the brilliant producer Peter Hirschmann (creator of Medal of Honor, producer of Secret Weapons Over Normandy) are military freaks and I thank them for that. The amount of military weaponry is amazing. Another great thing about the contract missions is that you can do them however you want. There is no "failing the mission" if it isn't done exactly right. Some missions require strategy but if you want to run and gun your way through, you have that option (if you can get away with it). As long as the key points are hit, the mission is a success. The contracts and money opportunities are as small as pushing a barrel 50 meters to impress the Russian mafia to destroying vast communication bases by ordering air or artillery strikes. The missions are a lot of fun and you never get tired of similar missions. (I could order Air strikes on a communication tower every day of the week and twice on Sunday).

Buying supplies and air strikes as well as vehicles from the black market store is a great idea. It works well. No matter where you are in the field, if you can clear an LZ (Landing Zone) and you have the scratch, you can get whatever you need. Artillery from the Chinese, A-10 attacks, all are fantastic to use.

The graphics are fantastic and, although I haven't played the Xbox version, the PS2 version holds its own against any GTA type game. You can destroy anything you want, whenever you want, however you want. Jets are constantly flying overhead. Tanks and vehicles look and move realistically. The background looks great and the graphics in the few cutscenes that do exist are fantastic and realistic. GTA, at times looked bad in cut scenes. Mercenaries is smooth and you always have control of your character, no matter what is going on.

There are a few things that I wasn't too thrilled with, though. First, the AI is questionable at best. Obviously, they can't be too good for a lot of the one man missions that you do, but there are times when they seem to be extremely stupid. One time I was behind a bunker blasting away at a guy, I hit him a couple of times and he moved behind a pole that blocked him from me. I stopped shooting for a second and then he went back into his patrol mode, forgetting that I was there. Things like that are tolerable when you're outnumbered 20 to 1 but, for the most part, they're annoying. The other thing I didn't like is when you would come up on barracks or tunnels where guys would emerge. It's like a flash back to 1996 when war games included guys randomly coming out of a location. As long as you hung out there, you were fighting someone. There was no clearing the area. The AI is extremely aggressive as a whole though. The enemies will try to run you over with vehicles and blast you with rocket launchers as well as be alerted to suspicious behavior. But a lot of times they are so aggressive, they are stupid. Tanks try and fire at you while you are only a foot away from them. A rocket soldier who's 200 ft away will fire a rocket into a crowd of his own men as long as you are among them. You can't use other soldiers for cover, either. One time I was running up to the Q of Clubs and found out that they will gladly fire a rocket up their leader's ass to kill you. It just seems a little off.

The other thing I really disliked was NO MULTIPLAYER! How hard would it be, honestly? Why isn't that an automatic option for games like this? It drives me crazy. I buy games like this because, on Friday nights, when I'm not out at the bars I'm gaming with 5-10 friends. During those sessions, Mercenaries goes right on the shelf, not even to be considered. It's a shame, because, with all of the 2-3 seat vehicles you can get in and all the things you can shoot, it really seems fit for multiplayer. I mean, you can't even go online with it. Come on!

The different characters in this game aren't that different. I mean they say there are different skills but, in all honesty, the only difference is in the chatter. They could differentiate them a bit more and require you to alter the strategies you use to better use the character's abilities. But, then again, if they can't even put multiplayer in there, why would they alter the game for a character. (Sorry, I'm still mad about the lack of multiplayer.)

All in all, this is a great game. I went through and started playing it a little for a second time, just because every once and a while I need to feed that male desire to destroy something. They marketed this game as a "kill em all and let God sort 'em out" title, but it is more than that. The mix of strategy, equipment, vehicles and the GTA-style play make it worth the money. Although, in the long run, it isn't nearly as hard to beat as GTA. It took me about 4 days to find all of the clubs, and it got harder from there. A good gamer could probably rent this game and beat it in a week or so, but I recommend it thoroughly.