Mercenaries – Playground of Destruction is a classic third-person shooter that is not too distanced from the likes of Mafia and the Grand Theft Auto series, both in gameplay and objectives. Armed with your favourite carbine and whatever else you can loot off bodies and crates, you serve whatever faction is going to pay you the best rates.

There is a huge variety of missions to complete through the wartorn cities and towns. There are the usual timed missions where you race along highways to beat the clock for financial awards, capture vehicles and supplies or blow up military installations. Some are quite bizzare with one having your character pushing an oil drum along the road against the clock to impress the local mafia.

There are three merc's to chose from. These include the ex-special forces warrior type, the female CIA stealth character and the quick-footed combat rookie. Each has his merits and give you more options in how you can complete a mission. This makes the game highly replayable. Missions are delivered through a PDA device that you can bring up on screen at anytime during the game. This gives you a nice overview map that you can zoom in to see what possible missions are available and where your objectives are. It also tracks your progress on the overall mission objectives of the game.

This wider mission is to kill or capture a new set of evildoers set out in a pack of 52 cards. Each has a value in bounty - more if you bring 'em back alive (apparently; we never bothered bringing them back alive) and as you progress you pick up intelligence on where each of them may be located.

There is a great selection of weapons to utilise from shotguns, carbines, grenades, light machine guns and antitank weapons. There are also fixed weapons that you can get behind including heavy machine guns and recoilless rifles. C4 is also a useful tool to clear areas. Our favourite was rather than to sneek a peek around a corner, blow up the corner. A lot of the environment is destructable and with all the weapons at your disposal it's a shame not to oblige the game designers by undertaking a bit of urban renewal. The only drawback is that each weapon has a limited supply of ammunition and you need to be careful not to run out before completing the mission (although an empty weapon is a handy club).

Just about every vehicle in the game you can get into and drive. Initially you have access to only light jeeps and trucks but you will soon find yourself zooming about in armoured vehicles, tanks and even helicopters. Driving is relatively simple to do with only the basic controls to worry about. Some of the vehicles are easy to turn, while some are even easier to overturn. Enemy soldiers are fair game while driving, as are friendlies, however this can lessen your reputation with the various factions in the game. Where vehicles have mounted weapons you can park up, change position and let loose.

The controls for the game are very well set out, with an on screen map/radar, a weapon load out reading and a health bar. The PDA and the map function are good but the in-game map we found lacked a lot of detail and is at times difficult to determine where you should be going. We often got lost, but in the overall scheme of the game it did not matter as it just presented you with different targets.

Explosion effects and weapon sounds are well done. We particularly liked the vehicle explosions and the touch of aerial body effects. Moving about is smooth, however we would ideally have liked to have seen more than the two stances of standing and crouching. We also found at times when the character came up against an object it went into a jitterbug mode of bouncing about. It's a small thing but detracted from what we felt was a well put together game engine.