Pandemic Studios' Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction, published in 2005 by LucasArts for the PS2 and Xbox, is in my humble opinion the single greatest sandbox-style game ever made. The design philosophy embraced by Pandemic was, "Go anywhere, hijack anything, destroy everything, and never stop having fun." It's that last part which many sandbox developers lose track of, including Pandemic themselves when it came to making the game's sequel, but Playground of Destruction lives up to its subtitle in every way imaginable.
This is the kind of game that you look back on today and think, "How in the hell did they accomplish this on consoles two generations ago when devs have problems doing it even today on the PC?" The fact is, Pandemic had to build almost everything from the ground up to make it possible, and figure out how to turn the restrictions and limitations they faced into strengths. Mercenaries itself is a master class in identifying the core components of what makes the military fantasy of the one-man (or -woman) army fun and translating them to the screen. With three different playable characters with their own specialties and strengths; dozens of missions with multiple choices for how to go about achieving success; dozens more optional parameters for missions that feed the risk vs. reward mechanic; the need to balance the moods of four different factions for whom you can work; and an enormous roster of vehicles, weapons, and collectibles, as well as an equally full selection of artillery strikes, bombardments, laser-guided cruise missiles, and vehicle delivery options earned through your black market contacts and faction leaders, all set in a not-so-fictional-anymore nuclearized North Korea, Mercenaries isn't so much a sandbox as it is a toy box on a disc. With so much to see, so much to do, and so many opportunities to blow shit up, writing a guide to a game like Mercenaries must have been a formidable task indeed. Stephen and Bryan Stratton thought they were just the guys to do it, so this here's their version of a "Hitchhiker's Guide to North Korea".
Note: All images in this article were scanned by me from their original sources.
To Guide or Not to Guide?
The first thirty pages of the guide consist of an introduction and an overview. These reiterate the story given in the instruction manual, and also explain the controls. This is where you'll learn about switching weapons, hijacking and driving the various vehicles, hauling around prisoners, disguising yourself as a member of different factions, and other basics. Even if you have the instructions for your copy and have read through them, it's worth going through this section as the authors point out notes about various things that the manual leaves out but are nice to know beforehand. It's also copiously illustrated with screenshots and includes a handy table which explains how much damage the various weapon and damage types dish out against various targets. Stuff like this isn't 100% necessary to play or even enjoy the game, but it is nice for those who like digging into the behind-the-scenes calculations.
In fact, I'm including it right here for the curious.
Pages 30 - 72 are a complete guide to the weapons, vehicles, turrets, factions, playable characters, friends, enemies, and collectible pick-ups which populate Playground of Destruction's world. If you can fly it, drive it, shoot it, throw it, talk to it, work for it, collect it, play as it, capture it, protect it, or kill it, you'll find it listed in this section. About the only thing the authors leave out is the bounty paid for the destruction of each type of North Korean vehicle, which is nice to know but hardly essential as the game tells you how much you earn each time you smash a piece of NK hardware, to the accompaniment of a fabulous "cha-ching!" sound effect. The most useful parts of this section are the maps featuring the locations of every number card for all four suits in the 'Deck of 52'. While completing jobs for the different factions will give intel on a particular individual's location, the instructions can be vague enough to make finding some of them difficult. Locations like "South-east of Chongju" or "West of Inchon" aren't very specific, so it's nice to be able to look at the map and see exactly where you need to go. If you're doing another job or travelling from one destination to another, you can also kill two birds with one stone by grabbing up any number cards you'll be passing by. Face cards (the Jack, Queen, King, and Ace) only show up when you're on a mission to hunt them down, but the 2 - 10 folks can be nabbed any time.
From page 73 to 194, you get the meat of the book (and likely what you purchased it for): the walkthrough for every faction mission with tips on how best to approach each job, what you earn for a successful completion, and how to handle the pressure if things get out of hand. Like previous sections, this part of the book is copiously illustrated with screenshots and heavily annotated to point out useful items, strategies to try, and places to avoid while you're ripping up the countryside.
A sample page of the walkthrough section.
The complexity of the mission dictates the amount of words the authors devote to its walkthrough, though many of the missions involve a few alternate tactics the Strattons came up with or cribbed from the devs for players who like to live a little more (or a little less) dangerously. Just keep in mind that in a world as open and varied as this, it's impossible to account for every possible technique and much of the fun of Mercenaries comes from inventing new options on the fly. If you're out of RPG rockets and there's too much ground fire to allow a supply drop, maybe you can solve your problem by lashing a couple of C4 charges to a jeep, driving it towards an enemy, then bailing out and using it as a mobile bomb. You can also drag along some extra firepower by loading up an APC or jeep with friendly faction members to help improve your odds. In Mercenaries, getting the job done is the important part. "How" is utterly unimportant to the faction commander unless they've laid down stipulations stating otherwise.
The last part, pages 195 to 208, are the "spoilers" section of the book. These pages explain what is unlocked by completing the various faction jobs, runs down the list of every artiller/air strike available from the black market, provides maps and checklists for every bounty object along with the rewards you get for collecting/destroying them, the location and reward for every optional Challenge mission, and explains how to unlock "Playground of Destruction" mode as well as a couple of nice cheat-y weapon crates, in addition to how faction mood towards your Merc plays a role in the between-chapter cutscenes as well as the game's ending.
Guide
Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction is the sort of game for which strategy guides were conceived of in the first place, and this one has so much going for it that it's crazy. From the complete weapon and vehicle breakdowns to the maps and location lists for everything you would ever need to find to the front-to-back walkthroughs for every last mission, it sets a very high standard to which other open world sandbox guides should aspire.
There's only one major thing this book is missing, and that's a list of the cheat codes available for the game. Given such a thing is just a Google search away, this is hardly the end of the world. It's also cheap enough to add to your collection that, if you're a fan, there's just no excuse for not having this guide on your shelf.
And a little Jennifer Mui action to close out the article.