Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction is an absolute favourite of mine. Being able to capture anyone in the deck of 52, being able to ferry around allies to start firefights at enemy bases and call in vehicles for them was such a great time for me. I would love to see a remaster, it absolutely deserves one. RIP Pandemic
I used to get that rebel APC and crash into a base, bail out and just watch my dudes fight for their lives lol then call reinforcements to flank the defenses. It was fantastic
I used to fly loads of allied troops to the North Korean artillery base east of the South Korean airbase with a Blackhawk, make a big epic battle out of it lol
It was when Dog the Bounty Hunter was pretty big so I liked capturing High Value Targets and calling in extraction for them. Not to mention you could get friendly troops in different factions to roll with you whenever so that was added fun.
I like how every gamer has their own game to hate EA. for me it's Dead Space 3 . sooner or later EA will screw over your franchise. I used to not understand the hate because I don't play FIFA or Battlefield.
online coop Mercenaries would be great. like if you kill too much civilians or destroy too much property you could have a bounty on your head. it would be like a lesss serious Ghost Recon with Expendables type characters.
@@tacomas9602 Or how about no multiplayer? A game like that doesn't really need a bunch of strangers to make fun. Or even your friends. Those games were great single player games. Im not knocking mp its just that there is already a huge focus on that now as it is.
Man, I'm from Venezuela, and I remember when this game came out. I was still in school, and me and my friends were so hyped to play a game where we'd kill our president hahahahahah. There was an attempt to ban the game outright, and it was a pain in the ass to find it in stores. But, since most games back in Venezuela were pirated, regulation was pretty difficult. Man, good times.
I always wondered how the people in the countries these games are set in feel about them! Lol now I know The North Koreans probably loved playing Mercenaries as well
I loved both games, and am actually playing the first one again right now. Finding out that once again EA is responsible for the death of another game series and studio that I liked, sadly doesn’t surprise me. EA is a bloody serial killer of good things
One of my most memorable experiences with the first Mercenaries was calling an airstrike on a building but I was too close and had to run from the blast. Just at the last second, I jumped into a nearby ravine that saved me.
@@austinoakes3898 I remember some reviews back on the day sauingy that the game wasn't "realistic" enough, like it was a bad thing. The over the top explosions and battles made the game more charming.
I'm surprised they didn't mention the gas station promotion debacle for Mercs 2. Basically EA decided to rent a gas station and pay for any fuel bought from it to promote Mercs 2 due the game's setting being about oil. The problem is once word got out it caused mass traffic congestion around the gas station as every car owner in driving range tried to get free fuel.
that climate of the first Mercenerios gave greater immersion compared to the second. Walking around the map gave a realistic feeling of a war scenario. Hunting the Deck there in the far reaches of the game world would take you to epic locations, colossal bases that were difficult to invade. The radio always announcing war events added an extra touch of immersion. This game is definitely one of my favorites. Ps: destroying bridges in this game was awesome.
@@bladerj Let's be real, the last few games from dice have been trash. Their politically correct bullshit and the quality of the games... In my mind Dice died a while ago.
@@bladerj i mean, 2042. And Bioware is given another chance in yet another Mass Effect and Dragon Age. Weve only gotten teasers, so hope is low. But at least one is coming.
Mercs 2 has one of the best trailer songs ever. Just totally epic and while I never actually played the game, that trailer is forever stuck with me haha
The first Mercenaries game was amazing, the open world to do what you wanted, the Mafia shop where you can order weapons and vehicles was great, choosing which faction to befriend and reaping the benefits. Man it was awesome, sad to see the sequel wasn't that good, and even sadder to see the studio Pandemic die RIP. I hope one day we get a new Mercenaries game, even though "Just Cause" is similar to it, I still would like a game similar to the original one.
@@aaron1182 Yes Merc 1 was very good, I played it thru a few times befriending various factions. The 2nd I didn't feel the urge to other than to get thru the story. ANd then it never got another replay.
I absolutely loved the second game, although I was just a kid at the time, I beat it multiple times over the years growing up. On my PS2, then on my Xbox 360. I loved the huge open world and being able to call in SO MANY different bombs and airstrikes. This game had a great sense of humor as well, especially when playing as Mattius. I will never forget where the girl tells you to go get that super, experimental high powered vehicle and you're running down that long alley way, right as the music kicks in super heavy, you turn the corner and it's a pink mo-ped scooter with balloons and sparkles on it, then it starts playing that barbie doll music. I also never played the original game until many years later as an adult out of curiosity and I found it to be no-where near as good as the 2nd one (but it wasn't bad!), so I am heavily biased in my opinion. I could clearly see where it came from though and it's roots Pandemic grew to get there. I really wished it managed to get a 3rd release before EA got it's grubby hands on them.
Pandemic was an amazing studio. After I found out EA ruined them and stole from us all the future games they would have made I stopped buying EA games. It has been 10 years and EA has not received a single penny from me. Also, RIP Westood Studios another great studio taken down by EA
My high school video game design teacher was a dev on this series. He talked a lot about crunch and being forced to release the games knowing they were full of bugs.
@@yoav755 yeah my high school had a game design class as extracurricular. These classes were meant for those who wanted to try things out in case it interested them in the future. Part of the class also included how to do an interview and create a resume.
@@PlebNC it was certainly really interesting but not for me. Admittedly, i don't think he was the best teacher, though he was overall a nice guy. The best part of the class, despite the very tedious programming tutorials, was the chance to make whatever you wanted with the resources he gave us. It's a great toe dip into how it all works and it made me appreciate the sheer amount of work that goes into games more. It's kind of a miracle.
I'll never forget Playground of Destruction, playing it on my cousin's PS2 in Brazil was magical. The atmosphere in that game is envied by a lot of AAA titles of today, the freedom given to the player was something i had never witnessed before. The game was much more than "explosions and cool shit". Unlike the shallow experience that is Just Cause.
Mercenaries at the time, when it came out, was insanely revolutionary in my little boy eyes. This game showed me what open world gameplay could be and the amount of destruction you could rain down on people was so much fun. I was super disappointed by Merc 2, I felt they lost all their creativity and lost their way, it was such a shame.
I completely agree, while I do somewhat enjoy playing Merc 2. it does feel lack luster even for a game that of that era. Hell the PS2 version is better than the PC version. Even though the PC/Xbox 360/PS3 versions added new features and vehicles, they also changed a lot on how you play it in a bad way compared to the PS2 version and (if I recall correctly) I believe that the PS2 version you where able to store vehicles at your safe house and that feature isn't on the PC version which seams to be a very stupid choice on their part IMO.
@@JS-rv3et im big on atmosphere in my games and i feel like playground of destructions atmosphere was sooo much better actualy felt like u was in a warzone like. Also wasnt as glitchy ☺
Calling them "GTA clones" is why people don't make these style games as much anymore and why Rockstar has such a monopoly over the the entire genre. Call them what they really were - competitors.
@@TheChief10097 as much as it pains me to admit, you're probably right. Games these days aren't what they used to be, between flat out broken releases, and straight up cash grabs where half the game is locked behind paywalls. Shit fuckin sucks man.
Fun games. Actually went to try to download the backwards compatible version of Mercenaries 2 off of Xbox store a month ago but they only have the first one.
After watching this video, I immediately ran to my game closet to find my copy of the 1st game and plopped it in my Series X. Lo and behold I found a piece of paper inside with hand written cheat codes I grabbed on gamefaqs 17 years ago. Man. I feel like a kid again. (Also, whatever the upscaling and smoothing did by the Xbox team on it is pretty amazing. It looks as good as I remember it!)
My little brother and I used to play "pretend" all the time, and we loved the first Mercenaries game so much that we came up with our own version of the concept to play in real life with toy guns. I played "The Merc" and my little brother played all of the other characters, his favorite being the SWEDISH MAFIA LEADER named ORZEGA. That's right, in our make-believe Mercenaries game, the Russian mafia was replaced by Swedish Mafia.... I don't even think Sweden has a mafia...
and it's inspired on a real bounty list called deck of 52 but the real one was about Saddam hussein and his commanders. they issued poker cards with the faces of these people and their names so soldiers would become familiar with these people. basically they turned a most wanted list into a card game.
I worked at a GameStop for about 6 months a good decade ago (maybe longer…). I single handedly sold the majority of our used stock of Mercs 2. So many people came in looking for suggestions of what to buy. I didn’t even realize what I was doing until one of the managers pointed it out. He hated the game and thought I was trolling our customers. I loved that game and played through it multiple times. The company had to have been wondering how a random game like that started flying off the shelves. LOL
@@kingdomross8974 Idk, I was never able to finish Mercs 2. I'd play for 30 mins to and hour and call it a day. Mercs 1 was much more addictive. I'd spend entire nights playing it. I played campaign 3+ times. It really was a great game.
My favorite thing to do in Mercenaries 2 was start a faction’s outpost mission since it gave you on demand troops to use for capturing strategic locations. - However, if you ignored the objective entirely, you basically just got free squads to drop wherever. Needless to say, there were some pretty large battles. - Usually I would cozy up to the Allies and take their squads right outside the Chinese HQ, drop a bunch of Allied vehicles, and essentially let the battle play out. As the AI, once dropped, essentially existed to kill as many enemy combatants as possible (within the limitation of their nearly crippling quirks of course), they would storm the HQ and the Chinese would put a hard fight. In Mercs 1, you could do something similar but you had to have an HVT to allow for allied extraction. If not, you’d just have to call in helicopters from the Russians since they came equipped 1-3 people with each call in. Since nobody likes the Russians, it usually ended up in some large scale battles as well. God, I miss these games.
I did the exact same thing! I'd spend hours calling in vehicles for the Jamaican Pirates and the Allies on the beachhead. Then I'd call in the Allied troops and watch the besch landing commence
@@choppergunner8650 remember how impossible it was to get the Apache in the first game? Had to snipe an allied pilot and hope it didn’t blow up when it hit the ground. But if you got one? MAN were you unstoppable lol
@@streetpilot4098 yeah, you had to snipe the pilot from the AN outpost in the northern peninsula... The Apache made you unstoppable... until you met some hidden SAM batteries in a valley... I hate games that do this. Like, making a certain vehicle hard to obtain or very rarely seen. Like the Ka-50 Hokum for the Russian Mafia. You only saw that once. Also, the large choppers that brought you heavy payloads (like the Mi-26 Halo for the Russian Mafia, CH-53 Sea Stallion for the South Koreans and CH-47 Chinook for the AN) were impossible to obtain. You couldn't shoot the pilot. Also, in Mercs 2 for the PS2, the rarest vehicle I ever found was a Venezuelan BTR-60 (brought back from the 1st game) in a relatively hidden outpost near Maracaibo...
I like to think that this narrator is a classically trained voice actor who had little knowledge of gaming and the industry, however through his work on this channel he is now very knowledgeable and has a new found appreciation for gaming, the industry and the culture. :)
Mercs 2 = Criminally (and I mean like War Crime criminally) underrated. Me and my friend couldn’t get enough of it! Even when I was finally allowed to play GTA!
Still love this game. Most of all, I really appreciated how you could approach every mission in so many ways. Stealth + Sniper? CHECK. Get a Helicopter? Check! Recon and get in position for a carpet bombingrun? CHECK! Also really liked the music, and the immersion!
funny that you release a video of this somewhat obscure videogame series now, because last week I started playing mercenaries 2 again after YEARS of not thinking about the game, I found my copy in the collection of old videogames collecting dust in my attic along with my xbox 360, and got the itch to play it again. crazy how this world works sometimes.
Slight correction to the video - Mercs 2 wasn't the first time you could destroy the entire map (minus terrain) - you could do that in the first game too. But yeah, Mercs 1: POG is one of my favourite games of all time. Endlessly satisfying to play, solid mechanics, great physics and audio - just a masterpiece.
R.I.P Pandemic. Thank you for the countless hours of fun you gave me between this franchise, Destroy All Humans and Star Wars Battlefront. Their closure was a massive loss to the entire industry. Thanks again for that, EA.
I am Venezuelan, I live in Venezuela and I had never heard of that video game, I have been a fan of the channel for a long time and it made me want to play it, the people who promote prohibitions and request cancellation in my opinion only try to draw attention to them and their policies since time has shown that they are not interested at all in citizens and their true needs, GVMERS from Venezuela thanks and keep up the good work.
@@RaggedyGreg The truth is that nobody here is interested in prohibitions. I assure you that the game is normally sold everywhere, all games are, regardless of age or content.
Holy shit seeing those 2 seconds of the hijack tank animation from Mercenaries 2 brought me way back, I haven't seen or even thought of that in well over 10 years. Also whenever you would call in supplies to be dropped from a helicopter the pilot would always say something like "it's always me that comes and saves your bacon" in a horrible scottish? accent and I will remember that till the day I die for some reason. Great times playing that game.
"always relying on me to come save your bacon". 2 is abandonware now on pc, so you can download it for free. I'm currently playing it again 10 years later for the nostalgia
It's Irish but yeah. Also I think one of my biggest dislikes of the second game as opposed to the first was the quick time events. Agreed that the first game made hijacking tanks, a very powerful enemy, too easy (run up to it in i.frames or drive close enough to hop out and press a single button) and too rewarding. QTE was a *decent* approach for the time but I feel it's dated and slowed getting into a tank to a crawl.
One of my favourite series. Just Cause or the recent Saint Rows games just doesnt scratch that same itch unfortunately. Ghost Recon Wildlands does get close. Its just missing the large airstrikes and variety of supply drops etc.
Yeah Wildands had the feel and adding air strikes and extraction missions would have been amazing. Mercs 2 wasn't as good for many but it's still loads better than what Ghost Recon Breakpoint ended up being.
LucasArts missed a huge opportunity by not making a Star Wars version of Mercenaries, for example set on a planet where the Imperials refuse to give up after the Battle of Endor and the ensuing power struggles by competing factions.
Mercs 2 was a fun game. Nothing fantastic or anything but it was still a good time. Being able to level a city was fun, though the buildings reapawning was kind of annoying.
I used to spend hours just leveling city blocks and attacking HQs in both games lol. Destruction looked better in the first one, but the second one had such a bigger arsenal and map to play with
Buildings respawning is good because you can come back and destroy them in a different way... very fun I probably destroyed Caracas like 100s of times lol
Mercenaries 2 was the swan song game of my PS2 days as I played it OVER and OVER again until I was fortunate enough to get a XB360 for Christmas in 2011.
I loved Mercs 2 in spite of, and because of, all its weird flaws. The Saboteur was great too. I really hate EA for closing Pandemic, among other things.
Mercenaries 2 is my favourite of the titles. Most of the tanks and helicopters in the game were rare to see. The Mi-26 (Condor), MD500N (Rogue), Alouette (Kestrel), M41 Stingray 2 (Mantis), AMX-30 (Jaguar) & FV107 scimitar (Puma) just to name a few Not too mention, the tanks wheels were also connected to the chassis by suspension (another detail not that common even today) The love the modellers put into these vehicles is apparent and I love it. I do remember renting the game week of release. And then got it the Christmas the same year. I still have my original copy from that day. And am currently replaying through it. 23/05/24
Mercenaries 1 is still some of the coolest open world games I ever played. It's like gta in a warzone with tons of vehicles, tanks, planes, helicopters, you could call in airstrikes and vehicles drops and it had some incredible destruction for its time - iirc basically every building could be leveled. I will always remember it fondly.
Loved the variety of airstrikes too. Like the bunker buster was for bunkers since it was pretty shit against ground troops. And the regular air strike was cheaper but a coin toss how well it would do.
The first Mercenaries I would attach c4 to a car, use the helicopter with the magnetic winch to lift the car, swing the helicopter around and use the momentum to launch the car into enemies and detonate the c4. One of my favourite sandbox moments as a kid
I like doing extra work like that lol. Like shooting down an allied helicopter pilot for a chance to get the rarer apache attack helicopter since you can't call one in.
hands down one of my favorite game series. For some reason I've been remembering Mercenaries more and more lately, either due to someone mentioning Tom clancy's wildlands or some other game bringing back these memories, even though barely anyone else remembers it. I still have to watch it but thanks for this video.
One of my favorite Mercenaries one memories was that after some time of playing quests I just started to drive randomly. Then next a movie theater I see a guy and he is one of the Jacks. I remember thinking "it may be a later mission", but proced to engage anyways to see whats gonna happen, for my surprise I was able to engage, win and arrest the Jack and get paid for it. Since then, my expectations bout video games really have changed.
I loved the Mercenaries series, especially the attention to detail in the first one. Less enthused by the second one but still enjoyed it. Had no idea it was as big a deal as it apparently was.
Thank you for making this and bringing back memories of a great franchise. Yes, it might not have been perfect and it sure did have a lot of bugs but at it's heart it was a ton of fun. Multiplayer in Mercenaries 2: World in Flames was a good laugh. When thinking about a game that EA could remake or remaster a mercenaries game would be a good pick for sure. Although I still hate them for killing Command and Conquer, I'll never forgive them for that.
At 8:09 I remember that pic of Alastor. It was his profile picture on the official forums. He was a developer from Pandemic and very active on the Mercenaries 2 forum page. He used to hype the community so much, but was ultimately bound by EA. He was a cool guy, and he seemed legitimately upset that Mercs 2 was kind of a disappointment.
i met one of my closest friends cause of this game. they were so hype they made a subforum for this game. i joined and we became friends. i went through 2 horrible periods in my life and they were there for me. checked up on me just 2 days ago to see if i was feeling better.
I loved all the little details in these games. In Mercs 1 you can walk around the briefing room while being briefed. Depending on the specific mission, different objects can interacted with which garners comments from the clients if they've finished their briefing. In Mercs 2, the ammo, bombs and money stored at the Mansion HQ directly correlates to the ammo and types of munitions and money available to the player so as the player's strength and wealth accumulates the game reinforces it.
I forgot about your mansion in the second one being filled with the resources you actually accumulate. I initially played the PS2 version of the second game which was really bad LOL but even that version had that feature and I loved stopping at home and just admiring my inventory 😆
@@austinoakes3898 The point when I noticed it was after discovering that the one of the repeatable challenges was super easy to farm cash from (I think it involved stacking containers with a helicopter) and I did a farming run for an hour and then went in the mansion and was like "wait, that wasn't there before". And figured it worked for munition because I recovered a fuel-air bomb and later saw one in the mansion.
@@austinoakes3898 there were some aspects from the ps2 version that I wish theyd carried over, like being able to store vehicles from the world at the villa and call them in later, also they removed the PLAV zamora attack helicopter that would spawn in the forest near the mansion from the game for some reason.
When you hear pandemic teamed with E A. your automatically like why they just close studios down. They should've stuck with activision. Then your like oh nvm they lay everyone off and repurpose them to help with Call of Duty. They were screwed either way.
Remember that EA bought Pandemic in a super shady way.......and then ruined the studio and destroyed the Mercenaries IP. Never forgive and never forget. I cannot believe such an amazing studio like Pandemic was taken out by EA.
I remember watching a friend play Mercenaries 2: World in Flames back in 2007. It wasn't long before I ended up buying myself a copy for the X-Box 360, and much later for PC. I'm genuinely let down that none of the DLC made it from the console versions to the PC, but hopefully somebody will find a way to port it someday. Overall, a sad end to an amazing franchise made by a talented team of developers. Thank you for making this video.
Back when destruction in video games was innovative and unique, video game these days lack interactive environments like the series had, except maybe Minecraft but that doesn't count.
That Scarface game is such an underrated gem. I want to start a religion about it. Not the classic movie but just the 2005 video game. They even had James Woods for some reason!
I'm 20 now, I must've been 10 or 11 when I played mercenaries 2 for the first time and omg I loved it. That game was amazing as a kid me and my buddies would play all day after school blowing up the big mansion over n over again lol
I have great memories being a sophomore in high school, buying Mercenaries, and having a wonderful time with my friend taking turns seeing how much mayhem we could cause. 2003-2007 was definitely was a golden era of solid game releases for all consoles and PC.
Ouh, "What happened to all those GTA clones..." and the intro clip of SCARFACE: The World Is Yours, really made my heart sink, knowing a sequel to Scarface was almost release-ready when EA canned it, if I recall.
I really despise the term ''GTA clone'' games urinalists applied to every open world crime game that came after GTA 3. It always did major disservice to games that managed to do their own thing, but urinalists constantly kept calling them GTA clones. Devs of such games always got a sense of inferiority because of that, and by efforts to get away from being labeled that, studios like Volition made Saints Row worse in result.
Referring to games as clones of others existed before GTA3, such as every FPS being a Doom clone for a while before the mechanic became commonplace. It's useful for describing mechanics concisely but does ignore alot of the distinctions of the clone.
It’s funny how they even say that when the first game before that was Driver so technically GTA three is a rip off of Driver I mean, technically it was before anything you had guns you can run around get out of your car and this as long before GTA third person. With gta 1 &2 It was only a 2d game so technically rockstar copied drover
Oh this game made my childhood so much better! Just the moments when you were leveling buildings with C4, calling in cruise missiles or just flying around in your chopper or driving your humvee - unforgettable moments! The music also was on par… I miss these days.. I wish they would make a remake or something… fucking loved playing as Nilsson or the Asian girl… ah the nostalgia I can feel now… thanks for the video and happy Sunday to everyone!
The best was strapping C4 to the hood of a stolen jeep and then driving it into a group of enemies. Bail out of the vehicle and push the button right as it reaches them to take them out super spy style. You could even launch jeeps by clustering them around a couple C4s. I eventually launched one so high it hit the limit of the sky.
What sucks is we'll never really get an amazing game with destructible environments and buildings collapsing like them it's 2022 and we still don't get building that collapse
Pandemic was one of my favorite studios, first game I played from them was SW: The Clone Wars it was rough around the edges but pretty fun, then Full Spectrum Warrior, SW: Battlefront 1 and 2, Destroy All Humans 1 and 2, LotR: Conquest was a banger too. And of course Mercenaries, I must have replayed the second one a dozen times really liked the first one too but the disk died fairly quickly. Hard to find games that are just fun nowadays, there always must be a catch, some bullshit crammed in or some such.
If I'm thinking of the right game, clone wars was fucking awesome. It was the one where you spent the whole game driving around vehicles right? And there was split screen/co op modes, and the best was the endless battle arena modes, where you just dealt with wave after wave of enemies until they finally killed you? That was the first game I played that got me saying(still to this fucking day) EVERY GAME needs some sort of CO OP battle arena, where the games AI is put to the test, as much as the players abilities.
I absolutely love both of the mercenaries series. ❤ both were gems. Forever in my heart. Kids these days will never know how good and genuine games were in the golden era of video games.
I wanna thank this channel for bringing back alot of memories for certain games and giving a better insight and behind the scenes look! GVMERS YOUR SO AWESOME! I APPRECIATE EVERYTHING YOU DO AND ALL THE HARD WORK YOU PUT INTO YOUR CONTENT!!!!!!
Mercenaries was ahead of its time and not just in gameplay but in geopolitics as well. I never did get into completing Mercenaries 2 only because it felt dull and linear to me compared to the first one.
I remember around 15 years ago when I was in school and enjoyed Mercenaries : Playground of destrcution so much that I would think about it most of the time when I went to school and couldn't wait to go back home and play it again. For some reason, I could never finish it back then and for all this time, it was one of the first games I would remember when I thought of my PS2. So I was so happy to finally finish it last year and still loved it as much as I did back then.
I played Mercs 2 before the first one, and MAN, the difference was night and day. Even though it was the PS2 version of Mercs 2 (I later got the PS3 version), playing Mercs 1 seemed out of this world. Hijacking helicopters was GONE, having to kill the pilot before he grabs the damn thing. Also, Ace missions seemed IMPOSSIBLE. Ace of Clubs was okay, but the Ace of Diamonds (or was it the Ace of Hearts? It's a mission with a giant cannon and radioactive spots on the map) was just ridiculous. Getting fired at by a massive onslaught of BMPs and BRDMs while dodging radiation spots on the island, rushing to get into the prototype cannon to destroy the main cannon firing shells at Seoul... Jesus Christ, I remember ragequitting a lot just because I didn't knew how to get by without losing a tank and dying by radiation. I finally managed to beat it, go into the northern part of the peninsula, but I started having disc problems and unfortunately was never able to beat it. Shame though, because I was already near the second to last Ace.
@@choppergunner8650 That's right! My disc was messed up too and that's why I couldn't finish it too. But yea Mercs 1 was so good. The atmosphere was something I probably won't forget.
Merc 1 will forever hold a place in my heart. That game was absolutely amazing and gritty, it gave everything that someone would want in a game: a good story, plenty of exploration, a variety of choices, and the tools to let your imagination run wild.
God I love that game to death and just think to myself constantly, it was from nearly 20 years ago. Think about the advancements in technology, console, game development etc. that have been made in 20 years! How if they rebuilt mercenaries 1 today, what it would look like, play like. What new features, content could we have had. Dozens of weapons, refined boots-on-the-ground gunplay, superior mechanics, better physics, more airstrikes, supplies and vehicles. It was the peak of open world games cause it dared to be ambitious and its a shame that 18 years later nothing has had the same ideas or ambitions...
One of my favorite game series! I loved driving around with a ton of soldiers and making them fight rival factions and using nuclear bunker busters! On another note, another old video game franchise with interesting history is TimeSplitters. It's troubled history with reaching high sales figures is similar to Mercenaries', and along with Haze, caused its in progress sequel to be unfortunately laid to rest, for the time being. Thank you for the amazing videos!
I speedrun Playground of Destruction; an admittedly desperate attempt to breath new life into this legendary, dead franchise There’s actually a surprisingly active Discord server dedicated to the games There are invites for it in the descriptions of most my videos
Mercenaries 2 had very bad reviews back then which surely impacted sales and played a part in dropping development for a third game. I never understood why the reviewers had the unanimous opinion this game was horrible. In this age coop in an open world was especially rare and great fun. I loved both parts and hoped for part 3. For me it was the ideal mix between GTA and Just Cause.
Mercenaries was my Playground of Destruction, which was also my introduction into the series. I played it like it had been prescribed to me. I watched and listened to the characters then dawned their personalities on each playthrough, simply to immerse myself in everything offered, which i loved immensely. I 100% the game legit with the three Mercs then, i used cheats like a mad man on a seperate playthrough for the three and just did everything my organic life desired and could do. I delved into the code on the xbox version and created an unreleased mod which had everyone acting friendly to eachother, i would simply drive around in civilian vehicles and just try to "live the life" of an NK citizen in the Mercs Universe. I was hoping to see the series continue forward and still hope it picks up when our economy is better. A release that revolves around America breaking to the massive debt and everyone almost going rogue with various factions spread across the country, with others trying to influence us, would be 10/10 from me.
Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction is an absolute favourite of mine. Being able to capture anyone in the deck of 52, being able to ferry around allies to start firefights at enemy bases and call in vehicles for them was such a great time for me.
I would love to see a remaster, it absolutely deserves one.
RIP Pandemic
I used to get that rebel APC and crash into a base, bail out and just watch my dudes fight for their lives lol then call reinforcements to flank the defenses. It was fantastic
Best game ever. Still blows my mind.
I used to fly loads of allied troops to the North Korean artillery base east of the South Korean airbase with a Blackhawk, make a big epic battle out of it lol
I would call in vehicles for both sides and just watch them duke it out, I loved this game.
absolutely it was one of my favourite games, i also wish for a remaster or even a 3rd one
Playgrounds of Destruction was such an amazing game. The score, the setting, the chaos. the destruction. Simply one of gaming history's greatest game.
Atmosphere was amazing too felt like u was actualy in a warzone
It was when Dog the Bounty Hunter was pretty big so I liked capturing High Value Targets and calling in extraction for them. Not to mention you could get friendly troops in different factions to roll with you whenever so that was added fun.
POG was sooooo much better then WIF in every imaginable way. Especially the soundtrack that was amazing
What a series and what a studio. The fact EA shuttered them was always my introduction to how terrible a publisher they are.
since early days they were like that... if you search their history. they have a cursed penchant for that.
I like how every gamer has their own game to hate EA. for me it's Dead Space 3 . sooner or later EA will screw over your franchise. I used to not understand the hate because I don't play FIFA or Battlefield.
@@bigz2008 For me It was their treatment of the battlefront games (Also made by pandemic, go figure).
@Why The Hell Was I In Star Trek 6? take your upvote sir
westwood fans: First time?
Original mercenaries is one of the greatest games ever made. We need a remake. That level of destruction with updated graphics would be awesome.
Drop that bunker buster again!
online coop Mercenaries would be great. like if you kill too much civilians or destroy too much property you could have a bounty on your head. it would be like a lesss serious Ghost Recon with Expendables type characters.
@@MaestroJericho it would need a much bigger map for multiplayer.
Looks pretty good on my series x
@@tacomas9602 Or how about no multiplayer? A game like that doesn't really need a bunch of strangers to make fun. Or even your friends. Those games were great single player games. Im not knocking mp its just that there is already a huge focus on that now as it is.
This series was Pandemic at its peak. Fully destructible buildings and the Deck of 52 were game changers. A huge loss.
Rockstar: You can't just blow up buildings because 9/11 happened.
Pandemic: carpet-bombing a city goes brrrr.
Their peak was pretty garbage then.....The first game was OK and quite a bit of fun....The sequel was pretty garbage
I personally think the Destroy All Humans series was the best the ever did but that's just me.
@@SpeedVaultz Not just you because I agree and I'm looking forward to the DAH 2 remake later this year.
@@PlebNC To be fair, you couldnt in Just Cause 2 either. And both games had full size commercial airlines you could fly.
Man, I'm from Venezuela, and I remember when this game came out. I was still in school, and me and my friends were so hyped to play a game where we'd kill our president hahahahahah.
There was an attempt to ban the game outright, and it was a pain in the ass to find it in stores. But, since most games back in Venezuela were pirated, regulation was pretty difficult.
Man, good times.
Yeah I grew up in the Phillipines where everything was pirated for like $2usd per game. No way you could do that with anything beyond PS2 though lol.
@@ferreira226 cab u still pirated ps5 games ??
I always wondered how the people in the countries these games are set in feel about them! Lol now I know
The North Koreans probably loved playing Mercenaries as well
@@tybarker5038 please tell me you aren't stupid enough to think north koreans were able to play mercinaries.
@@tybarker5038do you actually think North Koreans got and played this game?
I loved both games, and am actually playing the first one again right now. Finding out that once again EA is responsible for the death of another game series and studio that I liked, sadly doesn’t surprise me. EA is a bloody serial killer of good things
Yea. I'll never forgive them for destroying Westwood Studios. That was the start of EA's cannibalizing brilliant dev studios.
EA has given Nerdslayer plenty of subjects for his "Death of a Game" video series on TH-cam
(the other is NC Soft).
@@Marinealver Never heard of NC Soft, that I can remember? What was their biggest franchise they bought & killed off
Electronic (F)Arts can go EAt a cocc
If game titles were people, EA is a serial killer and it’s hands are drenched in unwashable blood.
One of my most memorable experiences with the first Mercenaries was calling an airstrike on a building but I was too close and had to run from the blast. Just at the last second, I jumped into a nearby ravine that saved me.
Classic
@@austinoakes3898 I remember some reviews back on the day sauingy that the game wasn't "realistic" enough, like it was a bad thing. The over the top explosions and battles made the game more charming.
I like how you could choose to ninja your way to do it instead too. Or use it as a distraction to capture a Deck of 52 target.
That’s incredible
@@kriskater game still holds up too. Like every OG Lucasarts game.
Mercenaries 2 world in flames. Still one of my all time favorite games. Amazing gem lost to time.
The original was better. More real and less campy. Harder, too. Mercenaries 2 is still very fun, though
Bought it for the PS3 just to relive it
I'm surprised they didn't mention the gas station promotion debacle for Mercs 2.
Basically EA decided to rent a gas station and pay for any fuel bought from it to promote Mercs 2 due the game's setting being about oil.
The problem is once word got out it caused mass traffic congestion around the gas station as every car owner in driving range tried to get free fuel.
I know right even hearing that classic theme song gets the nostalgia boat floating
@@PlebNC wasn't that around the Obama gas era where it was like $3.60 a gallon?
that climate of the first Mercenerios gave greater immersion compared to the second. Walking around the map gave a realistic feeling of a war scenario. Hunting the Deck there in the far reaches of the game world would take you to epic locations, colossal bases that were difficult to invade. The radio always announcing war events added an extra touch of immersion. This game is definitely one of my favorites. Ps: destroying bridges in this game was awesome.
I'm still playing the first Merceneries and Mercenaries 2.
EA has a nasty record of dissolving awesome studios.
Correct.
bioware and dice are next.
@Why The Hell Was I In Star Trek 6? bioware is already got its head on the choping slab, dice is still climbing to the guilotine
@@bladerj Let's be real, the last few games from dice have been trash. Their politically correct bullshit and the quality of the games... In my mind Dice died a while ago.
@@bladerj i mean, 2042.
And Bioware is given another chance in yet another Mass Effect and Dragon Age. Weve only gotten teasers, so hope is low. But at least one is coming.
These games really did deserve better. Playground of destruction was one of my pivotal games growing up.
Mercs 2 has one of the best trailer songs ever. Just totally epic and while I never actually played the game, that trailer is forever stuck with me haha
Oh no you didn’t!
@Mr Zombikilla can't believed I played this game without seeing the ad🤣
Too bad the game itself was pretty meh
Sucks tried to play me
But he didn’t pay me
I don’t even think I played the game, but I still remember the trailer.
''GTA CLONE'' is such a dumb term and one of the reasons why Rockstar has gotten so lazy due to lack of proper competition.
The first Mercenaries game was amazing, the open world to do what you wanted, the Mafia shop where you can order weapons and vehicles was great, choosing which faction to befriend and reaping the benefits.
Man it was awesome, sad to see the sequel wasn't that good, and even sadder to see the studio Pandemic die RIP.
I hope one day we get a new Mercenaries game, even though "Just Cause" is similar to it, I still would like a game similar to the original one.
I was so disappointed by the second game.
@@aaron1182 Yes Merc 1 was very good, I played it thru a few times befriending various factions. The 2nd I didn't feel the urge to other than to get thru the story. ANd then it never got another replay.
Just cause is mercenaries with the good stuff taken out. Limited destruction, no real character, dull open world and no real exciting moments.
I don't think Just Cause comes anywhere close to the first Mercenaries game.
I absolutely loved the second game, although I was just a kid at the time, I beat it multiple times over the years growing up. On my PS2, then on my Xbox 360. I loved the huge open world and being able to call in SO MANY different bombs and airstrikes. This game had a great sense of humor as well, especially when playing as Mattius. I will never forget where the girl tells you to go get that super, experimental high powered vehicle and you're running down that long alley way, right as the music kicks in super heavy, you turn the corner and it's a pink mo-ped scooter with balloons and sparkles on it, then it starts playing that barbie doll music. I also never played the original game until many years later as an adult out of curiosity and I found it to be no-where near as good as the 2nd one (but it wasn't bad!), so I am heavily biased in my opinion. I could clearly see where it came from though and it's roots Pandemic grew to get there. I really wished it managed to get a 3rd release before EA got it's grubby hands on them.
Pandemic was an amazing studio. After I found out EA ruined them and stole from us all the future games they would have made I stopped buying EA games. It has been 10 years and EA has not received a single penny from me. Also, RIP Westood Studios another great studio taken down by EA
Theres some exceptions though man… it takes two and unravel deserve purchases imo.
My high school video game design teacher was a dev on this series. He talked a lot about crunch and being forced to release the games knowing they were full of bugs.
Your hige school video game designer teacher?
@@yoav755 yeah my high school had a game design class as extracurricular. These classes were meant for those who wanted to try things out in case it interested them in the future. Part of the class also included how to do an interview and create a resume.
@@ColombianThunder What I would've given to study games design in high school....
@@PlebNC it was certainly really interesting but not for me. Admittedly, i don't think he was the best teacher, though he was overall a nice guy. The best part of the class, despite the very tedious programming tutorials, was the chance to make whatever you wanted with the resources he gave us. It's a great toe dip into how it all works and it made me appreciate the sheer amount of work that goes into games more. It's kind of a miracle.
what was his name?
I'll never forget Playground of Destruction, playing it on my cousin's PS2 in Brazil was magical. The atmosphere in that game is envied by a lot of AAA titles of today, the freedom given to the player was something i had never witnessed before. The game was much more than "explosions and cool shit".
Unlike the shallow experience that is Just Cause.
Mercenaries at the time, when it came out, was insanely revolutionary in my little boy eyes. This game showed me what open world gameplay could be and the amount of destruction you could rain down on people was so much fun. I was super disappointed by Merc 2, I felt they lost all their creativity and lost their way, it was such a shame.
I loved both but playground of destruction was on another level man brilliant game
Yesssss you nailed it.
I completely agree, while I do somewhat enjoy playing Merc 2. it does feel lack luster even for a game that of that era. Hell the PS2 version is better than the PC version. Even though the PC/Xbox 360/PS3 versions added new features and vehicles, they also changed a lot on how you play it in a bad way compared to the PS2 version and (if I recall correctly) I believe that the PS2 version you where able to store vehicles at your safe house and that feature isn't on the PC version which seams to be a very stupid choice on their part IMO.
@@MrSkullMerchant how so world in flames still jas all the destruction. if not more
@@JS-rv3et im big on atmosphere in my games and i feel like playground of destructions atmosphere was sooo much better actualy felt like u was in a warzone like. Also wasnt as glitchy ☺
Calling them "GTA clones" is why people don't make these style games as much anymore and why Rockstar has such a monopoly over the the entire genre. Call them what they really were - competitors.
I miss this series, sad to see it never released again.
Maybe it’s for the best we don’t see it come back bastardized by micro transactions
@@TheChief10097 as much as it pains me to admit, you're probably right. Games these days aren't what they used to be, between flat out broken releases, and straight up cash grabs where half the game is locked behind paywalls.
Shit fuckin sucks man.
Fun games. Actually went to try to download the backwards compatible version of Mercenaries 2 off of Xbox store a month ago but they only have the first one.
After watching this video, I immediately ran to my game closet to find my copy of the 1st game and plopped it in my Series X. Lo and behold I found a piece of paper inside with hand written cheat codes I grabbed on gamefaqs 17 years ago. Man. I feel like a kid again. (Also, whatever the upscaling and smoothing did by the Xbox team on it is pretty amazing. It looks as good as I remember it!)
I blame EA for shutting down pandemic at the time.
My little brother and I used to play "pretend" all the time, and we loved the first Mercenaries game so much that we came up with our own version of the concept to play in real life with toy guns. I played "The Merc" and my little brother played all of the other characters, his favorite being the SWEDISH MAFIA LEADER named ORZEGA.
That's right, in our make-believe Mercenaries game, the Russian mafia was replaced by Swedish Mafia.... I don't even think Sweden has a mafia...
If we did I'm not sure they'd be named Orzega hahaha 😂
Swedish house mafia tho 😁 killer music.
the deck of 52 was such a great feature. it really helped give the game life and open up the world.
and it's inspired on a real bounty list called deck of 52 but the real one was about Saddam hussein and his commanders.
they issued poker cards with the faces of these people and their names so soldiers would become familiar with these people.
basically they turned a most wanted list into a card game.
I worked at a GameStop for about 6 months a good decade ago (maybe longer…). I single handedly sold the majority of our used stock of Mercs 2. So many people came in looking for suggestions of what to buy. I didn’t even realize what I was doing until one of the managers pointed it out. He hated the game and thought I was trolling our customers. I loved that game and played through it multiple times. The company had to have been wondering how a random game like that started flying off the shelves. LOL
I will never understand why people hate mecenaries 2
@@kingdomross8974 Idk, I was never able to finish Mercs 2. I'd play for 30 mins to and hour and call it a day. Mercs 1 was much more addictive. I'd spend entire nights playing it. I played campaign 3+ times. It really was a great game.
My favorite thing to do in Mercenaries 2 was start a faction’s outpost mission since it gave you on demand troops to use for capturing strategic locations. - However, if you ignored the objective entirely, you basically just got free squads to drop wherever.
Needless to say, there were some pretty large battles. - Usually I would cozy up to the Allies and take their squads right outside the Chinese HQ, drop a bunch of Allied vehicles, and essentially let the battle play out. As the AI, once dropped, essentially existed to kill as many enemy combatants as possible (within the limitation of their nearly crippling quirks of course), they would storm the HQ and the Chinese would put a hard fight.
In Mercs 1, you could do something similar but you had to have an HVT to allow for allied extraction. If not, you’d just have to call in helicopters from the Russians since they came equipped 1-3 people with each call in. Since nobody likes the Russians, it usually ended up in some large scale battles as well.
God, I miss these games.
the russian mafia: ok so what are we being called in for again?
pilot: we are doing favor for our merc friend
SK anti-air: ENEMY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I did the exact same thing! I'd spend hours calling in vehicles for the Jamaican Pirates and the Allies on the beachhead. Then I'd call in the Allied troops and watch the besch landing commence
I miss trying to snipe/steal the large helicopters that used to bring you stuff in Mercenaries 1. Sadly they're unattainable vehicles.
@@choppergunner8650 remember how impossible it was to get the Apache in the first game? Had to snipe an allied pilot and hope it didn’t blow up when it hit the ground. But if you got one? MAN were you unstoppable lol
@@streetpilot4098 yeah, you had to snipe the pilot from the AN outpost in the northern peninsula... The Apache made you unstoppable... until you met some hidden SAM batteries in a valley...
I hate games that do this. Like, making a certain vehicle hard to obtain or very rarely seen. Like the Ka-50 Hokum for the Russian Mafia. You only saw that once. Also, the large choppers that brought you heavy payloads (like the Mi-26 Halo for the Russian Mafia, CH-53 Sea Stallion for the South Koreans and CH-47 Chinook for the AN) were impossible to obtain. You couldn't shoot the pilot. Also, in Mercs 2 for the PS2, the rarest vehicle I ever found was a Venezuelan BTR-60 (brought back from the 1st game) in a relatively hidden outpost near Maracaibo...
Venezuela protesting your videogame is the equivalent of a lemon farmer screaming at a little kid for selling lemonade
I like to think that this narrator is a classically trained voice actor who had little knowledge of gaming and the industry, however through his work on this channel he is now very knowledgeable and has a new found appreciation for gaming, the industry and the culture. :)
What other fairy tales do you like?
@@conformistbastard9842 The Bible has a few good ones
@@cathalorourke1 Nah, I'm waiting for the Bible's sequel to come out.
Mercs 2 = Criminally (and I mean like War Crime criminally) underrated. Me and my friend couldn’t get enough of it! Even when I was finally allowed to play GTA!
Still love this game. Most of all, I really appreciated how you could approach every mission in so many ways. Stealth + Sniper? CHECK. Get a Helicopter? Check! Recon and get in position for a carpet bombingrun? CHECK!
Also really liked the music, and the immersion!
The theme song is awesome, it has so much energy and life
Don't forget completing any mission by dropping a nuclear bomb on anything
I approach the mission with doomguy style. Just put on unlimited bullet cheat and shoot everything until you passed the mission.
funny that you release a video of this somewhat obscure videogame series now, because last week I started playing mercenaries 2 again after YEARS of not thinking about the game, I found my copy in the collection of old videogames collecting dust in my attic along with my xbox 360, and got the itch to play it again. crazy how this world works sometimes.
I forgot all about that series. You've now got "oh no you didn't" stuck in my head again after over a decade thank you so much.
Slight correction to the video - Mercs 2 wasn't the first time you could destroy the entire map (minus terrain) - you could do that in the first game too.
But yeah, Mercs 1: POG is one of my favourite games of all time. Endlessly satisfying to play, solid mechanics, great physics and audio - just a masterpiece.
R.I.P Pandemic. Thank you for the countless hours of fun you gave me between this franchise, Destroy All Humans and Star Wars Battlefront. Their closure was a massive loss to the entire industry. Thanks again for that, EA.
I used to love playing desert, urban, and jungle strike. Merc’s was an amazing game.
I am Venezuelan, I live in Venezuela and I had never heard of that video game, I have been a fan of the channel for a long time and it made me want to play it, the people who promote prohibitions and request cancellation in my opinion only try to draw attention to them and their policies since time has shown that they are not interested at all in citizens and their true needs, GVMERS from Venezuela thanks and keep up the good work.
Thanks to this game is why videogames where “banned” in Venezuela, at least the “violent” ones, what a fucking joke…
@@RaggedyGreg The truth is that nobody here is interested in prohibitions. I assure you that the game is normally sold everywhere, all games are, regardless of age or content.
Holy shit seeing those 2 seconds of the hijack tank animation from Mercenaries 2 brought me way back, I haven't seen or even thought of that in well over 10 years. Also whenever you would call in supplies to be dropped from a helicopter the pilot would always say something like "it's always me that comes and saves your bacon" in a horrible scottish? accent and I will remember that till the day I die for some reason. Great times playing that game.
"always relying on me to come save your bacon". 2 is abandonware now on pc, so you can download it for free. I'm currently playing it again 10 years later for the nostalgia
It's Irish but yeah. Also I think one of my biggest dislikes of the second game as opposed to the first was the quick time events. Agreed that the first game made hijacking tanks, a very powerful enemy, too easy (run up to it in i.frames or drive close enough to hop out and press a single button) and too rewarding. QTE was a *decent* approach for the time but I feel it's dated and slowed getting into a tank to a crawl.
I still remember the Advertisement "Why use 1 grenade when you can use 2?"
One of my favourite series. Just Cause or the recent Saint Rows games just doesnt scratch that same itch unfortunately. Ghost Recon Wildlands does get close. Its just missing the large airstrikes and variety of supply drops etc.
i feel just cause 3 was pretty close. 4 went a bit off the rails
Just Cause 2 was THE best game of the series.
Yeah Wildands had the feel and adding air strikes and extraction missions would have been amazing. Mercs 2 wasn't as good for many but it's still loads better than what Ghost Recon Breakpoint ended up being.
LucasArts missed a huge opportunity by not making a Star Wars version of Mercenaries, for example set on a planet where the Imperials refuse to give up after the Battle of Endor and the ensuing power struggles by competing factions.
Mercs 2 was a fun game. Nothing fantastic or anything but it was still a good time. Being able to level a city was fun, though the buildings reapawning was kind of annoying.
First one was better
I used to spend hours just leveling city blocks and attacking HQs in both games lol. Destruction looked better in the first one, but the second one had such a bigger arsenal and map to play with
What makes the first one better? I like it but never played the 2nd game
Buildings respawning is good because you can come back and destroy them in a different way... very fun
I probably destroyed Caracas like 100s of times lol
If it weren't the sequel to Mercs 1, it would've definitely felt a lot better. But seeing as it was, Mercs 2 was definitely a huge let down.
Mercenaries 2 was the swan song game of my PS2 days as I played it OVER and OVER again until I was fortunate enough to get a XB360 for Christmas in 2011.
I loved Mercs 2 in spite of, and because of, all its weird flaws. The Saboteur was great too. I really hate EA for closing Pandemic, among other things.
They should remake mercs2 and The saboteur
Mercenaries 2 is my favourite of the titles.
Most of the tanks and helicopters in the game were rare to see. The Mi-26 (Condor), MD500N (Rogue), Alouette (Kestrel), M41 Stingray 2 (Mantis), AMX-30 (Jaguar) & FV107 scimitar (Puma) just to name a few
Not too mention, the tanks wheels were also connected to the chassis by suspension (another detail not that common even today)
The love the modellers put into these vehicles is apparent and I love it.
I do remember renting the game week of release. And then got it the Christmas the same year. I still have my original copy from that day. And am currently replaying through it.
23/05/24
Mercenaries 1 is still some of the coolest open world games I ever played. It's like gta in a warzone with tons of vehicles, tanks, planes, helicopters, you could call in airstrikes and vehicles drops and it had some incredible destruction for its time - iirc basically every building could be leveled. I will always remember it fondly.
Nuffin felt better than dropping a carpet bomb on a town leveling the whole place 😂
Loved the variety of airstrikes too. Like the bunker buster was for bunkers since it was pretty shit against ground troops. And the regular air strike was cheaper but a coin toss how well it would do.
You show driver when you talk about gta copies but real ogs know that driver started the open world 3rd person driving game craze.
The first Mercenaries I would attach c4 to a car, use the helicopter with the magnetic winch to lift the car, swing the helicopter around and use the momentum to launch the car into enemies and detonate the c4.
One of my favourite sandbox moments as a kid
I like doing extra work like that lol. Like shooting down an allied helicopter pilot for a chance to get the rarer apache attack helicopter since you can't call one in.
1:03 "as opposed to crime bosses and kingpins"
Sergei: Am i a joke to you?
hands down one of my favorite game series. For some reason I've been remembering Mercenaries more and more lately, either due to someone mentioning Tom clancy's wildlands or some other game bringing back these memories, even though barely anyone else remembers it.
I still have to watch it but thanks for this video.
Game series? There are literally only two games... lol.
Hands down better then just cause. I wish just cause would have died and mercenaries would have kept going that game is pure fun.
duology
One of my favorite Mercenaries one memories was that after some time of playing quests I just started to drive randomly. Then next a movie theater I see a guy and he is one of the Jacks. I remember thinking "it may be a later mission", but proced to engage anyways to see whats gonna happen, for my surprise I was able to engage, win and arrest the Jack and get paid for it. Since then, my expectations bout video games really have changed.
I loved the Mercenaries series, especially the attention to detail in the first one. Less enthused by the second one but still enjoyed it. Had no idea it was as big a deal as it apparently was.
It’s unusual to find a gaming documentary TH-cam channel with narrator who has a good, professional voice. Subscribed.
I used to LOVE the Mercenaries franchise. I couldn't believe the freedom of being able to use any vehicle in the game. Pandemic NEEDS to come back!
Thank you for making this and bringing back memories of a great franchise. Yes, it might not have been perfect and it sure did have a lot of bugs but at it's heart it was a ton of fun. Multiplayer in Mercenaries 2: World in Flames was a good laugh. When thinking about a game that EA could remake or remaster a mercenaries game would be a good pick for sure. Although I still hate them for killing Command and Conquer, I'll never forgive them for that.
10:45 Didn't expect to see Matt Colville here.
For those who don't know, he runs DnD campaigns and has a pretty good YT channel
Surprised me too
Wondered if he'd show up
I don’t remember the video in question, but the one where he discusses the meeting with the IRL mercenary for story research is pretty chilling.
At 8:09 I remember that pic of Alastor. It was his profile picture on the official forums. He was a developer from Pandemic and very active on the Mercenaries 2 forum page. He used to hype the community so much, but was ultimately bound by EA. He was a cool guy, and he seemed legitimately upset that Mercs 2 was kind of a disappointment.
i met one of my closest friends cause of this game. they were so hype they made a subforum for this game. i joined and we became friends. i went through 2 horrible periods in my life and they were there for me. checked up on me just 2 days ago to see if i was feeling better.
So cool. Thats a good friend right there
Bro. Can you imagine a world where Mercenaries 10 exists?
I loved all the little details in these games.
In Mercs 1 you can walk around the briefing room while being briefed. Depending on the specific mission, different objects can interacted with which garners comments from the clients if they've finished their briefing.
In Mercs 2, the ammo, bombs and money stored at the Mansion HQ directly correlates to the ammo and types of munitions and money available to the player so as the player's strength and wealth accumulates the game reinforces it.
I forgot about your mansion in the second one being filled with the resources you actually accumulate. I initially played the PS2 version of the second game which was really bad LOL but even that version had that feature and I loved stopping at home and just admiring my inventory 😆
@@austinoakes3898 The point when I noticed it was after discovering that the one of the repeatable challenges was super easy to farm cash from (I think it involved stacking containers with a helicopter) and I did a farming run for an hour and then went in the mansion and was like "wait, that wasn't there before". And figured it worked for munition because I recovered a fuel-air bomb and later saw one in the mansion.
@@austinoakes3898 there were some aspects from the ps2 version that I wish theyd carried over, like being able to store vehicles from the world at the villa and call them in later, also they removed the PLAV zamora attack helicopter that would spawn in the forest near the mansion from the game for some reason.
I saw Bush and Chavez in the thumbnail and I clicked immediately. The 2000s! Those were great times!
Fr. Its like truly the world has gone to shit these past 10 years.. there was just a different aura.
When you hear pandemic teamed with E A. your automatically like why they just close studios down. They should've stuck with activision. Then your like oh nvm they lay everyone off and repurpose them to help with Call of Duty. They were screwed either way.
Co-op was a blast in Mercs 2. Played it through with a friend and it was some if the most fun ive ever had in a game.
Remember that EA bought Pandemic in a super shady way.......and then ruined the studio and destroyed the Mercenaries IP. Never forgive and never forget. I cannot believe such an amazing studio like Pandemic was taken out by EA.
I don't think EA even gave a shit about Pandemic Studios to begin with: they wanted Bioware...and look what they did to *them*.
I remember watching a friend play Mercenaries 2: World in Flames back in 2007. It wasn't long before I ended up buying myself a copy for the X-Box 360, and much later for PC. I'm genuinely let down that none of the DLC made it from the console versions to the PC, but hopefully somebody will find a way to port it someday.
Overall, a sad end to an amazing franchise made by a talented team of developers. Thank you for making this video.
Back when destruction in video games was innovative and unique, video game these days lack interactive environments like the series had, except maybe Minecraft but that doesn't count.
That Scarface game is such an underrated gem. I want to start a religion about it. Not the classic movie but just the 2005 video game. They even had James Woods for some reason!
this was THE game of my childhood. i’ll never forget going through the city blowing up literally ANY building i saw in the city that’s fire
I'm 20 now, I must've been 10 or 11 when I played mercenaries 2 for the first time and omg I loved it. That game was amazing as a kid me and my buddies would play all day after school blowing up the big mansion over n over again lol
I have great memories being a sophomore in high school, buying Mercenaries, and having a wonderful time with my friend taking turns seeing how much mayhem we could cause. 2003-2007 was definitely was a golden era of solid game releases for all consoles and PC.
Agreed. So much creativity that is lacking now
@@BeatRoot14 Creativity is definitely lacking in the AAA space but not in the indie space.
Mercs 1 is a masterpiece. I played it when I was stationed in South Korea in 2005.
Some SK soldiers didn't too much like the game lol
I wonder why lol
Ouh, "What happened to all those GTA clones..." and the intro clip of SCARFACE: The World Is Yours, really made my heart sink, knowing a sequel to Scarface was almost release-ready when EA canned it, if I recall.
Not sure I'd even call it a GTA clone at that point... seems kind of insulting and not even accurate enough to be useful.
I love both of these games still. Really wish a remake or reboot would release at some point
Tell Solonano to send more troops! That line always got me going man!
I really despise the term ''GTA clone'' games urinalists applied to every open world crime game that came after GTA 3.
It always did major disservice to games that managed to do their own thing, but urinalists constantly kept calling them GTA clones.
Devs of such games always got a sense of inferiority because of that, and by efforts to get away from being labeled that, studios like Volition made Saints Row worse in result.
Referring to games as clones of others existed before GTA3, such as every FPS being a Doom clone for a while before the mechanic became commonplace. It's useful for describing mechanics concisely but does ignore alot of the distinctions of the clone.
It’s funny how they even say that when the first game before that was Driver so technically GTA three is a rip off of Driver I mean, technically it was before anything you had guns you can run around get out of your car and this as long before GTA third person. With gta 1 &2 It was only a 2d game so technically rockstar copied drover
Loved the series. Such fond memories of getting my grandma to purchase it for me at a flea market game store
Oh this game made my childhood so much better! Just the moments when you were leveling buildings with C4, calling in cruise missiles or just flying around in your chopper or driving your humvee - unforgettable moments! The music also was on par… I miss these days.. I wish they would make a remake or something… fucking loved playing as Nilsson or the Asian girl… ah the nostalgia I can feel now… thanks for the video and happy Sunday to everyone!
The best was strapping C4 to the hood of a stolen jeep and then driving it into a group of enemies. Bail out of the vehicle and push the button right as it reaches them to take them out super spy style. You could even launch jeeps by clustering them around a couple C4s. I eventually launched one so high it hit the limit of the sky.
What sucks is we'll never really get an amazing game with destructible environments and buildings collapsing like them it's 2022 and we still don't get building that collapse
Pandemic was one of my favorite studios, first game I played from them was SW: The Clone Wars it was rough around the edges but pretty fun, then Full Spectrum Warrior, SW: Battlefront 1 and 2, Destroy All Humans 1 and 2, LotR: Conquest was a banger too. And of course Mercenaries, I must have replayed the second one a dozen times really liked the first one too but the disk died fairly quickly.
Hard to find games that are just fun nowadays, there always must be a catch, some bullshit crammed in or some such.
Ah, yes...the *correct* Battlefront games.
Ave Imperator!
If I'm thinking of the right game, clone wars was fucking awesome.
It was the one where you spent the whole game driving around vehicles right? And there was split screen/co op modes, and the best was the endless battle arena modes, where you just dealt with wave after wave of enemies until they finally killed you?
That was the first game I played that got me saying(still to this fucking day) EVERY GAME needs some sort of CO OP battle arena, where the games AI is put to the test, as much as the players abilities.
World in Flames was a massive inspiration for how I play games nowadays. Always try to play a mercenary if I can help it.
Mercenaries 1 is still one of my top 5 games of all time. Such a special game for me ❤
I absolutely love both of the mercenaries series. ❤ both were gems. Forever in my heart. Kids these days will never know how good and genuine games were in the golden era of video games.
I wanna thank this channel for bringing back alot of memories for certain games and giving a better insight and behind the scenes look! GVMERS YOUR SO AWESOME! I APPRECIATE EVERYTHING YOU DO AND ALL THE HARD WORK YOU PUT INTO YOUR CONTENT!!!!!!
Did you recognize any of the games in the video? There was some cool open world games and military shooters he didn’t even bother to list and mention
Press Caps Lock again! You can do it. I believe in you.
Mercenaries on the ps2 and its sequel on the 360 were some of my favourite games of my childhood.
Mercenaries 1 for PS2, such great memories! Sad how the Pandemic studio close it in face of EA's shenanigans.
Mercenaries was ahead of its time and not just in gameplay but in geopolitics as well.
I never did get into completing Mercenaries 2 only because it felt dull and linear to me compared to the first one.
I remember around 15 years ago when I was in school and enjoyed Mercenaries : Playground of destrcution so much that I would think about it most of the time when I went to school and couldn't wait to go back home and play it again. For some reason, I could never finish it back then and for all this time, it was one of the first games I would remember when I thought of my PS2. So I was so happy to finally finish it last year and still loved it as much as I did back then.
I played Mercs 2 before the first one, and MAN, the difference was night and day. Even though it was the PS2 version of Mercs 2 (I later got the PS3 version), playing Mercs 1 seemed out of this world. Hijacking helicopters was GONE, having to kill the pilot before he grabs the damn thing. Also, Ace missions seemed IMPOSSIBLE. Ace of Clubs was okay, but the Ace of Diamonds (or was it the Ace of Hearts? It's a mission with a giant cannon and radioactive spots on the map) was just ridiculous. Getting fired at by a massive onslaught of BMPs and BRDMs while dodging radiation spots on the island, rushing to get into the prototype cannon to destroy the main cannon firing shells at Seoul... Jesus Christ, I remember ragequitting a lot just because I didn't knew how to get by without losing a tank and dying by radiation. I finally managed to beat it, go into the northern part of the peninsula, but I started having disc problems and unfortunately was never able to beat it. Shame though, because I was already near the second to last Ace.
@@choppergunner8650 That's right! My disc was messed up too and that's why I couldn't finish it too. But yea Mercs 1 was so good. The atmosphere was something I probably won't forget.
Merc 1 will forever hold a place in my heart. That game was absolutely amazing and gritty, it gave everything that someone would want in a game: a good story, plenty of exploration, a variety of choices, and the tools to let your imagination run wild.
God I love that game to death and just think to myself constantly, it was from nearly 20 years ago. Think about the advancements in technology, console, game development etc. that have been made in 20 years! How if they rebuilt mercenaries 1 today, what it would look like, play like. What new features, content could we have had. Dozens of weapons, refined boots-on-the-ground gunplay, superior mechanics, better physics, more airstrikes, supplies and vehicles. It was the peak of open world games cause it dared to be ambitious and its a shame that 18 years later nothing has had the same ideas or ambitions...
Thanks for this! I always wondered what happened to this series.
Sadly it seems the major trend for series dying is either the studio being shuttered or the series being dropped for some reason.
EA had no problem shutting this down, but yet Madden still terrorizes millions.
One of my favorite game series! I loved driving around with a ton of soldiers and making them fight rival factions and using nuclear bunker busters! On another note, another old video game franchise with interesting history is TimeSplitters. It's troubled history with reaching high sales figures is similar to Mercenaries', and along with Haze, caused its in progress sequel to be unfortunately laid to rest, for the time being. Thank you for the amazing videos!
The orginal Ghost Recon Wildlands. I forgot how much I played Mercs 2
Great memories of a great time. I hate EA for this.
Man those games were my childhood! This video took me back down memory lane! Nice work man
I remember this game! The OST was amazing! I remember putting c4 around the side of cars to fire them firing up into the sky.
The opening screen's OST is iconic ! , with the shots of the destroyed landscape.
Funny to hear how they held back releasing a game so they could iron out the bugs...(even if they didn't fix them all)...those were the days eh?!
I speedrun Playground of Destruction; an admittedly desperate attempt to breath new life into this legendary, dead franchise
There’s actually a surprisingly active Discord server dedicated to the games
There are invites for it in the descriptions of most my videos
I want to join but for some reason can't
your voice and editing are so good, one of the best creators on youtube in my opinion
Mercenaries 2 had very bad reviews back then which surely impacted sales and played a part in dropping development for a third game. I never understood why the reviewers had the unanimous opinion this game was horrible. In this age coop in an open world was especially rare and great fun. I loved both parts and hoped for part 3. For me it was the ideal mix between GTA and Just Cause.
pandemic studios deserves so much credit for the amazing franchise they created
What the hell is this footage 1:26 lol?
Mercenaries was my Playground of Destruction, which was also my introduction into the series. I played it like it had been prescribed to me. I watched and listened to the characters then dawned their personalities on each playthrough, simply to immerse myself in everything offered, which i loved immensely. I 100% the game legit with the three Mercs then, i used cheats like a mad man on a seperate playthrough for the three and just did everything my organic life desired and could do.
I delved into the code on the xbox version and created an unreleased mod which had everyone acting friendly to eachother, i would simply drive around in civilian vehicles and just try to "live the life" of an NK citizen in the Mercs Universe.
I was hoping to see the series continue forward and still hope it picks up when our economy is better. A release that revolves around America breaking to the massive debt and everyone almost going rogue with various factions spread across the country, with others trying to influence us, would be 10/10 from me.