Mercenaries Hands-On

Mercenaries is a new third-person shooter from LucasArts and Pandemic. The game, as you might expect, puts you in the role of a mercenary. The demo on display here at E3 starts you out right near some fairly heavy fighting.

As a mercenary, it's up to you to accept missions for money. The neat thing is that you can spend that money in the field to get new items airlifted in. Need a little extra burst of speed? Drop in a jeep and get moving. You'll also find vehicles on the battlefield. A handy "hijack vehicle" button also means that you won't always have to wait until a vehicle is unoccupied to take it.

At its core, Mercenaries is a mission-based shooter. You'll take on objectives, use a subscreen map to plot your course, and move from one spot to the next, taking out opposition with a variety of guns, rockets, and grenades. You'll take on tanks and choppers, as well as infantry and other light ground vehicles.

Graphically, Mercenaries looks pretty sharp on the PlayStation 2. The environments look large, and the game moves along at a solid speed. The models used for players and enemies alike are also nice.

It's hard to get a feel for how the mission-based mercenary action will shape up, but the basic mechanics--running around, shooting people, driving vehicles--feel pretty good. Mercenaries is currently scheduled to ship for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox in 2005.