Way back when I was five, I used to spend my summer days chillin in my sandbox with my GI Joes and Star Wars figures, creating spectacular battles and feeding victims to creatures that dwelled underneath the surface. Unfortunately, LucasArts' latest game Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction doesn't have giant monsters in it, but it's still a highly enjoyable action-adventure romp chock full of enemies to kill and mini games to enjoy.

In Mercenaries you're a...well...mercenary who's been hired to take down North Korea's most evil men who have been arranged in a deck of 52 playing cards, so you'll be tracking down, for example, the King of Hearts and the Four of Clubs. The game takes place in Asia in this absolutely ENORMOUS game environment that plays host to several warring factions: The Allied Nations Task Force, China, the Russian Mafia, the South Korean Union, and of course, North Korea. The gameplay concept simply involves accepting contracts from these factions and going on "errands" to kill this bad guy or capture this package, among others, and you'll collect lots of cash along the way that can be used to buy stuff such as weapons, air strikes, and vehicles.

You'll net the most cash if you go after the deck of 52. They're not always easy to find, but as you drive around you'll notice card symbols on your PDA, and you can also get hints as to their whereabouts. When you locate one of these scumbags you have two options: You can kill them and take their picture (which will net you less cash), or you can gun down his small army protecting him and subdue the slime ball, but in order to complete the objective you'll need to call in for a helicopter pick-up. Yeah, capturing them is more challenging, but herein lies one of the game's biggest problems. It really doesn't encourage you to take them alive because there are so many other ways to get cash that by the time you finally encounter one of these guys you may not care. For the first few enemies, I took the more difficult path, but once I had over $500,000 in my bank account, I just ran over the #$%#%$#%. It's less hassle, and, when you have THAT MUCH cash, who cares if the bounty gets cut in half when you can make up the extra money by blowing up enemy vehicles? Not this guy!

Of course, the game's greatest appeal is the level of freedom it provides. You can literally go anywhere, kill anyone (though that may piss off the faction you're working for and may require you to make amends in some fashion), and blow up anything. All of the buildings/vehicles can be obliterated and the effects are fantastic. You can also hijack vehicles, and these include helicopters, jeeps, SUVs, and civilian rides. It's a thrilling and visceral experience that'll definitely suck you in for several hours. Initially I wasn't too impressed, but over time, and this may sound odd, the game became extremely relaxing, probably because of the total lack of responsibility. You don't owe anyone anything, and there are always small battles going on, so you can stop, blow the ##%$ out of something, collect some dough in the process and be on your merry way.

I love the physics in this game. Aside from blowing up a jeep and watching bodies fly every which way, Mercenaries introduces a radical vehicular concept not often found in games. If your ride pitches on its side or gets turned upside down you can no longer use it. So many games allow you to just press a button to flip over a vehicle that I was initially surprised with this, but like everything else you just grow accustomed to it, and if you're real persistent, you can knock it back over.

Mercenaries also succeeds because of its various bells and whistles. The graphics have this cool glow effect and the environments are detailed when you're not laying waste to everything. The game's aural component is also pretty sweet, as guns, explosions, and the various languages you'll hear sound authentic.

My two biggest problems with Mercenaries are its AI and its fun factor, the reason being that the AI is as dumb as a log and the game gets boring after several hours. While the enemy's super aggressive, it'll also drive into a wall, back up, then drive right back into the wall, and it'll do this forever. Also, there's a glitch where, if a box gets knocked in front of a gun turret, you cannot man it, and since you can't really push it out of the way, you're stuck.

Lastly, the enjoyment of the game reaches a peak and then just arcs downward, with the desire to nab the evil 52 being the only real reason to keep playing. But taking down buildings and shooting guards only lasts so long, so you better REALLY want to kill or subdue all of those guys. Don't get me wrong, the game's going to keep you entertained for a LONG time, but with little story to speak of it's just a run-around-blow-everything-up mindless shooter. Not that that's a bad thing, but if you've run-and-gunned before, it won't be incredibly amazing.

Much like my time spent in the sand box, Mercenaries is very enjoyable (though there's certainly no imagination required to play it). However, much like the sand box I got bored and went to do something else. It's fun for a pretty long time, but after a while I desired something a little meatier. Eventually, this Playground needed to close for the evening.