The Demilitarized zone (DMZ) that separates North and South Korea is described by some as the most dangerous place on Earth. It is a landscape of nightmares; a wasteland thick with artillery craters, barbed wire, minefields, graveyards, and the skeletons of villages. The earth has been shelled, mined, overgrown, booby-trapped, burned and abandoned, and it is here the entire duration of Mercenaries takes place.

From Pandemic, the studio responsible for the likes of Full Spectrum Warrior and Star Wars Battlefront, it's obvious from the outset that there's a wealth of military clout behind Mercenaries. If you're looking for cute, you're in the wrong place. If you're looking for a war-themed GTA then, surprisingly, you might also be in the wrong place.

The DMZ is full of warring factions, each with grudges against one another. Obviously North and South Korea have a presence, as does the UN, the Chinese military, and black market racketeers the Russian Mafia. It is these organisations who'll feed our bank balance if we help them with a few 'favours', and these that we'll then be shamelessly attacking when revenge hits are called for.

The five groups will each be indicated on screen as a flag, but only when you're in favour with them. If a hit goes wrong or you back out of a contract, your standing with each group will fall, only to be redeemed with a cash donation or the recovery of stolen items you'll find littered around the map. Fall too far out of grace though for, say, destroying an entire military airport for shits 'n giggles, and you'll be shot on sight by any patrol or scout that encounters you from there on in until you literally bankrupt yourself to stop the hits.

The DMZ is a huge, sprawling area so there is little chance of incurring too much wrath without being able to escape and earn those much-needed Brownie points to get back on side with a contractor. Populated with rolling hills, misty mountains, and secret outposts, the DMZ is easily as large as Vice City. Unfortunately it isn't as easily navigated nor half as pretty, despite being fully free-roaming from the start. Without an off-road vehicle, many missions are limited by the layout of the roads, and although every car is free to attempt a slightly inclined climb, few actually make it, making for a lot of meandering gameplay down endless roads.

It's also a bit of a bummer when it comes to hitching a lift if you find yourself standing next to a burning wreck that was once your vehicle. Sightseers and Sunday drivers are few and far between, so there will undoubtedly be portions of the game where there's nothing for it but to walk everywhere. Manage to carjack a vehicle though, especially one with city-flattening capabilities, and the world is your oyster, and you're a bloody great hammer ready to smash it to smithereens.

During the game you'll have to bring down the 52 Most Wanted Korean generals, designated in a deck of cards system, but how this is executed is entirely at your discretion. You can employ stealth (of a sort) and sneak in for a snipe, or you can call in full bunker-busting wrath of hell stuff and scorch the earth away (and anything on top of it). If you can conceive of a way to kill, Mercenaries lets it happen, and that's where the beauty of the game unfolds. Every man-made structure, be it a humble watchtower or a huge fortified skyscraper, can be destroyed. You can flatten and stomp, explode and implode everything you see. Pack a stack of cars against a building or under an arch, set one off, and let them blow. Hijack a chopper and fill it full of tank-busters then rain them down on your target. Buy special weapons drops from any of the factions and you'll be laser-targeting buildings for an airstrike, calling in artillery strikes, carpet-bombing compounds, or watching those bunker-busters bore into the earth before sending up a spray of dirt and bodies. It's damned, dirty fun and we're encouraged to make the most of it.

Much like GTA, there's incentive to spend time exploring the environment and doing with it as you see fit, because it's during these times extra money can be earned and secrets unlocked. But, unlike GTA, Mercenaries doesn't quite possess the panache to keep free-roaming play engrossing. We thought there could never be enough destruction but whereas GTA gradually layers on the intensity, Mercenaries just barfs it up in your face. There are near-nuclear weapons at your fingertips from the beginning and very little consequence for using them. Financial penalties are no kind of punishment for going crazy so there's no real incentive to spend that much time on a rampage. Having a fleet of Black Hawks or swarms of heat seekers on your tail would have upped the ante, but there's none of it. This is consequence-free gaming and, as a result, free-roaming can get dull.

The missions themselves more than compensate for the free-roaming aspects though, thank goodness. They are varied enough to encompass tasks that require belly-crawling through undergrowth to plant C4, and then there are those that push the beautiful physics engine to its limits as cars, fuel dumps, and passenger jets all explode into the sky in a wash of flame and smoke. If there's one thing that easily surpasses the standard set by GTA, it's the physics. They're stunning.

Mercenaries, despite not quite hitting all the goals it aims for, is a superb effort nonetheless. The score is reminiscent of the old John Barry Bond themes, and there's a genuine menace in the DMZ thanks to the all saturating mist. The subversive thrill of destroying just about everything you clap eyes on is ingenious within the context of a mission too, yet the game is a bundle of contradictions.

Where it excels to brilliance in parts, it also manages to be indescribably daft. Hijack an armoured car by killing the driver and the soldier in the gunner's seat will then instantly forget it ever happened and lend you a hand. We got the sense that everything in the world was placed there for the sole purpose of being destroyed, without enough consideration to the fact that, just maybe, they should be protecting themselves from you.

The three mercenary character types are different on the exterior only, with nominal strength and stamina differences. If you like the way a character's ass wobbles when she walks, you might just as well choose her for all the good it does. All three characters are ridiculously hard to kill, being capable of surviving chopper crashes and exploding vehicles without a scratch. Again, this just reinforces the idea that Mercenaries is all about venting anger and smashing up whatever the hell you like. It succeeds perfectly in that respect.

As an exercise in showing off explosion physics and brainless fun, Mercenaries is a faultless title. An over-the-shoulder rocket launcher and access to a helicopter is all you need to get stuck into the most overly gratuitous, superbly silly game we've seen in ages, and if you can stand to gasp and giggle at a barrage of destruction for longer than quarter of an hour, then you're a great man indeed. However, 'sandbox' games need to strike a balance. Freedom to do what you want is a good thing, but not when it comes at the expense of characterisation, plot, Al, and gameplay. If Pandemic had just reined in the obvious fun it had developing Mercenaries, we gamers might have had more fun playing it. It's sturdy, it's explosive, and in short bursts it's a stupidly enjoyable, C4-charged rolling death machine of a GTA-beater. Beyond that though it never stretches itself to the obvious cult classic it could have so easily become. .

1. Second to none use of the physics engine means every explosion leaves your mouth watering and your eyes wanting more...
2. ...too many explosions do spoil the broth though. A visual treat at first, but there is such thing as getting too much of a good thing.
3. The three mercenary characters are completely interchangeable, so there's no real impetus to play more than once as a different person.
4. The score is superb. No cult pop classics or r 'n b, but the orchestral work rivals those good old spy flicks for creating atmosphere.

1. Why can't we drive cars up steep hills? Free-roaming is great, just as long as we get given the chance to actually be free-roamers!

A truly amazing effort. More plot and fewer meaningless explosions would have shaken GTA's iron grip considerably.