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Mercs is not a subtle game. It's all jungles, violence and anti-personnel weaponry. So it seemed natural that Trenton - CF's least subtle person - should get the reviewing job. Apparently, he loves the smell of napalm in the morning, he says it smells of...

Victory! As ultra-violent super-troopers, that's all that Joe Gibbs and Howie Powell know about. Well, they do know some other things - like how to count to twenty by taking their socks off and the correct spelling of cat - but victory's all they really care about. Why? Because they're mercenaries (but because that has too many syllables for them to remember they refer to themselves as 'Mercs' instead); they're lean, mean fighting machines who like to, erm, split spleens... and any other parts of the enemy's body that are handy.

The situation looks like this. There are these terrorists who've gone beyond the bounds of all human decency. They've nabbed the President and you have to get him back. Oh, and while you're at it you have to terminate (with extreme prejudice) as many terrorists as you can find. It's justice you see.

Administering 'justice' in a war-zone may seem as fruitless a task as handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500, but it's what you've got to do. You're to follow their trail up the Du Lon river (through eight different battle stages) and kill everybody you see along the way - except the President, as that would be treason.

The second you get off of the boat on stage one the gist of the game becomes obvious. In the classic Commando/Ikari Warriors style, you run about an isometric landscape. Enemy soldiers and buildings are the major obstacles, but both can be dealt with in that great military fashion - shooting them.

Occasionally, vehicles litter the route (such as a jeep and a plastic patrol boat) which you can commandeer to help you in your quest to spread death and destruction, but all they really offer mass-killers are greater mobility and no extra fire-power which is a bit of a shame. You can't even run over the enemy soldiers or ram their boats. Okay, so driving around adds a bit of variety but it doesn't actually help you out that much.

The other items of interest for the killer elite are crates. Some thoughtful courier has dropped off supplies along route. The Mercs just have to pop a shot at them to liberate the contents. Bearing in mind these crates contain guns, power-ups, credits and a fine selection of cold meats it seems odd that the guerrillas haven't hit on the idea of nicking this kit for themselves. But they haven't, and this tactical oversight should be pointed out to them with the barrel of your gun.

All would be fine in the world if Mercs was simply a one- or two-player game that boasted with hordes of isometric blasting, pick-ups galore and big end-of-level baddies. Mercs tries, but never achieves even this simple level of fun. It's just too flawed.

The shooting itself is inaccurate and the collision detection curious in the extreme. Stand too close to a building and you can't shoot, as it seems that the gravitational effect of the building somehow sucks your bullets in. 'Safe' positions suddenly turn into death traps when it transpires that enemy soldiers can run through hitherto solid walls. And while the end-of-level bad guys are huge, they're also hugely lame - there are easily-spotted safe zones on every screen, so killing them is easy.

Worst of all though, is the scroll. Normally its so slow you have to push right to the top of the screen in a suicidal fashion to move it along. And it gets worse. At times part of the 'gameplay' involves finding the correct route through a level. If the correct path runs sideways across the screen and you scream on ahead, it's easy to scroll the path off the bottom of the screen, leaving you stranded! This isn't too much of a problem on level one, but on level three (where it's most likely to happen) it's potentially fatal. Whether this is intentional, or the result of bad playtesting, it comes down to lax game design and is unforgivable.

With serious amounts of on-screen action, Mercs might sound like the kind of non-stop slug-fest you've been looking for, but the gameplay flaws soon kill any interest. The graphics and sound don't do the game any favours either; 'functional' would be the kindest thing to say about them, and sometimes even that is too kind (well, you try working out which way the jeep's supposed to be facing). A famous film psycho-soldier once said, "Let me tell you something, young Captain. Someday this war's gonna end." Play Mercs for too long, and you'll pray he was right.

Graphics 56%
Big but blocky. They're too simplistic to be taken seriously.

Control System 38%
The bland tunes swiftly force you to turn the sound down.

Playability 47%
It looks so busy you assume that the first few deaths were your fault.

Lastability 18%
You'll soon discover the game's flaws and lose interest massively.

Overall 28%