If you couldn't get enough of the sensless crime and violence of the GTA series, you can quench your thirst for carjacking, assassination, and reckless driving in Mercenaries on the X-box. There are plenty of vehicles to steal and destroy including North Korean tanks, Chinese 'Jeeps', South Korean Attack Choppers, American H3's, and even the occasional city bus. In addition to the traditional arsenal of RPG's, C4, and a large variety of machine guns, Mercenaries adds the option to call in various airstrikes. These airstrikes can take out anything from a single soldier to an entire building, yes with a 'bunker buster' airstrike an entire building will crumble into dust and rubble. In my opinion, this is a rental. I haven't beaten the game yet and am already tired of it. The missions are repetative; kill this, blow up that pretty much describes every mission. Occasionally you find yourself in a situation surrounded by tanks where there is no way out and you die, which is frustrating because you have to drive back to where you were in slow, poor handling vehicles back from the MASH. Overall i would recommend renting this game for a week and saving 40 bucks rather than buying it, because it is obvious already there is little replay value.

This game comes from a developer cranking out hot shot games: Pandemic. This game truly carries pandemics excellence. Enough, you want to know if the game is good, it's good. The sheer size of the game is only matched by your creativity. Bomb the wall or find a hole to sneak in. Destroy the helicopter or board it from 30 feet in the air. This game is yours to craft. There are some minor graphical hiccups and some missions where you think "not this again". But they will not ruin this game. It's a must buy and a must play.

This is the first truly great game of 2005. With a fully interactive environment and a variety of modern weapons and vehicles, it has set a very high standard for the rest of the games of this year. The story line also provides a little variety, since you can decide if you want to fight for peace or support the diabolical north vietnamese general (unofficially). Choose your guns. Choose your side. Choose your character. Choose what you want to destroy, who you want to kill (don't be fooled by the "Teen" rating, it provides ample blood, gore, and violence, but lacks the strong sexual content and drug references it would need to be vaulted into the mature category), and how you want to kill them. Great game.