Mercenary Kings - The pixelated expendables

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Hello everyone! How is it going recalling old times while travelling around the world in Nostalgia? It is indeed nostalgic, right? And talking about nostalgia, in this new entry I´m going to talk about yet another game that, just as the JRPG from the last entry for Nintendo DS, aims to pay tribute to the classic 8 and 16-bit games, drawing inspiration from them to deliver an adventure that will take us straight to the past of action games, and that belong to the recent wave of games brewed in the popular Kickstarter crowdfunding website like Shadowrun Returns, The Banner Saga, Pillars of Eternity, Shovel Knight, or the future Mighty No. 9, Shantae, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night or Torment: Tides of Numenera. The game is called Mercenary Kings. Let´s see what this adventure full of pixilated testosterone, bullets and blood has to offer.

We will have to stop the evil terrorists known as Claw.

Developed by the small Canadian indie team called Tribute Games, of which I already talked about in the entry I dedicated to the fun and charming Wizorb, Mercenary Kings is a 2D Shooter that belongs to the subgenre Run N´ Gun, a genre in which we can find other classics such as Contra from Konami, Gunstar Heroes from Treasure or Metal Slug from SNK, being this last one the most obvious source of inspiration for Mercenary Kings, for many of the elements that form Mercenary Kings remember strongly of SNK´s classic, from certain elements of the gameplay, to the funny design of the characters, of the great sense of humor that is present in every single element of the game. However, Mercenary Kings is more than just a simple clone of the famous SNK´s arcade classic, as it also incorporates to its gameplay elements from other popular classic franchises such as Mega Man or Super Metroid, mixing them with concepts from more modern games such as a mission and item creation system similar to the one we can see in Capcom´s Monster Hunter series, delivering like this a hybrid that gathers old and new mechanics in a single game. The story of Mercenary Kings is worthy of the best B action movies from the 80s. A dangerous terrorist group known as Claw has taken control of the research facilities in which secret military experiments were been performed in order to obtain the technology to use it to conquer the world, so now is up to a group of elite mercenaries to go the Mandrake Island where the facilities are found to stop the evil terrorists. Period. As I said, worthy of the best B action movies of the 80s, or worthy of Stallone´s new Expendables movie, which also applies to the charming characters of the game and their archetypical personalities, from your typical “killing machine”, to the old-school grumpy coronel, or the typical dictator wannabe that will also act as the final boss in a tribute to General Morden, the evil dictator from Metal Slug. The story of the game will be narrated via Metal Gear style codec conversations among the characters between the missions in a tribute to the popular series created by Hideo Kojima.

The game uses a reload system like the one we could see in Gears of War.

The conversation between the characters will be held via codec like in the Metal Gear series.

Regarding the gameplay of the title, as I was saying at the beginning of the entry, Mercenary Kings is basically a 2D Shooter, although it incorporates certain elements from other classic franchises that help to make the game unique. We will start the game by creating our character, for which we will be able to choose between male and female, on top of choosing our characters color scheme from a series of preset combinations, and also our name. Once we finish creating our character, we will proceed to the tutorial where we will learn the basics of the game. After finishing the tutorial, we will arrive Camp Crown, where the adventure will start, and where we will be able to manage different options. As it happens in games such as Monster Hunter or Fallout, Mercenary Kings is divided in missions, which will be classified in military ranks (recruit, private, corporal, sergeant, lieutenant, captain, major, etc.) As we complete the missions that compose each rank, we will receive awards and unlock new missions, and once we complete all the missions of a rank, we will be promoted and will be able to access the missions from the next rank, which will be more challenging. One of the biggest complains is that the game can become quite repetitive pretty fast, and one of the main reasons for this is the types of missions available. The types of missions will be:


- Neutralize: we will have to eliminate the designated targets.
- Capture: we will have to capture the target by weakening him and then paralyzing him with a Shock Bomb. Bosses flash orange when they're weak and ready to be captured.
- Rescue: we will have to find and save a certain number of hostages.
- Sabotage: we will have to damage or blow up enemy equipment, sometimes guarded by a boss.
- Extermination: we will have to eliminate all enemies within a specified area.
- Gathering: we will have to gather items and bring them back to the camp.
- Infiltration: we will have to reach a destination within the time limit.
- Rendez-Vous: we will have to talk to a specific character within the time limit.

Camp Crown: our operations base.

The game offers a huge amount of possibilities and freedom to customize our weapons.

All the missions will have a time limit, and if this time reaches zero or we lose all our health, we will fail in our mission. During the missions we will have to face bosses which will we have to defeat in order to be able to keep advancing in our adventure, or in some cases be able to complete our mission. As it happened in many classic games, each boss will have its own attack patterns which we will have to memorize if we are to be victorious. As opposite as seen in other games where the bosses fought till the bitter end, in Mercenary Kings bosses might choose to run away. Once we have weakened enough a boss, this will start blinking with an orange light. From that moment on, we will have a limited amount of time to defeat the boss before it decides to run away to another area in the map. While this might not make any sense at a first glance, if our objective was to defeat that boss and we allow him to escape when there is not much time left in the chronometer of our mission, it could mean that we will have no option but to repeat the whole mission. Although the missions might seem very varied at first, pretty soon we will discover that we will be basically doing two things the whole time: shoot everything that moves, and look for items/hostages. Now, I know it´s not fair to punish Mercenary Kings for this, as this could be applied to many other games out there (perhaps too many), but this feeling of repetition seems to be more pronounced in Mercenary Kings. The other point that could make the game feel a bit repetitive are the stages. The game includes the following stages:


- Jungle: composed of the jungle path, the ruins and the POW camp areas.
- Military City: composed of the military road, military city and the A17 Skyscraper areas.
- Bastion Dam: composed of the battery path, bastion dam powerhouse alpha areas.
- Old Temple: composed of the temple tunnel, temple galleries and temple crypts areas.
- Facility: composed of the chemical tunnel, assembly line and cloning facility areas.

As opposite as we could see in Metal Slug, where the stages were completely linear, advancing always in horizontal from left to right or sometimes also in vertical, with the possibility to choose a secondary path from time to time, the stages in Mercenary Kings give us the option to explore them freely, giving us several ways to reach our goals, encouraging like this the exploration of all the areas that compose each stage like we could also see for example in Super Metroid. Although the stages have a great design, the problem is that ALL the missions of the game will take place in the stages mentioned above, and while the stages are not small, having to complete the dozens and dozens of missions included in the adventure playing always in the same maps can get a little bit repetitive after a while. However, where Mercenary Kings does a really good job is in one of the main features of its gameplay: the creation and customization of weapons. In Mercenary Kings we will be able to use different kinds of weapons, which include from knifes (or even funnels) for close quarter combat, to guns, assault rifles, shotguns and revolvers, on top of several types of ammo with different effects. Each weapon will be made up of different pieces (cannon, sight, clip, etc.), and each piece will affect the attributes of a weapon in different ways. On top of being able to buy new weapons and pieces to customize them, when we defeat certain enemies or complete a mission, we will be rewarded with materials that we will be able to use to create new pieces to customize our weapons. The materials we will obtain will vary depending on the enemy we defeated or the mission we completed. All this will allow us to obtain a huge amount of pieces for our weapons that will allow us to create all kinds of warfare masterpieces (and aberrations) while we constantly aim to create the perfect weapon, which can become something quite addictive, specially for all the looting lovers out there. On top of this, we will also be able to equip our character with bionic implants that will grant us certain skills, such as improving our attack power or speed, or the effectiveness of our items. However, some of these implants well also have negative secondary effects, like reducing our attack power or fire rate, o receive less money when we defeat our enemies. We will also be able to equip our character with other items, such a medical kits, grenades or C4 explosives. All this will force us to plan well our strategy, for depending on our mission, the items we brought with us will be more or less useful. Other thing that we will also have to keep in mind always is the weight of our equipment. Each item will have its own specific weight, and the heavier our equipment is, the slower our character will become. Finally, Mercenary Kings includes an active reload system as the one we could see in the Gears of War series. Every time we need to reload our weapon, an indicator will appear above our character. If we press the button at the right moment, we will obtain certain advantages, thought, as it also happened in the adventure of Marcus Phoenix, if we miss our weapon will jam and will be completely exposed to our enemies for a few seconds. This will force us to pay attention when we are reloading in you don´t want to run out of weapon at the worst moment, like in the middle of an intense shooting with the screen full of enemies.

During the adventure we will have to face all kinds of hilarious bosses and enemies.

We will be able to use different kinds of ammo, each with its own special effects.

As the modern standards demand (although some still decide to ignore them), Mercenary Kings includes a multiplayer mode, both local, and online, which will allow for 2 to 4 player matches. The local multiplayer will make use of the classic split screen display system. The online multiplayer will allow us to join our friends games or those from other players from all over the world (or they to join ours) anytime. Although the game is perfectly payable and enjoyable playing single, the multiplayer can be great fun when we join our forces with our buddies to start shooting the hell out of everything, especially due to the great humor sense of the game. As opposite as seen in other games, since in Mercenary Kings players will be able to explore freely the stages, the players won´t always have stick together on the multiplayer mode, giving like this option to the players to decide whether they want to focus all the members of the team in a single objective, or if each of them will take a different route in order to be able to accomplish more objectives in less time. And then finally we arrive to my favorite aspect of the game: it´s graphics, which probably one of the best aspects of the game without any doubts. Mercenary Kings is another love letter to pixels from master craftsman Paul Robertson, who again makes use of his IMPRESSIVE artistic talent to portrait over his personal “digital canvas” the characters and environments of the game, all of them full of live and all kinds of details that transmit an unmistakable handmade aroma, with extremely detailed and fluid animations that reflect perfectly the personality of all the characters, while bringing into harmony the tones of pixilated bullets and blood that will flood the screen. When you see the game, you have no option but to admit what a BRILLIANT pixel artist Paul is, turning Mercenary Kings into another pixel masterpiece, and proving once more that there is still space for this graphic style in the industry.


Mercenary Kings is definitely a good game, especially if you keep in mind that we are talking about an indie production, and although it surely has it shortcomings in the form of some repetitive game mechanics, the game compensates those greatly with a solid gameplay and a charismatic and charming presentation that will take you directly to the golden era of the pixel, which will make lovers of this graphic style fall in love with the title almost instantly. The game is available for PC via Steam and PlayStation 4 via the PlayStation Store. If you feel like having some old-school fun, you should definitely give a chance to Mercenary Kings, I´m sure it won´t disappoint you. Enjoy!


GAMEPLAY VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU-A8m1U6bA