E-Mail This Article to a Friend A real army of one How Mercenaries predicts the path to victory in North Korea BY CHRIS DAHLEN

True story, courtesy of the 9/11 Commission Report: It’s the late ’90s, and President Bill Clinton is trying to catch Osama bin Laden in the wastes of Afghanistan before the guy does something crazy, like fly a plane into the World Trade Center. But the CIA can’t figure out a way to capture the guy, and one plan after another fails or fizzles out until finally Clinton turns to General Hugh Shelton and says, "You know, it would scare the shit out of al-Qaeda if suddenly a bunch of black ninjas rappelled out of helicopters into the middle of their camp."

I know exactly how he feels. For the last couple of weeks I’ve been reading about the growing crisis with North Korea, and every headline warns that President Bush has "few options" for rapping the knuckles of our newest nuclear neighbor and its head tantrum-thrower, Kim Jong Il. Yet every night, I spank North Korea hard, right on its own turf: I blow up its nuclear facilities, I run over its troops with a tank, and I’ve locked up almost the entire leadership caste. Thanks to LucasArts’ Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction, I believe in the concept of the "Army of One." I know that a single guy can take down an entire tyrannical government that’s armed to the teeth, without even knowing the language.

Now, I should warn you that LucasArts never advertised Mercenaries as "realistic." It cribs a lot from our current wartime experience, from the setting – a hostile, nuclear North Korea that’s only a few years away – to all of the Iraq-war innovations, like the embedded journalists, the helpless weapons inspectors, and the Deck of 52 hierarchy that sorts out the bad guys. But in most regards it plays like a comic book: the NPCs are as broadly-drawn as those effete Nazis with the pet tigers who used to fight Captain America, and the landscape looks about as foreign and dangerous as Idaho.

When I play, I usually take the all-American Chris Jacobs, who has the brawniest, most bullet-absorbent build. (I really wanted to play as the stealthy, svelte Jennifer Mui, but my family’s not ready to know that I like to play as girls in video games.) As Jacobs, I go through the game and single-handedly kill, to date, over 2000 of its soldiers, all through a simple combination of driving like a maniac and blowing the snot out of everything.

Where its obvious inspiration, Grand Theft Auto, thrust you into the morally-troubled world of mugging hookers and killing shopkeepers, Mercenaries spares you the messiness and turns everything into a physics experiment. In fact, I spent a whole afternoon driving my Scout into embankments and light poles to get it to spin on one wheel in a pirouette, or flip and then land right-side-up. I’m the world ballerina champ of Mercenaries. But when it comes to the other people in the game, let’s just say you won’t get many East Asian Studies credits by studying the drab civilians that hustle across this landscape. They don’t do much aside from run out of the way when you drive at them. You can trap them and force them watch you do your driving tricks, but I haven’t found a way to make them applaud.

Although you have support from other armies and factions, the game makes it clear that you’re basically on your own – and that being alone in the middle of the wilderness is, if anything, an advantage. Even though you can practice stealth to minimize the casualties, I found that I could just barrel through any situation without much damage. After all, why play a character who’s built like a second-string quarterback if you’re just going to pussyfoot around?

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that I’m playing Mercenaries at a time when the country in which it’s set is all over the news. After all, LucasArts doesn’t want to seem too prescient in world affairs (I’m still creeped-out that Star Wars anticipated a bearded, gentle-seeming old man who subscribes to an old-fashioned religion and plots military strikes from a cave). But no matter what the intention, I can’t help but find the broad strokes and easy answers of Mercenaries reassuring.

If you read your daily newspaper, you’ve probably seen some of the "real" horror stories about North Korea, about the propaganda, famine, cannibalism, and the doofy crew-cuts that Kim Jong Il ordered all the men to get. You’d think the whole country would be as horrifying as Doom 3. But in Mercenaries-land, it’s just one big box of dynamite, and I’m the fuse. Send me in there alone, Mr. President: I’ll have the world safe and peaceful again in a jiffy.