I had anticipated Mercenaries not holding up like many open world games that were its contemporaries, however I was pleasantly surprised at how excellent it was. Mercenaries may seem limited in its scope compared to modern open world games, but the restraints of the technology created a really tight and fun open world playground. The game never tried to punish you for outsmarting it, and it was always satisfying to use a helicopter to glide right over a gauntlet of machine gun nests, or to drop an APC right in the middle of a firefight when making a frantic escape out of a stronghold. The faction system was implemented well and even if you had to swing a faction from hostile to friend it never felt like a chore. In general, the game economy was excellently implemented. There's so many other cool ideas in this game that were held back to technological limitations. It's a shame that this franchise is dead and that there hasn't been a proper re-imagining.