Blow stuff up! Blow it up some more!

So goes the slogan for the new game “Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction.” But “Mercenaries” isn’t just about huge explosions — though that might be the best part of the game.

The game begins by giving the gamer an option between four soldiers of fortune, each with a unique strength. For example, there’s Swedish operative Matthias Nilsson, who runs a bit faster, and the American agent Chris Jacobs, who can take a few more hits than the rest.

After selection, the mercenary is briefed on the main mission — to kill a North Korean warlord, General Song, and collect bounties on the rest of his underlings, dead or alive.

In order to get information on the location of all the targets, the mercenary performs missions for four different factions: the Allied Nations, the South Koreans, the Chinese and the Russian Mafia. Most of these missions include stealing vehicles, slaughtering tons of soldiers and even racing against time to pick up and drop off journalists.

The easiest thing to point out is how this game doesn’t live up to the standard set by the “Grand Theft Auto” series.

At first glance, the game may seem like a stale blend of “Star Wars: Battlefront,” “Grand Theft Auto” and a military setting — but “Mercenaries” deserves a little more credit than that.

That’s because being a mercenary is truly badass. Among your arsenal are bunker bomb drops, laser-guided missiles and artillery strikes. Your character can also call in for supplies and vehicles to be dropped in from helicopters.

Not only that, though, he or she can throw people on the ground and handcuff them, swing into tanks by the cannon, throw a grenade down the hatch, hijack helicopters and use a large variety of weapons and grenades. The character graphics and terrain are beautiful, especially the animations for all of the explosions.

All of this comes with a price, however. There are plenty of different vehicles, but all of the tracked vehicles are incredibly annoying.

The short clips in loading screens brag about how vehicles can traverse any terrain — but try taking a tank up a hill and it is likely to get stuck or flipped over. After the tenth time that the mercenary has to get out and punch that 80 gazillion ton tank right-side up, it gets a little old.

But the glitches don’t stop there. LucasArts will frustrate gamers with the same dilemma that plagued earlier versions of “Grand Theft Auto” — it just doesn’t make any sense when your character can kill dozens of enemies in a matter of moments, but can’t swim for more than 3 seconds without drowning.

Also frustrating is the impossible level of difficulty at some points. It isn’t a lot of fun when two North Koreans with grenade launchers can pop out of nowhere and blow you up instantly.

The game has a number of annoying flaws, but “Mercenaries” is still a fun game. It should be rented first, since buying it right away might lead to a bit of buyer’s remorse.