Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix

The Good
Max Payne eat your socks off! This is definitely the best shooter around!

The game excels in all round levels: graphical, sound, atmospherical, special FX, gameplay, strategy and tactics, innovative levels and situations, enemy AI (which gets to be predictive later - they wait for you and throw stun grenades before attacking), variety of weapons!

I really dunno where to begin talking about the greatness of this game. Here lies a true masterpiece in every aspect, in-depth detailed to the max. Not only this game is a good shooter, it has a tremendous atmosphere which sucks in the player, making him believe the virtuality of the moment as a true experience. No matter if you're in Prague where the game begins, the jungles of Peru, the snowlands of Russia, the steel and rust scented sea cargo freighter, or the mysterious Hong Kong, the programmers have captured the uniqueness of every environment in detail and manage to bring you the virtual equivalent.

Gameplay-wise we are talking about one of the most brutal and gore lusted shooters you've ever seen. A really lethal arsenal thirsty to turn enemy terrorists bodies to strainers is at your disposal. Good strategic points are included as well, where you're needed to sneak in, kill some terrorists in silence before the real mayhem outbreaks.

The Enemies AI is very good too. They have developed quite some tactics here, instead of heading for attack when they spot you, the enemies hide and throw grenades at you (stun or normal) hoping to render you blind for some vital seconds in order to attack.

The variety of missions and locations is truly enormous given the 2 CD space. Innovation comes to the point where there's a chopper flight level where you mount a M61 machine gun and blast away all ground units and structures!

The Bad
2 things that put me off (minorily) with the game are: The game needs top end equipment to really show what it can do. You gotta have some piece of machinery if you want to have your jaw dropped. And if this not enough for you here comes the worse part:

John Mullins (the main game character - you) himself!!! The guy is one of the worse characters ever to appear in a game of this style. Man! He looks like a damn farmer, or even worse a grocery store salesman. Things get worse when you hear him talking!!!! It's the kind of voice you'd expect to say "Uhhh that'll be 2 dollars for your cabbages ma'am!"!!! Simply I couldn't help myself from laughing when I saw the video cut scenes and listen to him talking. Especially there are parts where he plays it as a tough cowboy and this only made me laughing my eyes out...

...or maybe this is a plus!

The Bottom Line
If you're not convinced yet about the supremacy of that game from what I said (and the other guys too) then I'll tell you one last thing: Even if you don't like shooters this is the shooter that will make you like'em! Go and buy a copy now! (20 out of 10)!

Errrrr... done it! How about that payment check now mr.Activision???

The Good
We've been spoiled by the number of top notch war shooters in recent months. With titles like Return to Castle Wolfenstein and Medal of Honour it's a pretty hard time to complain. The only things that really were left out for me was that I like my war shooters a little more modern and I want to see some damage being done! MOH was fantastic but when someone gets a point blank shot to the head they aren't going to just fall over without a scratch. The whole effect just makes me feel once again like I'm sitting in front of a computer. SOF2 addresses both of these points and keeps everything else at a high enough standard to stand tall alongside all the MOH's and RTCW's in the world. Basically an evolution of the overrated original SOF, SOF2 provides better everything. The graphics smack you in the face they look so good so high end Geforce owners are in for a real treat with this one. Jungles actually have foliage at last, character models are detailed with more explicit deaths and the damage models are more finely tuned than any I've ever witnessed in a video game. Gunfire will actually blast people backward with appropriate force and jets of blood pump out with dismembered limbs. Needless to say that this game is not for kids but parents or the squemish should note that a violence lock can be applied that allows for the fine tuning of any aspects of the gore or disturbing images in the game so you can make it very tame if you'd like. Weaponry is realistically depicted with even the aim going out if you hold the trigger for too long in the automatic firearms. Loads of great scripted sequences in the gameplay have been introduced such as clearing out a jungle village alongside a team of marines who work with you and a very cool escape along a winding road manning the mounted gun on the back of a truck. Thanks to a good balance of realism and good old fashioned action hero style gameplay the missions in the game are (mostly, more on that in a minute,) loads of fun to play. The difficulty level can be scaled to your liking in a custom difficulty mode too. Sound is also great with gunfire, screams and explosions being the main flavour peppered with the clank of footsteps and conversation, all of a high calibre and music is very nicely orchestrated, giving a perfect action movie feel.

The Bad
At times SOF2 can really push the frustration level a bit too far. Some stages are plain stupid such as the sneaking stages. An alarm can be set off the very second an enemy even hears you and I mean the very SECOND. Even if the enemy hears you stick a knife in the back of his head the alarm goes off before the slicing action is even complete which is just plain stupid. It feels a lot like the sneaking element of the game wasn't even finished. Sometimes the enemy see you a little too quickly. An example of this would be in a stage in the snow where seeing anything more than about 10 feet away is impossible. Suddenly someone with a mounted M-60 starts blasting away at you even though there's no way they'd be able to see you yet since they are over 20 feet away. There is also the annoying tendency of enemies to know exactly where you are just because they are on alert even though they haven't actually seen you yet.

The Bottom Line
A top-notch war fps that comes highly recommended but with some minor reservations. Not for the squemish.

The Good
The game has got very good graphics: The Animations of your enemies and the other characters in the game are very good, because of the Ghoul 2 System. The game is particularly too brutal for children. You can shoot off the head of your enemies, and the brain comes out of the stump. The level-design is raven-like, very good designed with perfect textures.

The Bad
A little bit too boring levels, but all in all its very cool.

The Bottom Line
Buy the game, and have fun! You´ll like it!