Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix

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
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
I was a big fan of Soldier of Fortune. That was one of my favorite games for quite some time. I loved the way Raven pulled no punches with it, showing us the bloodiest first person shooter to date. But beside the blood, there was still a fun game to it, even if it always amounted to you taking down a hundred or so terrorists. Whether I wanted a first person shooter to play through, or a good tool to take my aggression out on, Soldier of Fortune was a great game to play.

Its sequel is slightly different, but the idea stays true: kill everything and get real bloody. But man, did Raven ever take it to the extreme. Hands down, Soldier of Fortune II is the most violent game I've ever heard of. Grand Theft Auto? Carmageddon? They don't hold a candle to this game. This is the only game I've ever played that's made me at all squeamish. The realism in gore in this game is astounding, even if the engine is slightly dated. Yes, this is a good thing. We need a bloody tool to take our frustration out on. And what better way than blowing a guy's guts open from a close range shotgun blast? Or whacking off three quarters of his face from a sniper rifle? Or just pumping him full of lead and watch him fall to his knees, bloody gushing from his wounds, collapsing to the floor?

Besides the gore, there are also some really interesting twists in the ol' first person shooter genre to be found here. For instance, the AI opponents have quite a few tricks up their sleeve, and any battle could conclude in any sort of way. Bad guys will take cover, as per the standard, but they will also jump out shooting and run back to their cover, or sometimes they'll just stick their gun out and fire in your general direction. They'll jump over rails to come get you, they'll throw grenades back at you, and they'll choose the best weapon for different confrontations. They'll throw smoke grenades and flashbangs to cover themselves, and they'll throw frag and incinerary grenades over obsticals to get at you. Battles always had a fun twist to them, forcing me to think on my feet, and it definitely helped create an immersive experience. I remember shooting the gun out of a soldier's hands, and watch him go straight for his sidearm. Since I was out of ammo, I ran around the corner to reload. When I came back, the soldier was reaching for the gun he had lost before. It was this sort of thing that made the game more than just FPS+extreme gore.

The locales you visit are diverse, which take you all over the globe, above and under the Earth, even back in time (in a flashback, that is...heh.) One in particular that got a lot of attention was the Columbian jungle level, which is very well done.

The Bad
Unfortunately, despite the interesting AI tricks, the extreme blood and varied levels, the game just didn't appeal to me. Now, close combat was great. Especially with the shotgun. But, really, once you've seen every type of death animation and gore splatter, it just gets old.

The AI tricks is neat, but the AI can be pretty damn dumb, too. They'll often charge at you right in the open without shooting, or just shoot the wall instead of aiming at you. It's not uncommon for enemies to just get stuck in the wall, either. And while they can be worthy opponents at times by themselves, they have no consideration for their fellow teammates. They'll throw grenades right into a mass of their own men to get at you.

The story is just plain stupid and doesn't even compare to Soldier of Fortune's original plot, nor does it have anything to do with it, save that your buddy from the first game is still dead. SOF's story wasn't exactly an award-winning masterpiece, but the elements in the story were great, I thought. It felt like a campy action flick, and it almost was. But Soldier of Fortune II seems to try to pass itself off as some pseudo-realistic plot that could happen in today's world. They even took away all the cool sci-fi weapons (AND my Desert Eagle!) from the first game and replaced them with more "realistic" weapons. Boo!

The voice overs are okay, but the dialogue is as bad as the story. "Ha ha ha! I did it for the money, of course!" "You're a mad man!" "A mad man? Perhaps...NOT! Ha ha ha! Die, Mullins!" Talk about dumb. Nothing killed the immersion more than a cutscene in this game.

The game comes with a "random mission generator", but it's downright poor. It only creates outdoor environments, and, quite frankly, close-combat was the only fun part of the game. A nice feature, but it's better to just play through the game.

Worst ragdoll effects in any game I've ever seen. At least they tried. Usually, you'll shoot a guy, he'll go through his death animation, slump to the ground, and suddenly have a short seizure, afterwhich his body will be contorted in a way that looks like he was thrown halfway through whatever he's touching. It is rather humorous, though.

The boss battle(s) sure didn't compare to the difficulty of the first game's, either.

The Bottom Line
While I was impressed by the tricks the enemies could pull, as well as entertained by the violence and the always entertaining shotgun, the game just falls apart in too many places to really recommend to anyone. If you want to take your aggresion out, oh I'd definitely suggest this, but not above Grand Theft Auto or Carmageddon. At least those games are fun in more ways than just blowing people to pieces.