Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix

The Good
VERY VERY gory - Some people may rate this as a bad thing, but I sure rate it as a good thing.

To me, gore is a factor of realism, and to everyone, realism is a factor of the game. Without any realism, I don't enjoy shoot-em-ups as much, as they should be fairly realistic.

There is a good storyline in this game, in which you have to prevent a large terrorist organisation from wreaking havoc. You fight in a variety of venues, which contain much enjoyable scenery. Yes! You can fight women too, so if you've just had trouble with the wife, this game is for you!

There are a great variety of weapons available to you in this game, from simple Colt pistols to large M60 machine guns that can take down helicopters - and also rip people apart. The usual methods can be used to dodge bullets, including leaning, crouching, jumping, etc. Alternative fire modes are also available, so if you're no stranger to UT, RTCW, etc, you won't be a stranger to this either! UNFORTUNATELY ...

The Bad
... This game is NOT free of bugs, by any means. Quite the opposite, in fact: The shadows are a real disaster, and this is obvious when fighting near water, or crouching near a sitting character. The shadows are floating above the persons knees!

In Columbia, you can walk off the mountain and not get killed, yet you can walk around on an invisible floor, in some locations.

The women in Hong Kong sometimes fall down as if to die when shot, yet they suddenly 'teleport' back up again and take an extra 3 shots or so to finish off. These are just some of the bugs, there are many more.

Graphics can have grading errors, aswell. This is not just a problem with my installation as it has happened on many of my friends' versions too. I do not like how dead bodies disappear over time, and how they suddenly change positions after the initial fatal gunshot. This game has many flaws... BUT...

The Bottom Line
... It's great. Full of violence, yes, but full of a story also. The graphics are great for 2002, and look even better on a large LCD monitor. I strongly recommend nudging the graphics up as far as you can, it's worth it. If you are a parent, YOU CAN USE THE PARENTAL FUNCTIONS TO LOCK OUT THE VIOLENCE! This is very important! Even I agree with the inclusion of this function and its use!

Back to the point, definitely consider buying this game. It is still for sale in shops in the UK, I know that part, and its available online everywhere else. Go for it, and shoot some baddies!

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.

The Good
Soldier of Fortune 2 is like a cheesy action movie starring Chuck Norris. There isn't a complicated plot, there isn't a lot of good supporting characters, but there is plenty of running, gunning, and more than enough bloodshed.

In SoF 2 you play John Mullins, a soldier of fortune who works primarily for a secret agency called the Shop. He's a counter-terrorist, and he has his work cut out for him when a group of mysterious baddies steal a deadly biological weapon and plant a mole inside the Shop.

This of course leads to a chase across several countries, including Russia, China, and several other international hotspots. And it leads to a lot of shooting with an arsenal of weapons that would make most militias drool with envy.

The plot is silly, trite, and only serves to move you along from location to location, but I think that's actually a plus in this case. The cheesiness of it takes some of the sting off the gruesome violence.

And it is gruesome. You can blow limbs off, sending the severed pieces flying in fountains of gore. You can slice up enemies with your knife, sending chunks of brain and face everywhere. And yes, you can shoot people in the groin and watch them double-over in true pain.

I don't honestly think this is a plus, but it is a gimmick that works to shock you for a little while before becoming ignorable.

Overall, the Quake III graphics engine doesn't do a bad job here, although watching characters talk is sometimes painful. At least the sound and music hit home very well.

There's also a solid multiplayer mode, but unless you're playing LAN, you won't find any good servers anymore. Newer games just edge this one out in the multiplayer arena.

The Bad
Now, there are plenty of faults to SoF 2, and they aren't easily ignored.

The AI for instance is about the cheapest I've seen in years; sometimes the enemy feels very realistic, taking cover, trying to pin you down, and then you see them do some of the bone-headed things that instantly take you out of the immersion of the game. Running back and forth like ducks while you shoot them, getting stuck on corners, and charging at you blindly are all some of the things they do. They also have an uncanny ability to spot you no matter where you are, making the stealth missions hard and annoying. Especially since, once they see you, the alarm is raised automatically.

I guess the Force is with these guys, huh?

Also, though you have tons of real-world weapons to play with, none of them behave properly. Your best tactic is just to hold down the trigger and spray a wave of bullets at the bad guys. This also takes you out of the immersion the developers might have been trying for, but it only adds to the action-movie cheesiness of the whole thing.

The graphics are another weak point. Though they look good, the environments are bland, and the animation horrible. The characters jerk around like they're puppets being controlled by an insane puppet master.

The gameplay also gets repetitive. You shoot down a small army of enemies, pull a switch, open a door, and go on to the next level to do more of the same.

The Bottom Line
So, with a big list of complaints, and a lack of originality, why do I like this game?

It's like I said, this game is a cheesy action-fest filled with brain-dead enemies, generically evil villains, and a tough hero with enough firepower to make Rambo jealous. And that is why I like the game.

Of course, this isn't a recommendation to you; it is merely a note that, if you're looking for an old-school, shoot the baddies and move on, game, then this might be for you.

So long as you aren't squeamish.