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???