Soldier of Fortune Review

The dank air was filled with the smell of blood and gunpowder. The silence was periodically disrupted by slow and wary approaching footsteps. He was firmly holding the grip of this faithful 44 and controlling the huge adrenalin influx while wondering why he is doing all this. Fighting for his family? No! Fighting for his ideas? No! Fighting for peace? No! The only thing that always made him go back into the raging battle was MONEY! Yes, he was a soldier of fortune...

Fly, like a bird...

Boy, what a mess.

A lot of people find lives of men who risk their own hide fighting for somebody else's ideas quite intriguing. Is it worth putting your life at stake for money? Can money buy calm sleep and pure conscience? Raven Software finds these topics intriguing too. Activision published their game that allows the player too feel what it is like to be one of those men. They wanted to make the game very realistic so they employed one of them as a project counselor and named him John Mullins in the game.

An interesting menu appears after a common installation procedure. Once you have set all the graphics, sound and control options, John is ready to go to work.

John Mullins is working for The Shop, an organization that can provide the right "services" for the right people. With some help from his friends like the dangerous Hawk, John takes care of those "services". The game takes place around some nuclear missiles that fell into wrong hands, New York subway, a business center somewhere in Japan, the sewers of Gracanica on Kosovo and secret Russian military complexes in Siberia where John has to spill a lot of terrorist blood. The very fact that there is A story behind the missions, somehow makes this game a bit more interesting than other FPSs where the authors never even bothered to think of a plausible explanation for all those massacres. Good action with scripted sequences makes the player feel that he is in a Rambo movie. The story it still much less significant than in Half-life for instance, so that it soon withers away and leaves the player alone with action.

Soldier of Fortune was announced as a game requiring a lot of tactics and stealth play, but this is not really true. Big noise WILL attract more enemies, but John is strong enough to cope facing them and survive, so that most players will just rush through missions like Arnold Schwarzeneger through Commando.

The game doesn't look at all bad in spite of the fact that it uses the already outdated Quake II engine. Like in all Q2Engine games the objects are a bit blocky. Beautiful textures serve their purpose and together with great light maps provide the desired atmosphere. What makes this game really special is the GHOUL model manipulation system. Character animation, especially the bits with wounds and dieing are terrifyingly realistic. Enemies have 26 gore zones on their bodies, and depending on which weapon you use and which zone was hit, the enemy's body gets dismembered in an appropriate way. You can, hence, use the shotgun to blow your enemies' heads or arms off, or a pistol to kill them by firing one bullet strait to their head, or disable them by shooting their legs. This type of realism can make certain people stop playing the game in question, yet on the other hand, they can make you run around trying out all the "fatality" moves. This is why the game has two versions: one without the questionable scenes, and the other with them, but you still can turn them off is you want to. The GHOUL system makes every single kill a much heavier experience, but as these animations are few in number at one point they will start to annoy you.

Here, do you want some barbecue?

Ooops, there goes the head!

Enemy AI in Soldier of Fortune is pathetic. Difficulty levels will change the opponents' targeting skills and their respawning frequency, but their behavior remains as senseless as ever. They usually just stand and shoot, or start running away when they feel endangered. Sneaking, stalking waiting in ambush and other thing enemies can do in Quake III, or indeed in the much older Half-life, have been left out.

The sound is altogether perfect. High quality samples, a host of background noise and great positional audio supporting A3d and EAX will put you in the middle of the action. The music utterly fulfills its mission: it improves the atmosphere without distracting the player's attention.

The weaponry is quite versatile. All weapons ranging from the 9mm or 44 handguns, sniper rifle, shotgun to rocket launcher, flamethrower and heavy machine gun have been presented very well. The pistol is useful in situations where you have to take care not to hurt innocent civilians; the shotgun comes in handy in close range combat. Flamethrower and rocket launcher are great for facing a lot of enemies. Weapons like EMG gun that kills enemies with high-voltage electricity seem a bit strange in a game announced as a realistic combat simulation. Most people prefer the powerful the heavy machine gun, which has a phosphor grenade for secondary fire. Other accessories include night-vision goggles, c-4 plastic explosives, hand grenades and again highly unrealistic medikits.

Soldier of Fortune did not yet have the chance to prove itself where multiplaying is concerned, but it defiantly has sufficient qualities to become very popular. Multiplayer mode includes DM mode with the realistic injury model and the Assassination mode in which every player has a precise target.

The very idea to make the Soldier of Fortune was indeed interesting and combined with the GHOUL system it really promised a lot. Some minor drawbacks, however, prevented the game from fulfilling all its potentials. An insufficiently strong storyline, outdated graphics and stupid AI took their toll, yet it can still be said that the game brought something new to the genre.