Oh My God, His Head…

Anyone who has played Soldier of Fortune I (and who wouldn’t admit to something like that?) knows pretty much what they’re getting out of Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix, at least at a very basic level.

Gore, gore and more gore.

Oh, and occasionally some gore.

Seriously, though, there are some very good things about this game, some “so-so” aspects and some parts that made me want to join that guy on the floor with no legs and only part of his torso.

There are really three parts of Soldier of Fortune II that deserve separate consideration: the single player campaign, the multiplayer mode and the skirmish mode.

Single Player: Anything you can do, I can do bloodier

 I think that playing Deus Ex has made me officially spoiled for any future FPS games. I demand choices! I demand interactivity of characters and inanimate objects! I demand not to fail a mission because I killed some guy with my knife instead of the knocking him out with the butt of my shotgun.

I’m funny that way.

Soldier of Fortune’s single player campaign is very similar to any other first person shooter on the market. Get a mission, choose your weapons, kill or avoid the bad guys, then go on to the next mission.

Now, I admit to having ragged on the first SOF because I finished the first campaign in like two hours. In SOF II, it takes me about two hours per mission, and I’m playing on the freakin’ easiest difficulty level!!

So many things about this game drive me nuts. For example, the very first mission has you “sneaking” into a hotel to retrieve a scientist planning to defect. You can’t go in the front of the hotel, due to the massive firepower and manpower guarding it.

Yet, the only way to get to the back of the hotel is to go past the front, where you have to fight the guards anyway as there’s not really an easy way to sneak by.

On the non-stealth missions, every single soldier/guard seems to know where you are instantly, no matter how quietly you move. You could spend all day knifing opponents but they still hear you somehow.

On the stealth missions, on the other hand, guards stand with their backs conveniently facing the other way, making it fairly easy to knock them out. In fact, one guard was walking away from me as I tried to pummel his noggin, so I accidentally hit an empty crate next to him instead. The crate shattered into a thousand pieces, yet he continued his onward journey towards the blank wall so that he could stare at it aimlessly for a few minutes.

And if I have to endure one more game where you go around blowing up crates at random looking for spare guns and armor that seem to be littered across these terrorists’ hideouts like bowls of candy in an insurance agent’s office, well I don’t know what I’m going to do.

The saving grace is the fourth mission during the Prologue, during which you take the post as the gunner of a getaway truck, while being pursued by angry Communist types. I felt like I was in a James Bond or Indiana Jones movie during the chase scene, enemy trucks exploding and crashing left and right, while the good guy’s car just narrowly avoids careening over the rickety bridges and hairpin turns along the way!

I haven’t finished the game, so I can only hope there are a few more missions like this, or I will cry in my pants and stick to multiplayer.

Multiplayer: D00d, u using n00b gun are gay

I don’t know if I’ve always sucked at multiplayer shooters or if somewhere along the way I just lost the precision hand-eye coordination gained by hours upon hours of River Raid on the Atari 2600.

Multiplayer on Soldier of Fortune II is an awesome experience assuming you can find a good server and you don’t lag too much.

There are some particularly awesome maps that provide for particularly harrowing adventures. Now I know that there are other good multiplayer games out there but – OK I admit it!! I’m hooked! I need to call SOF II Anonymous or something because I can’t keep myself offline!

Where was I?

Oh, well the nice thing is that the latest patch has incorporated a little feature called PunkBuster, which is supposed to eliminate cheating on those servers that have it enabled. How effective it works, who knows? During one game today, some players were accusing another player of having an “aimbot” that would work despite PunkBuster. Of course, he denied it, but considering he had a score of like 70 and I had a score of like 3 I think we know who’s right.

Just as with any online game, you inevitably run into people who can’t forgive you for making a wrong turn while bringing home the flag, so they team kill you and take credit for the flag themselves. Then they TALK ABOUT YOU LIKE YOU AREN’T THERE!

OK, I’m starting to get steamed now, and SOF II is getting a lower and lower rating by the minute. Now, that’s not really fair, is it?

Skirmish Mode: You must eliminate Mr. … um, Smith? Because he’s evil. Yeah, that’s it.

I thought I’d mention the skirmish mode briefly because it is one of the best implementations I’ve seen, especially in a FPS. You hit the random mission generator, it comes up with an objective, a target and even a detailed back story. Then, Poof! – you’re on your way.

It’s definitely a fun little break when you’re at your wit’s end with the campaign.

I’d also like to mention in closing the freaking awesome graphics and sound effects. If you thought I was going to add, “especially the blood and gore” – well, you might be right, but I should probably leave that out for now.

I’d also like to say I had a heck of a time coming up with an accurate rating for this game. After this I might force myself to a 10- or 12-point system or something.

Final Rating: