Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix impressions

Activision and Raven Software's Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix is on its way to stores all over North America, but we recently managed to get an early copy of the final version. The game is a sequel to Raven's controversial first-person shooter that was released in 2000. Powered by the then-aging Quake II 3D engine, Soldier of Fortune placed you in the shoes of retired Special Forces soldier John Mullins and received a fair amount of notoriety because of its over-the-top depiction of violence.

In Soldier of Fortune II, you'll reprise your role as John Mullins, who's out to stop a terrorist organization from unleashing a deadly virus onto the world. And like the original game, Soldier of Fortune II has no shortage of gratuitous violence. You will notice that the game will make you jump through a few hoops in order to turn up the level of gore to its fullest. During the installation process, you will be prompted by a graphic-violence warning, and you'll have to manually turn off the password-protection option. Additionally, the ability to turn on all the gore is buried fairly deep within the game's options menus, so all this should ensure that Soldier of Fortune II will remain as presentable as such games can be to everyone other than those who actively seek the gore out.

One of the first things we noticed is the level of AI that the enemies in the game exhibit. Activision gave us an early build of the game a few weeks ago, and while the game seemed complete at the time, enemy AI was somewhat lacking. Specifically, enemies would do little more than stand in one place while you carefully drew a bead on them. It disheartened us at first, but Activision insisted that this problem would be remedied in the retail build of the game. After test-driving the final version of Soldier of Fortune II, it's easy to note the enhanced AI of the enemies. No longer will enemy soldiers stand still while you gun them down. Instead, they'll duck behind tree stumps, hide behind walls, and generally seek out some kind of nearby cover while engaging you.

The game has nearly 50 single-player missions that will take Mullins to all the corners of the globe. Soldier of Fortune II actually starts out as a flashback mission in Prague and then progresses to areas like Colombia, Kamchatka, and Hong Kong. One of the levels even takes place aboard an ocean liner caught in a torrential downpour. Mullins has access to a variety of weapons in all of these levels, including the M4A1, M60, AK-74, and the SPAS-12 autoshotgun. The game even includes the multibarreled OICW, which is an assault rifle, a grenade launcher, a range finder, and a night-vision scope all rolled into one. All the weapons are modeled realistically and with a high number of polygons, thanks to the game's use of the Quake III: Team Arena engine, and they all have a satisfying kick to them that's punctuated by an equally powerful bark.

Like Raven's last game, Jedi Knight II, Soldier of Fortune II has several different multiplayer modes, in addition to its single-player component. Many players already got a small taste of the game's multiplayer mode with the release of the test map a few weeks ago, and Soldier of Fortune II will have about a dozen other similar maps that range from tight indoor areas to expansive outdoor jungles. Additionally, you can expect to find a random map generator in the game that can literally create an infinite number of snow, desert, hill, or jungle maps.

Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix will be available in North America starting next week. Be sure to check back soon for our full review. In the meantime, we've updated our screenshot gallery with some brand-new images taken from the final build.