It's fun, it's addictive - and it's free of charge! Great game, despite the occasional bug, bad graphics and no campaign
Soldat, meaning 'soldier' in several languages, is a free, downloadable 2D sidescroller shoot-em-up game by Polish hobby-programmer Michal Marcinkowski. It feels like a game made by gamers for gamers; it doesn't rely on outstanding graphics, impressive campaign/story or any of that. Instead it focuses on an intense multiplayer (online or offline), which has been refined over and over again since its release in 2002. Since then, it hasn't changed the formula much. Most of the patches deal with weapon balancing.
Gameplay:
In Soldat, you control a small, jetpack-equipped soldier. There are several modes to choose from in this multiplayer-only, including free-for-all deathmatches, classic team deathmatch, capture the flag, infiltration and several more. You can either play locally against bots, or online versus other people. The aforementioned jetpack requires different reloading times (depending on the map you're currently playing on) and can be used to move about the map quickly. The rest is pretty standard - move with WASD, shoot with left trigger. So far,s o good, you may think, sounds pretty unexciting. But what makes Soldat so special, is....
Strengths:
Full-on blood and gore. Watch enemies being torn apart by grenades, heads exploding in spectacular fashion after every headshot and blood and action everywhere. But all this without seeming unnecessarily serious, it's got a comic-ish touch to it.
Incredible customization-possibilites. You can create maps, weapons, gametypes, change the look of your soldier (even more so if you decide to spend 10$ on the registered version) etc.
Amazing sound effects - gunshots and explosions sound astonishingly devastating!
Nice physics. The weapons, the flag in capture the flag, dead bodies, living bodies - all are subject to more or less realistic physics, that once again give this game its comic-ish, extraordinarily fun feel.
Weaknesses:
The graphics... well they serve the purpose, nothing more. Animations look nice though, movement seems fluid.
No campaign. Although you can easily spend your time destroying bots in offline multiplayer games, this isn't what you want to be doing for hours and hours. Just a couple of simple missions with an ever so superficial story would have been better than nothing.
Difficulty/Bot AI - playing against bots on easier difficulty settings is mind-numbing. Playing against bots on higher diffculty levels causes them to aim devilishly good, without actually acting any smarter. Thus, online is where this game is at its best.
Verdict:
This is a game every fan of the various shooter-genres will enjoy. It's a multiplayer experience you won't forget, simply because of its charme and enormous variety. WILL KEEP YOU COMING BACK FOR MORE!