This game strikes an amazing balance between doing nothing wrong while also doing nothing right.
The first thing you will notice is that the game looks terrible. All aspects considered, the first Soldier of Fortune looks better than this game. All the environments are blocky and very bland. The enemies turn into rubber rag dolls upon dying and it is hard not to laugh at many of their deaths. SOF has always been known for it's level of gore. The first two games in the series were made more intense by the violence. This game is made more humorous by it. When killed, the enemies will squirm and convulse until the game decides they have landed properly on the ground, sometimes taking up to ten seconds. Blowing a guy's head off results in a Mortal Kombat style spray from their neck. There are so few character models in the game that it is impossible to be immersed in the experience. There are two models for the prisioners. In a prison camp level when you release 15 or more of them, it is ridiculous to see the same two over and over. There also isn't much variety between the models. I was introduced to a main enemy character at one point and thought I killed him a minute later, only to find out that it was another guy that was dressed similarly. The total lack of cutscenes also kills the game's fun. Everything you learn is told through voice overs and the occasional still photo. I am also getting sick of cliffhanger endings, especially in a game that barely had a story to begin with. If I invest this much time and money into a game, I expect some kind of closure at the end. This game just stops. There wasn't even enough left of the story to fill up another game without needlessly dragging it on.
The game plays as you would expect. The controls are good (not great) and the action is entertaining but the whole experience feels like it was thrown together quickly. Almost like the developer had to, without exception, have the game done before Christmas no matter how close to finished it was (they wouldn't do that, would they?). The sequence that expresses this more than any other is a car chase boss fight. After a brief gun battle on foot, the enemy jumps into a Humvee and you jump into the back of a dump truck to give chase. You are in the back of the truck with no access to the cab and there is no one driving, but the truck is able to drive it's way out of the quarry you were at the bottom of while you focus all of your attention on shooting the enemy. It would have been a cool segment if the first thing on my mind the entire time wasn't, "Who the hell is driving?"
My biggest disappointment with the game had nothing to do with anything that happened in-game. What bother me the most was that it was originally announced as a budget title with a $39.99 price tag. A month or so before the game came out, some corporate exec jackass who probably never even played the game decided that it should be a full price game. Everything about this game says budget and it is insulting to gamers that the publisher thinks this is acceptable to be priced alongside games like Call of Duty 4 or Halo 3.
The game is definitely fun, but definitely not good. It is actually quite enjoyable to play the game with the purpose of making fun of it. It is a good rental, but you will never get enough enjoyment out of it at it's $59.99 tag. The original SOF is among my top ten favorite shooters of all time and it is sad to see the series fall to a half-assed attempt at cashing in on the Christmas rush.