Soldier of Fortune - Collectors (aka Platinum) Edition.
I loved playing SOF2 so much that I bought SOF (original) ... perhaps that was a mistake?
SOF, unlike it's sequal (SOF2), is somewhat disappointing by comparison. Strangely, these days as with movies, sequals to PC games can be a disappointment ... however SOF2 is VASTLY superior to its predessessor in a number of ways, most notably graphically. Gameplay, as compared to the excellent SOF2, in SOF is ... however quite good. One just needs to suspend disbelief as the game degenerates into something resembling a B-grade sci-fi crossover game.
Graphics are very very average. Everything is angular: character and weapon skins are "squarish", walls and surfaces are "flat" and wheels ... well, they aren't round ... but hexagonal. Perhaps at the time of its release (2000) SOF was a ground breaker. Scenic backdrops, such as they are, look amateurish ... you won't be missing much if you don't look out the side of the train in the Sudan or from the rooftops of Baghdad. Graphics-wise, one could say everything looks kind of 2D pasted on predominantly squarish 3Ds frameworks.
Again, this is possbly due to the graphical limitations in 2000, but the worst (or funniest) case of graphics are the tracked vehicles (I'm assuming intended as tanks?) in Siberia ... more like "static" boxes gliding on snow.
As noted elsewhere, I'm new to PC games, so the "oldest" FPS games (I think) I own, apart from SOF, are MOHAA (2002) & Nightfire (2002) ... which have vastly better graphics, similar to SOF2. Shogun: Total War is also from 2000, whereas the much better looking Medieval is from 2002, so obviously
graphics dramatically improved in a short timespan. So ... it is possible that SOF set a graphical benchmark in 2000 ... today, alas, it is perhaps best described as "clunky". Anyway it's interesting to play one of the "foundation" games of the popular FPS genre in retrospect. That said, graphics are not the be all and end all ...
SOF has 5 levels of difficulty plus a custom setting. As with SOF2, I used the custom option with: challenging difficulty, standard spawning, unlimited saves and aggressive enemy toughness. My review is based on playing an entire game with these settings.
SOF, I guess to use a phrase I read elsewhere, is a "run & gun" shooter gameplay-wise. Apart from opening doors, activating machines, viewing CCT video screens or hatchcovers, there isn't much else to do apart from shooting tattooed muscle-bound and/or bio-suit wearing bad guys and run through the environments. On the "run" side John Mullins, your alter ego, seems to glide/ice skate more than walk or run. On the "gun" side ... well, the weapon and ancillary equipment skins (eg. grenades, nightvision goggles, etc) look from very average to downright silly. The weapon sound effects are however quite good ... not sure if they are realistic as its difficult to associate the skins with the weapons they supposedly depict.
The cut scenes, while advancing the narrative along, are unintentionally funny ... again as a result of the mediocre graphics. Hawk, Mullins' partner, looks like he's chiselled out of a block of granite, with a square head ... a bit like Mr T with a shaved head. The storyline is your standard bad guys,in this case neo-nazi/white-supremacists with links to Iraq, Sudan and the Japanese Yakuza (go figure), bent on world conquest. Sort of a quirky Bush-Cheney era B-grade "axis of evil" scenario. Speaking of which we do get to see (the late) Saddam in a couple of cut scenes during the second Iraq mission, including through a sniper scope!
Enemy AI is pretty average ... again perhaps a year 2000 factor ... and even on the hardest setting the bad guys just stand in place or somersault around towards you but they are more lethal at long range at the harder settings and can take more hits (though this is like most games). They do not try and outflank you or take cover ... Rainbow Six Vegas or GRAW this is not ... but the recent Code of Honor FPS is on par.
For me a good soundtrack (together with sound effects) is essential in making the "gaming experience" and in this regard SOF largely succeeds. The environments are usually dank, dark tunnels, caves, and dimly lit stacked sea-containers. While in many games this can lead to an eerie environment (e.g. FEAR or even parts of SOF2) here the lack of a suitably "moody soundtrack" in some missions fails to deliver that "eerieness factor". Although, it must be said the incessant "jungle drumbeats" in the second Sudan (slaughter yards/meatworks) mission certainly does add to the tension. Overall sound effects (ie bangs and booms) are however quite good and the noisy streets of wartime Kosovo, windswept Siberia and the refinery in Iraq work reasonably well.
Most of the missions, some of which seem quite short, are similar, although for me the stand out ones are the second New York City mission (following the first Iraq one), the second Sudan mission and the second Iraq mission. A lot of the time one feels like one (John Mullins) is just, literally, gliding through the game (funnily one seldom hears any footsteps from Mullins even when he's running). Even using the unlimited saves option, I seldom needed to backtrack as I was rarely killed (except in the dying, pardon the pun, section of the final mission in Germany), although sometimes severely wounded by the odd-ball "sci-fi" weapons the enemy has.
In fact, where the game loses the plot for me, so to speak, is in the introduction of some very silly (I can't think of a politer word) characters and weapons, for example the plate-armour(!) wearing bad guys in Iraq armed with a shoulder-fired multiple rocket launchers. Something that may stem from the fevered imaginings of a B-grade sci-fi fan perhaps? SOF according to its blurb is meant to be a modern era FPS, not a sci-fi cross-over. Later in the game we even have microwave pulse rifle? I guess one must suspend disbelief and just blast away.
The "boss battle", using parlance I have learned here, at the end of the game involves trying to destroy Dekker, the arch-villian, with a microwave pulse rifle and nothing else seems to damage him not even 4 x rockets fired simultaneously. Who comes up with this wierd stuff?
Unlike SOF2, SOF does not have a SP random mission generator, not that the one in SOF2 was anything to get excited about. You can however set up yourself with bots and play solitaire using the LAN interface. Very amusing watching the other characters jumping/bouncing around running & gunning ... well for a while it is. Nightfire does the bot/LAN combo somewhat better.
SUMMARY: Perhaps in its day SOF was a fresh new and exciting game. Alas over the years games with improved gameplay, background music and (much) better graphics have diminished SOF's former glory.
Nevertheless, SOF does have its moments ... its not really a bad game, enjoyment-wise, it's just badly dated in 2009. It is perhaps unfair to compare SOF with newer games ... given my late entry into PC gaming I just did not get a chance to play its peers back in 2000 to compare (nor do I really want to now).
SOF can still be enjoyable but SOF2, which enhances the gameplay and graphics, is vastly superior. My rating largely reflects the (negative) impact of the graphics and soundtrack.