E3 2001 Hands-OnSoldier of Fortune II: Double Helix

One of the major attractions at Activision's booth is the sequel to last year's Soldier of Fortune. We had a chance to take a look at a few levels and some of the new features. There are 10 missions and a total of 70 levels in Soldier of Fortune II, some of which are loosely based on the real-life experiences of John Mullins, an ex-special operatives member.

One of the missions takes place in a Columbian jungle where a mysterious virus has wiped out the entire local population, and your goal is to go in and discover the cause. This particular level has an incredible amount of detail, and it's obvious that the development team at Raven Software is pushing the Quake III engine to the absolute limits. As you're walking through the jungle, trees and tall patches of brush sway in the wind, producing a very realistic effect. Your character is joined by several other soldiers in this mission. If you zoom in on the faces of these other soldiers, you can see the staggering amount of detail in the game's 3D models, such as how even their eyes are completely polygonal and very lifelike. In fact, it's almost eerie to watch these faces as they stare right back at you. Just to give you an idea of how much more complex the models are in Soldier of Fortune II, the first game used models made up of approximately 300 polygons, whereas Soldier of Fortune II uses models made up of 3,000 polygons--the weapons alone use about the same amount of polygons as the character models in the first game. Texture detail is also high--Raven Software recommends you'll want to use a video card with 64 megs of RAM to get the most detail out of the game.

A number of enhancements have also been made to GHOUL system as well, which was responsible for producing the realistic body damage effects in the first Soldier of Fortune. The number of damage areas on an enemy soldier has been increased substantially. You can riddle an enemy soldier with bullets, and all of the wounds show up on the enemy soldier's lifeless and shattered character model.

Observing the other soldiers also lets you see some of the hand movements they make, which are also based on real hand gestures the military makes to give silent orders. After the orders are given, the team disperses and if you don't really pay attention to what other team members are doing, you can run into trouble rather quickly. For example, in this jungle level, you can easily run ahead of your team, accidentally hit a tripwire, and die. If you take the time to look around at your teammates, you would see that they have stopped just in front of the trip wire, presumably waiting and deciding how to proceed without setting off the trap. Of course, while you're waiting by the tripwire, the enemy comes out of hiding from behind the tall brush, and opens fire on your team.

In a few other levels, you don't have to worry at all about what your teammates are doing. One such level forces you to fight through a group of enemy soldiers in order to make it to a SAM site. Of course, this is much easier said than done as a helicopter pursues you in the later parts of the level, firing on you while you try to make it to the missile area. Once you take care of the few remaining enemy soldiers in the tower, you can climb up, operate the missile controls, fire a few surface-to-air missiles at the bothersome helicopter, and then watch it explode.

Some adjustments are still being made to Soldier of Fortune II's computer artificial intelligence. In Kamchatka, a level that features realistic snow, one enemy soldier runs out from behind a corner. As soon as you open fire on the enemy soldier he tries to run away, and since he's injured, he moves much slower than he normally would. Raven plans to add AI routines where there are specific leaders within enemy groups that will work directly against you during a mission. But as of right now, the AI appears to be a little weak as most soldiers either run directly into the line of fire, or they get shot at and still don't pay any attention to you.

Overall, Soldier of Fortune II looks great, and the facial models alone give the game a distinctly realistic feel, but there are also plenty of secondary effects that will help immerse you into the game. Although it will not ship with any multiplayer support, Raven plans to include a robust mission generator that lets you adjust several different elements such as the type of environment, the types of objects, and the AI level of enemy soldiers. The mission generator then blends all of these elements together to form a random map. Soldier of Fortune II is due out this winter.