Soldier of Fortune Gold Updated Preview

Even though Soldier of Fortune was originally released on the PC more than a year and a half ago, many PlayStation 2 owners have probably never experienced the gritty environments, visceral action, and over-the-top violence that made that game a nominee for our Best Action Game Award in 2000. That will change in the coming weeks when Majesco releases a PlayStation 2 version of the game, which will not only attempt to recapture the PC version's unique style of gameplay, but will also improve upon some of the downfalls suffered by Crave's release of the Dreamcast port earlier this year. We've had a nearly complete build of the game in the office for some time now, and we've been blasting through the game's war-torn levels.

For those who don't know, the game puts you in the shoes of one John Mullins, a member of a special operative team who has been tasked with finding four nuclear warheads that have recently been stolen by a terrorist group. Mullins is modeled after an actual ex-special operatives member, who, not coincidentally, is also called John Mullins. Now a security expert in his 50s, Mullins served numerous tours of duty in Vietnam, and he acted as a consultant and a form of inspiration for the original game. Make no mistake, however, Soldier of Fortune Gold is by no means a tactical shooter like Rainbow Six. In fact, you'll be hard-pressed to find any semblance of realism throughout the entire game. Soldier of Fortune Gold seems to hearken back to the genre's early days, when first-person shooters involved little else beyond mowing down wave after wave of enemies.

The weapons you'll find in the game, which range from the simple 9mm handgun to a massive shoulder-mounted cannon, are all designed to fulfill the game's purpose of killing as many bad guys as possible in as little time as possible. Unlike in more scripted games like Half-Life, you won't have trouble finding a healthy supply of ammo around every corner, making it even easier to keep your guns blazing at a constant rate. Even reload times are grossly exaggerated to keep your downtime to a minimum. The game's 12-guage shotgun, for example, holds eight shells that can be reloaded faster than they can be fired. Realistic? Certainly not. Fun? Definitely. What's even more fun is watching the variety of death animations that the unfortunate terrorists will be subject to at the business end of your arsenal. Raven Software, the original developer of this game, came up with a rendering technology that it has appropriately named GHOUL. With GHOUL, enemies in the game can be hacked up in 26 different but equally graphic ways. Every appendage--arms, legs, and heads--can be blown away or otherwise mutilated with a level of violence that no game has come close to matching. Thankfully, for the faint of heart, Soldier of Fortune Gold will have a feature that locks out the game's gore.

In the technical department, Soldier of Fortune Gold is a mix of old and new. Even last year's PC version was running on what is considered to be ancient Quake II 3D technology, but the developers at Raven took every opportunity possible to upgrade the game's visuals by implementing rendering and animation techniques that remain impressive to this day. The end result was a game that successfully managed to look modern amid a sea of competitors that boasted next-generation 3D engines. While the PlayStation 2 version doesn't look as up-to-date as such recent shooters as Red Faction or Quake III Revolution, and certainly not as good as upcoming games like Agent Under Fire, it also doesn't look completely dated. Since this is a straight port from the PC, the game doesn't take advantage of the PlayStation 2's architecture, but most gamers should still find the visuals acceptable. After all, Soldier of Fortune's appeal was in its fast pacing, not its visuals. Having said that, there are a few issues with the game's graphics that we hope Pipe Dream will address before release, including the inability of our build to maintain a steady 60fps during scenes of heavy onscreen activity, and the loss of overall picture quality during the conversion from a VGA signal to NTSC.

It should be noted that, even in our preview build of the game, Soldier of Fortune Gold has improved upon the long loading times that were found in the Dreamcast version's levels. While each level in the game still has at least two areas--one in the beginning and one in the middle--where the game pauses to load the remainder of the map, the times are notably faster than those of the Dreamcast version. Hopefully, Pipe Dream will be able to cut these load times even further in the final game. The game won't let you save anywhere, but after every load screen, you'll have the option of saving your progress. Additionally, there are multiple difficulty settings available, ranging from effortless to impossible, so you won't have any trouble tailoring the game to your skill level. Other PS2-specific features include a congratulatory icon that you'll see every time you do something spectacular, like nailing an enemy while in midair or getting a headshot while on the run.

Soldier of Fortune Gold should have at least 10 deathmatch levels that can be played via a split screen, but we don't know whether or not Pipe Dream will have its online mode up and running by the time the game comes out. Earlier this year, the company expressed its desire to have such a mode incorporated into Soldier of Fortune Gold, but we'll have to wait until the game hits store shelves to see whether or not online play made the final cut. Soldier of Fortune Gold is expected to release as early as next week, so be sure to stay tuned for our final verdict. In the meantime, take a look at the latest batch of screenshots and movies that we've captured from the game.