-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Game Title: Soldier of Fortune
Platform: PlayStation 2
Developer: Raven Software
Publisher: Activision
Genre: First Person Shooter
Age Rating: BBFC: 18+
Release Date: 5th July 2002 (Europe)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Game Score: 7.9/10
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Summery:
Technical issues aside Soldier of Fortune is an enjoyable and brutally violent shooter that is reasonably handled on the PS2.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Solider of Fortune is a violent and mature rated first person shooter that was originally launched for PC, later ported to Dreamcast till it finds its way to the PlayStation 2 with all the violent gameplay intact. The game portrayed itself as a realistic combat game with life like violence that has been carried well into the PlayStation 2 port.
Solider of Fortune has you playing as mercenary John Mullins who alongside Hawk goes on a series of missions that has him going around the world stopping the nukes, fighting gangs and terrorists who want to use the nukes for profit. The majority of gameplot is told through frequent cinematics which are rather decent and the voice acting is rather decent.
Now Soldier of Fortune takes you through various stages where you take on enemies, make your way through simple yet decently designed levels and then you move on to the next stage. Before you play any of the later stages you get to chose between some of the various weapons and items available.
The controls in Solider of Fortune work reasonably well allowing you to lean from left to right, crouch, jump, movement, shooting with various weapons and items you'll find. Some stages will have you activating switches to do things to allow you to progress onward but otherwise its very simple stuff. There is also controls which allow you to flip a weapon over to a side of the player's view which looks cool.
What Soldier of Fortune does which sets it apart from other FPS titles is the effective weapons and the GHOUL System. The game features about 12 weapons from knives, pistols, machine guns, shotguns, sniper rifles, rocket launchers, the flamethrower and the slugthrower. Each of the are very effective in most situations and while there is a reasonable variety of enemies there will be heavily armoured enemies which will require more powerful weapons to put them down. The game does limit you to carrying a number of weapons at a time so if you want to pick up a new weapon you have to drop one of your other weapons which may not be useful in some situations. Of course you can't mention Soldier of Fortune without even mentioning its GHOUL System. Basically you can shoot off the limbs and body parts of your enemies and it leaves plenty of blood all over the walls. You can also even shoot an enemy's head off and it just explodes into a shower of blood and gore which is rather sick but really incredible. What is even better is that when you shoot an enemy in any particular part of the body the enemies react to it and even scream and panic, hop or limp on one leg or with a well placed shot in the hand drop their weapon which makes the combat in the game just so enjoyable and just insanely violent. Thankfully for people who can't handle that kind of violence can disable it in the options menu but it has to be in the pause menu which is strange but at least you don't need to put in a password to change it anytime. Another thing which is worth noting in the game is that you have a device called P.A.D.D. Which reflects on how loud you are being in the stage, if you are making a lot of noise more enemies will come to your location.
Now this version of the game can be played with a Dual Shock 2 controller or with a Keyboard and Mouse control setup and thankfully you can customize the settings to your liking which is quite good. The Keyboard and Mouse controls do work well in this port of the game especially the mouse itself although if you want to change the Keyboard and Mouse controls you have to do that in the pause menu which just like in Voyager Eilte Force on PS2 it's an odd design choice just like with enabling or disabling the violence.
Alongside the Single Player which will take you a couple of hours to complete you can compete in various local multiplayer matches which you can play with bots and they will offer you a reasonable challenge.
Now I understand that Soldier of Fortune was a PC game and arguably it looked really good for a PC game released back in 2000 but it doesn't look that bad on the PS2 even with the poor lip syncing. The explosion effects look great, the environmental details look decent and so do the character models. The soundtrack is very fitting to the dark and fitting violent battles that you will take in the game and the screams you hear from the enemies is very amusing. In terms of the performance Soldier of Fortune on PS2 suffers from some serious frame rate problems but trust me it's nowhere near as bad as the PS2 port of Eilte Force. It does start out reasonably smooth running at 50 FPS but when there is much action going on the frame rate can get between 10 and 15 towards single digits at times. There can also be times where the game will randomly stop and pause for a brief second to load up during gameplay and in the action that can be a problem. During the end boss the frame rate goes very choppy making it difficult to keep up with what is going on which is bound to get you killed.
Despite the performance problems Soldier of Fortune is an enjoyable and brutally violent shooter that is reasonably handled on the PS2. The action is hardcore and it keeps the violence level of the game intact. It keeps the PC feel of the game intact as well and the game is both engaging in both Single Player and multiplayer. It's easy and cheap to pick up and if you're looking for some intense violent action, this is the game for you.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Good Points:
---------------------
1. Brutal and very violent gameplay and death animations
2. Amazing and very impactful weapons
3. Keyboard and mouse compatibility
4. Just insane violent fun both single player and multiplayer with bots
The Bad Points:
---------------------
1. Frame rate drops and random screen pausing
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Reviewed by: Anthony Hayball (AQWBlaZer91)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------