SOLDIER OF FORTUNE
SHORT VERSION: The main gimmick of this game is the (now frankly mild) gore, and it gets old fast. Once it does, all you have is an incredibly mediocre (if competent enough) FPS, with boring level design but an entertainingly stupid plot.
LONG VERSION: A game based on some gun nut magazine, this game’s big thing was the gore. Basically, you can shoot limbs off people so they are just a collection of bloody stumps, and there’s constant sprays of blood.
Of course, it all looks a bit silly now due to it being powered by the Quake 2 engine, and much more graphic games have since come out. Half the weapons aren’t even strong enough to dismember, and in any case it definitely doesn’t take long to become numb to the gimmick.
AND despite all the explosions of blood, the guns lack oomph? I think it’s because there is zero feeling of recoil on your end so it feels like you’re just firing paint guns.
There are only three other things I remember about this game from when I first played it. First, your character looks like a Duck Dynasty reject and is impossible to take seriously (still true). Second, your mercenary organisation’s secret base is hidden in the back of a second-hand book store, and I liked the non-violent missions when you went there (still true). Third, I remember the last area in and under a German castle being a bit of a pain in the butt, especially due to turrets (still true).
Turns out I didn’t remember much else because this game isn’t very memorable!
The vast majority of the game is running through extremely linear levels, shooting bad guys who run in front of or behind you, and finding the exit. Most levels are boring to explore because, though there is some looping back here and there, so much of it is a straight flat line from point A to point B.
They try to spruce things up and make it feel cinematic with lots of scripted events, i.e. shit blowing up and enemies dropping in from the ceiling and what have you, but it doesn’t do enough to alleviate the dullness.
Sometimes you’ll need to push a button or turn a valve, and these parts suck because it’s often hard to find where the hell the things are. Even worse are when you have to do something else, like blow up a certain wall, because the game is really bad at indicating what you need to do.
Oh yeah, sometimes you can find alternate paths (mostly air ducts) that let you get the drop on enemies or avoid combat all together. More often they lead to ammo caches, though. Both things are rare.
Every now and then they’ll switch the gameplay up… at one point you have to defend your friend while he disarms a nuke (so, waves of enemies to mow down), and there is a part where you walk around with a disguise… for seemingly no reason. These moments are few and far between.
Though the level design is mostly bland and/or annoying, they do have a nice variety of environments to fight through. You basically tour through the world, with some very culturally insensitive levels in places like Sudan, Iraq, and Japan. Yes, in Japan you of course fight ninjas. In Iraq, your character meets Saddam in an incredibly ludicrous scene. Also this game supports the myth that Iraq was making nuclear weapons in the 2000s, so I blame it for the US invasion a few years later (even though your character of course single-handedly destroys their efforts in the game).
I really enjoyed the New York and Japan levels because you were running around “real world” locations (even if New York was places like shipping crate mazes). There is something about being in danger in places that are otherwise “normal” such as a subway station or office building that gets me. Running around military bases or generic Middle Eastern cities just doesn’t do much for me.
The music is also vaguely racist, but I have to admit the Sudan music is BANGING, and I love that the game turns into an industrial horror game when you get to the slaughterhouse. Basically turns into Quake.
A few other levels have very good atmospheres thanks to the audio, actually. The New York levels later in the game have an otherworldly feel due to it.
Oh, I haven’t talked about gunplay yet, it kinda sucks. Since 90% of enemies are hit scan, it’s all popping out from cover or just running full steam ahead with a machine gun without a thought (that worked well for me most of the time). It gets really boring, really fast. The enemy AI is amusingly janky, and love to do random rolls right into your shots. Like I mentioned, they try to spice things up with all the scripted events, but yeah, the gunplay is dull no matter how the enemies appear.
As for the plot, it’s a direct-to-video quality story about a terrorist organisation stealing nukes, with things getting increasingly ludicrous the further you get in the game. In the New York levels you kill a bunch of white supremacists, so that’s cool, and the big bad is someone pissed at the UN because they were someone who profited off apartheid in South Africa. Also he invests in tech so I guess the villain is basically Elon Musk. So! I liked that stuff about the game. Also, at one point you find a floating turd and you can shoot it and get a snarky remark, so that’s cool.
Another thing I liked is that your buddy gets killed in the game, but it’s okay because at the end you get a new partner… a sexy LADY soldier of fortune!!!
But there is one place where this game completely failed.
On the very first level, you turn a corner and see an enemy pissing against a wall, angled towards you. TRAGICALLY, you can’t see his dick, so even MORE tragically, you can’t use the dismemberment tech to shoot his dick off.
Truly, a game made by cowards.
