I decided to give this game a try, as I heard it mentioned often as one of a finer examples of FPS genre. However, I must say I found it pretty disappointing - I never played it back in the day, meaning there's no nostalgia value there for me.
The game is built, in many respects, like a rail shooter - you go through more-or-less straight corridors, with enemies ambushing you like a jack-in-the-box. I've seen the design compared to a haunted house here, and I do find the analogy accurate. The game would be fine this way, if it played like a fast-paced ride through the corridors - but it doesn't. Maybe there's something about the palette, or maybe there's something about me, but on every level I played there were moments where the flow of the gameplay was abruptly disrupted. One time I couldn't find the door, which blended with the walls, the other time I had no idea an element of environment could be destroyed - and in a game that's supposed to feel like a blitz through the hordes of enemy soldiers, these happen just too often.
I could forgive the level design if there was something else going on there that would make up for it - but there is nothing there. The graphical design is boring, with dull colours and palette dominated by shades of dirty green, brown and grey - I understand the choice, but I feel I played just too many military shooters for it to do anything for me. Contrast it with Red Faction I've just played yesterday - for all it's faults, I liked the presentation of the game, and the clear colour-based enemy-friend identification. Here I am physically unable to discern between civilians and enemies - I suppose that's a part of the difficulty, but for me it's yet another thing that breaks the flow the game itself tries to evoke. The gore does nothing to me, although I have to admit it makes using the shotgun very satisfying. Not artistically interesting, not technically impressive, I feel the resources that went there could be better spent elsewhere - although maybe it's just the grumpiness of mine that came with age.
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A decent game between classic and modern style FPS that feels like missed potential due to its repetitive combat and linear levels.
The art design is fantastic - the models are low-poly but well-crafted and the textures have an appealing pixel-art style (especially when bilinear filtering is disabled). And the characters actually look human, which isn't that common for a 2000 game. The gore is quite fleshed-out (heh), and the game became famous for it. You can dismember enemies in many different ways, and they scream in realistic horror and leave pools of blood behind. It's quite satisfying. There's a good variety of locations across this 7-hour game, including Siberia, New York City, Iraq, Sudan, and a German castle. Iraq is a common location in later FPS games, but here you explore beautiful Islamic architecture rather than drab city streets. Additionally, each location has uniquely-skinned enemies to keep things varied.
Now onto the gameplay. There's about a dozen weapons (pistols, a shotgun, semi-automatic's, a sniper, a flamethrower, and a microwave gun) and most feel pretty satisfying (especially the shotgun) and useful. Unfortunately, the enemy roster is less varied. The large majority of enemies are basically "guy with a gun who goes down in a couple shots". It takes many hours to meet more enemy types (rocket, flamethrower, and microwave soldiers eventually get introduced in small numbers). This makes the game feel repetitive, and it also discourages use of your heavy and exotic weaponry since the automatic weapons can take care of everything (and you're fed endless ammo for them). The shotgun in particular felt undervalued by the game, as some levels have no ammo at all for it.
The difficulty level is mostly pretty easy (on medium skill). It takes until the last mission for you face enemies that really take thought to take down and you have to consider conserving ammo. I actually didn't realize you could buy weapons & ammo at first, so I played the first few missions starting with no supplies and still encountered little trouble.
Like many FPS games after Half-Life, it's levels are linear (in contrast to the non-linear style of Doom and its many imitators). You simply move along one path almost all the time, occasionally having to find some sort of alternate entrance like a vent. This type of design makes the game feel mindless and more like a haunted house (in which you're just along for the ride) than an interactive experience. There are a couple levels that give you some freedom of exploration, and the difference in satisfaction is significant.
Technically the game is held together quite well. It runs on Id's Quake 2 engine with some changes. The gore system is a noticeable enhancement, music is dynamic, and surfaces use detail textures to give the impression of higher-resolution. I only experienced a couple minor bugs in my playthrough. Although some enemy types' AI (namely the microwave soldiers) is questionable.
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Soldier of Fortune is a militarist FPS, thats without a doubt the highpoint in the series.
Storywise its complete crap, and i couldnt tell you a single thing about its story. Its a game you play for the gameplay, and on that front its sublime. It handles very similarly to Quake, which means that you still have a fast movement speed and can run and shoot with ease. Very satisfying shooting actually. What sets it a apart from the competition is the gore system, which maybe not as shocking nowadays as back them, but its this gore system that helps make the shooting as satisfying as it is. The enemies use hitscan weapons, but fortunatly the enemy placement is good enough not to turn this into a slow tactical fps.
In terms of level design its great as well, featuring large maps in which you must press levers must of the time to move forward. The maps have a lot of backtracking to them, but also opening shortcuts, so you feel that you really know them by the end of the level. Again, reminds me a lot of the level design in the second quake game.
Overal its a really solid fps, worth playing for the gameplay component. It has aged a bit visually, but the gameplay remains as rock hard as ever.
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