Soldier of Fortune: Payback

"Bloody good time with a few major flaws on the side."

PRESENTATION

This game features bare bones menus with equally bare options. There are no CG opening movies, no statistics options, no cheats, unlockables or anything to distract you from the actual game. There are only two modes of play, single player (story mode) and multiplayer (only online play and Lan, no split screen) and three difficulty levels. This game easily wins the all-time award for least amount of gameplay options for a FPS I've ever played. I think even the prehistoric Wolfenstien 3D offered more options than this game.

CONTROLS

The preset controls felt pretty natural with the PS3 controller which is a good thing because the controller configurations are not user customizable. You get to pick from three preset configurations. Luckily the button layout feels pretty good with the exception of the crouch button which is strangely mapped to the d-button. The left analog moves the character while the right analog is used to look around and aim, the right trigger is to fire your weapon with the left trigger reserved for zoom aiming, R1 grenades, L1 secondary fire, L3 to sprint, triangle to change weapons, circle to interact, square to reload and x to jump. This is all pretty standard stuff I just wish that I could remap the crouch button to the R3 which is not used. It's not a big deal, I evetually got used to it.

GAMEPLAY

The story mode is pretty straight forward and short. It took me about 5 hours to clear the game and keep in mind that includes the many times I died and had to restart a level. If you are looking for a shooter with a deep story you can pass up this one as the story is laughable at best. The voice acting is even worse. Most of your missions consists of objectives that include rescuing a hostage, blowing up some enemy buildings, or finding a location. There are boss fights at the end of every mission and with the exception of maybe one boss most are not very creative or challenging. They usually consist of you shooting at the boss ducking for cover to reload and firing again until the boss is dead. Most of the levels are linear but spacious enough to give the illusion of an open world. There is an on screen arrow that has a number that decreases the closer you get to the objective. I thought that's just like rainbow six until I tried to call up the map. There is NO map option! You pretty much follow these arrows to find your way. It works but in the end it's just unacceptable. Considering that almost every single FPS these days have a map of some sort what were the developers thinking? The enemy AI is a mixed bag. The stupid behavior include running at you even if you are unloading a clip right at them. Sometimes enemies spawn in areas you have already passed and they will sneak up on you and try to gun butt you instead of just shooting you. At times the enemies seem to actually be quite smart. If you shoot at them from a distance and miss they will usually run for cover and fire back at you. The gore system made famous by the previous installments of the game is hard at work in this installment of the game. This is by far the main draw of the soldier of fortune franchise and it works pretty well here. Enemy soldiers have 9 areas of dismemberment. They are the head, forearm, upper arm (left + right), upper leg and lower leg (left + right). Depending on how powerful your weapon is, one shot can blow off an arm or a leg or cause body parts to fly in all directions. The amount of bloodshed is excessive. Blood sprays out of wounds like a water fountain. It's really quite ridiculous. Finally the coolest part of the game is the weapon selection. Before each mission you can choose a primary, secondary weapon, pistol and granade. There are dozens of real world guns and to make things interesting you can customize certain weapons with a variety of silencers, scopes, and hand grips.

GRAPHICS

The overall look of the game is quite good. Most of the environments look sharp and realistic but could use an extra coat of polish. Some of the textures look ugly specifically the sky, in certain levels. Enemies animate well especially the death animations. I particularly like the way a soldier will jerk to the side as he gets an arm blown off. The reloading animations for different guns look great as do the guns themselves. The frame rate is quite stable and holds up most of the time even when there are groups of enemies getting blown up by a grenade with pieces of flesh flying in all directions. This is definatly not the best looking game on the PS3 but it's not bad either. These graphics would not be possible on a lesser system (PS2). One of the biggest surprises to me is how fast the game loads. The longest loading period I had to wait at any given time is about 14 seconds. Considering all the previous sof on consoles had terrible loading problems, with times reaching over a minute, this is a big plus, especially since this is by far the best looking sof to date.

SOUND

The area that really drags down the game is the voice acting. The producers could have done better doing the voices themselves, which they might have, judging by how bad the voice acting is. The gunfire and reloading sounds can pass for par as do the explosions. The little music there is in the game is passable but a little more variety would have been nice. The overall sound is nothing special.

OVERALL

I played through the game in just one weekend and to be honest I did enjoy myself. There is something about mutilating people with a firearm that is disturbing yet addictive.(Yeah, I'm a sick puppy but fun is fun as long as you keep it in the game.) It's unlike anything in any other first person shooter. It's what makes this game stand out in the already over crowded FPS genre. If you're a fan of the previous sof you will not be disappointed in this latest installment. Just be warned, this game is extremely graphic. Keep this away from your kids.

NOTE: This review is for the PS3 version only. I have not played any of the other versions.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/27/07

Game Release: Soldier of Fortune: Payback (US, 11/19/07)