Soldiers of Fortune

"Mercenaries are cool... but not in this game."

Yay! My first non-Terminator related review! Anyway, Soldiers Of Fortune is a top-down two-player action game, one that isn't really good or really bad.

Graphics-7

Soldiers Of Fortune has good enough graphics so that enemies and power-ups and, of course, the hero(es) can be made out. There are little effects in the background, like mud bubbling and dust coming up from old bricks, but nothing major.

Sound-3

The sound for Soldier Of Fortune is just... atrocious. Everything is muffled, and the sound of mutant frogs jumping and each of the guns in the game firing sound the same. The music is no better, the same in every level except for the last one and repeating itself every minute. Your TV must be muted when you play this, or else, you'll go completely insane like me (...hehehehehehe, burning things is fun...)

Story-4

Bad. In 1900, the 'Baron' creates the Chaos Engine, which is a giant tyrannosaurus thing that lets him warp time and mess with the genetic structure of things and make mutant freak things to take over the world. Needless to say, you and your fellow Soldiers Of Fortune are hired by the King Of Europe (there was a King Of Europe?) to stop the Baron and his Chaos Engine. And so it begins... in a swamp.

Gameplay-6

In Soldiers Of Fortune, you or you and someone else get to choose from a selection of six Mercenaries, each with their own weapon and special ability. There's the Gentleman, with a flame pistol, the Scientist with his lightning-bolt gun and health packs, and the Brigand with a rifle and the 'Air Burst' ability. Also, you can play as the Thug, with a shotgun and Molotovs, and Navvie, a really big, slow German with a rocket launcher and craploads of health. You can even upgrade these characters' weapons, speed, health, special abilities, and number of lives by collecting and spending money. The way you advance through the levels is by shooting enough 'Chaos Towers' to open a gate at the end of the level. Then you repeat that fifteen more times. The weird thing is that the final boss isn't the T-Rex-ish thing you see in the opening scenes!

Challenge-10

This is the first 10 for Challenge I've given out, meaning that this is the first beatable game I've reviewed. It's still incredibly hard, though. Enemies are everywhere, and you don't have much health at all. 'Nuff said.

Replayability-None. Once you have beaten this unimaginably challenging, not-rewarding-in-story, hell of a game, you will never want to touch it ever again.

Overall-5

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 03/09/02, Updated 03/09/02