Soldier of Fortune (Gold Edition)

This is how I first became curious about the game, and my first time playing it, I was pretty shocked - in a pleasant way. The game uses technology called the "ghoul engine", which drives the games graphical gore fest. This system allows, for all sorts of realistic damage to be done to objects and characters in the game. Nasty looking bullet holes, complete with powder burns, apear where you shoot a bad guy. Blood is plentiful in the game. And of course shoot someone enough times at a joint (or with a high caliber weapon) and you will dismember them. This is actually pretty fun, though somewhat disturbing. Shooting someone in the stomache with a shotgun will even cause intestines to spill out, and shooting someone in the face causes a REALLY nasty mess.

While the over the top gore, is the main "feature" of the game, but otherwise the graphics look pretty good considering the year the game was made. Nothing too spectacular, but based on the quake 2 engine the game looks pretty good. Aside from dead bodies with missing legs and pieces of shattered bone potruding froom the stumps, the game has lots of other little graphical details. Bullet holes are different sizes for different weapons, and are different based on the type of surface you fire at. Sound too is pretty good, and bullets hitting metal, not only made nice looking bullet holes, but also sound pretty intense.

Besides these features the game is a little lacking in plot, but then again, that's probably not why you're playing this game. The gameplay is a heck of a lot of fun, and as long as you're old enough to handle it, the gore is just a nice little commodity. The problem is the game doesnt feel very "serious" although it tries to. The story gets pretty stupid towards the end, as the end of the game is a "boss fight" with a bad guy who looks like a reject from the GI Joe cartoons.

Also the realism found in the graphics is no where in the rest of the game. The selection of weapons is lacking, and the weapons are FAKE made up weapons, that are only LOOSELY based on real military arms at best. Some of the late game weapons are just plain stupid. They would have been better of staying with a gritty military persona for the game.

The gameplay is good, and if you want to see lots of blood and guts you'll love this game. But you may be disapointed that the rest of the game lacks character and realism.


Soldier of Sorry   November 23, 2003
 2 out of 2 found this review helpful

Soldier of Fortune for the PS2 is a very bad first-person shooter. You can play single player offline or multiplayer online or with BOTS. I played offline, but I doubt that it makes much of a difference since SOF has many technical problems.
This game is barely worth my time. Soldier of Fortune for the PS2 should have been beta tested, so it would not turn out this bad. This is simply of one the worst games currently out for the PS2. It is an insult to the pc version of Soldier of Fortune. The pc version had clean graphics, fast framerate and great sound effects. The PS2 version has none of those things. My biggest gripe about this version is the very crappy frame rate, it is pathetically bad! It has some of the worst graphics to date on the PS2! You'll see this strange folding effect on the screen; as if someone is tugging at it, because the graphics cannot keep up with the action on screen.

Not only does it look horrible but the choppy frame rate will also affect your game play. If someone is shooting at you from the upper level and you want to aim your cross- hairs up, it takes a couple of seconds too long and then you are either dead or the enemy gets away. The aiming controls can barely catch up to the target in time and this is very frustrating.

Just imagine an internet game with tons of "LAG", and then you'll understand what I mean. The graphics and colors look muddy and drab (even the SNES games look better). Animation is jerky and the characters look strange when they run around shooting. SOF also had clipping problems; in some areas I spotted enemies because their arms or legs where showing through walls. Loading the game takes forever! You can go have a cup of coffee and it will still be on the loading screen! Then when SOF finally loads you'll be treated to every bad thing that a PS2 game can have wrong.

The one good thing about the graphics was that it was able to keep the blood and gore from the pc version- you can still blow people's heads, arms and legs off. And I liked the fact that they included BOTS in multiplayer and you can play against them by yourself. Are the BOTS any good you ask? Well they have a tendancy to shoot you in the back very often and they seem to have better shooting accuracy than you, but they don't have any real strategy. They basically run and shoot a lot mindlessly. But the action is never exciting because of all the "LAG".

The frame rate is laughably bad (like a bad joke). Playing Single player is even less fun and I got ticked off by one of the levels where you ride on a moving train. My character got stuck in the railing a couple of times and the enemy cpu got me with a lot of cheap shots. I found a few other places where my character got stuck to a door and the enemy came and blew me away. That's just bad programming. If they had done a better job of beta testing SOF, this would not happen. The controlling is not bad but it needed to be more responsive (especially when aiming!)

The sound of effects are weak and unrealistic. The sound of gun fire from each weapon is very inaccurate and sound cheap. The Shotgun sound is too loud for its own good. Grenade explosions also sound weak as do machine gun fire. However, the music is pretty good as are the screams from enemies when you blow them away.

In conclusion SOF is plagued by everything that could go wrong in a game of this type and you are better off buying something else. I feel sorry for the people that buy this game and then they can't get their money back. So I hope they listen to me when I say this: Soldier of Fortune for the PS2 is total junk. I suggest many other first person shooter games that are much better and enjoyable than SOF. Games like: "Timesplitters 1 and 2", "Medal of Honor", "Red Faction 1 and 2" "James Bond Nightfire". Those games will leave Soldier of Fortune in the dust bin- where it rightfully belongs!


Repetitive Corridor Shooter   March 31, 2003
 6 out of 6 found this review helpful

I don't know why I purchased Soldier of Fortune. It's not that I regret it, necessarily, it's just that I had never played it, and I had only read mixed reviews. So I think, what intrigued me, was the controversy over the "gore-zones" this game featured, and how violent it was supposed to be. I guess I wanted to see if the game lived up to the controversy.
It does. Soldier of Fortune is a typical First Person Shooter, about a 'one man army' who fights his way through level after level of enemies that look exactly the same. Aside from the extremely graphic violence, you wouldn't be able to tell this game apart from any other mediocre corridor shooter. But the violence is very, very graphic. Heads are split apart, limbs are torn off, intestines and chunks of various other organs protrude from gaping wounds. It is all an attempt to portray violence 'realistically' in a videogame, but after a short period of time it all seems too over-the-top and very unnecessary. Regardless of whether or not the developers were trying to make the game realistic, blood and gore should probably be a bit more limited than this.
So aside from this 'gimmick' the rest of the game is very average. The control takes some getting used to, the framerate gets very choppy even with the very bland visuals, and the multiplayer mode seems pretty tacked on.
It isn't a horrible game. But it's probably a better rental than a purchase.