Soldier of Fortune 2 (SoF2) is, not surprisingly in light of the name, a sequel to the first game in what seems likely to become a long-running series. The most prominent feature for which the original is remembered is shared by its successor, namely, that it depicts the effects of violent combat more realistically than any other first-person shooter (FPS) game made to date. In fact, the original game was something of a one-trick pony along that line, but that's a label which the sequel clearly seeks to shed.
To be certain, games like Quake III Arena, Unreal Tournament, etc. are all just as violent. But whereas getting shot in those games might result in a puff of blood, or perhaps even a messy death replete with bloody chunks (i.e., "gibs"), getting shot in SoF2 is far more visceral. In SoF2, bullets tend to result in very painful looking wounds; i.e., heads with spilling brains, severed limbs with bleeding stumps and jagged bone, etc. Though SoF2 is also somewhat of a one-trick pony, I think the sequel nevertheless has a great deal to offer for reasons I'll explain in the sections that follow.
SoF2 is a game with pretty high goals. It seeks to provide very realistic graphics, particularly where the modeling of persons is concerned. And for the most part it succeeds. The character modeling is some of the best work done to date in any video game. The developer, Raven Software, is the same bunch who were responsible for the acclaimed Jedi Knight II (JK2), so it's not surprising that the successes of that game seem to be carried over into SoF2. The big difference is that the modeling in SoF2 takes the whole process to the next level.
Characters in SoF2 look very realistic, right down to their changing facial expressions. They move a bit strangely sometimes, but human motion is just about the toughest thing for an animator to get right. The textures are wonderfully detailed, the special effects are good, and the level of attention to visual detail is very high overall. The game looks very good with very few flaws. I can't imagine gamers being disappointed with how SoF2 looks.
Still, there are two problems with the visuals in my view. First, they come at a very steep price. When I first got the game, my video card was a Gainward GeForce3 Ti200, overclocked to almost the speed of a full GeForce3. Even with that much power, my frame rate headed south in some of the levels. The density of foliage in the jungle sequences seemed to be just a bit too much for my card to handle. Now that I have an ATI Radeon 9700 Pro, this complaint is a thing of the past; the game runs butter-smooth at 1280 x 1024 x 32 bpp with all the graphics options maxed out. If you're a gamer with a less-than-cutting-edge rig, you'd better be prepared to turn down the resolution or the detail level.
Second, some of the texture seams are kind of obvious. All of the character models in SoF2 are composed of various sections. This is what allows decapitations, limbs to be severed, etc. The game engine can remove the model sections as needed to simulate the results of violence. The problem is that it seems each of these sections is textured somewhat independently of the others. The result is that many of the characters have funny "seams" showing clearly on their bodies. In the opening sequence in the back of the car, for example, I couldn't take my eyes off the "Charlie Brown" zig-zag pattern on the driver's neck. Maybe there isn't any other way to do it and retain such realistic violence, but the present implementation has a number of such silly visual artifacts.
Finally, speaking of violence, this portion of the review would not be complete without at least some mention of the gore. Make no mistake: SoF2 delivers the most gruesome gameplay I've ever seen. I guess it didn't hit me, really, until I was sneaking around a drug-dealer's mansion. I came through an open door, and when I turned to the right I was eye to eye with an angry guard. I didn't even think; I just about jumped out of my seat in surprise as I pulled the trigger. The result was the wildest thing I've ever seen in a video game. His head essentially disintegrated in front of my eyes, and his twitching body fell to the floor. I stood there amazed as blood continued to spurt from the neck with each beat of his heart. As I watched, his heartbeat slowed and stopped, and the body eventually lay still amidst a large and spreading pool of blood.
I stood there for more than few moments. I guess I somehow hadn't previously noticed that sort of thing in the game. I'm sure it was there, but maybe I've played enough FPS games that it just didn't register. What I do know is that the few moments I stood over that corpse were intense. That level of realism was something I've never seen before, and I was keenly aware of it for the rest of the game. I know some will be put off by that kind of gore, but I think it's actually a good thing. In me at least, it created an emotional subtext to the game that one just doesn't find in other forms of entertainment. It reminded me of our fragility, the delicate nature of humanity. Our lives can be snuffed out in an instant, as a candle's flame is extinguished, and seeing the depictions in SoF2 reminded me very powerfully that guns, knives, etc. are to be taken with deadly seriousness.
The audio in SoF2 is pretty good. Some of the weapon sounds got a bit tiring after a while. There just didn't seem to be much variation therein. I absolutely loved the music that plays during the game menu screens, but the music for the rest of the game wasn't nearly as inspired. The voice acting was really quite good, and I must admit I was kind of surprised. I normally cringe at the kind of dialog one hears in FPS games, but SoF2 did a nice job in this department. I think they also deserve kudos for having a principal character with a believable southern accent. That's not often done well.
Better than any of the content, though, is the degree to which the engine works to make the audio an important part of the game. Granted, I've been playing the game of late with an Audigy 2 Platinum sound card by Creative Labs, but the positional audio is truly wonderful. I think SoF2 does this better than any other game I've heard to date. I knew exactly from where I was being shot at just by hearing the "tink" of a bullet against the wall behind me. The footsteps of others make it very clear precisely where they are. There is a crispness and a clarity to the positional audio that seems very new and different to my ears. I don't know what the developers did, but I heartily approve. SoF2 is the game that might make you want to upgrade your sound card. Of course, the Audigy 2 Platinum comes with a bundled copy of SoF2, so maybe that's the best route to go (grin).
Speaking generally, the interface is good. The game menus are pretty intuitive and everything works as one might expect. The in-game HUD is informative and not too busy for the most part. I don't think the whole sound-meter thingy is all that valuable, really, insofar as the stealth mode seems broken—more on that later—but I can overlook that.
What is harder to overlook is the degree to which rather goofy default keys were selected. Seriously, what were the developers thinking when they selected the keys to activate the special features of the various weapons? I had a nightmare using the OICW until I remapped the keys to something far more sensible. It seemed to me like the developers went out of their way to make the player hunt and peck to find things in the middle of combat. That's not good. Plan to remap your own key bindings for sure.
SoF2 is kind of hit and miss in this department. On the one hand, much of the game is well designed. Jumping, weapon-usage, and so forth all work just like you might expect. The bad guys make for pretty engaging fare. As FPS games go, SoF2 gets a lot right. I particularly like the way the various weapons complement each other. The selection of grenades is quite refreshing, and all of the weapons are useful in one way or another.
There remain three obvious flaws in my view, however, that mar the game. First, I think the stealth model is almost hopelessly broken. I've harped on this reviewing other games, but developers still seem to get it wrong. A game like Thief gets stealth right. That is, the player has good feedback on how obvious he is to the bad guys, and he can usually work through tight spots in a number of different ways. Further, should he be detected, it's not the end of the world. Oh, he might have a very intense few minutes, but eventually he'll be able to go on with his mission.
In SoF2, however, the guards have the split-microsecond reaction time of a computer. The very instant the player becomes visible to any guard, the alarm is raised and every bad guy within a hundred miles comes a runnin'. There just isn't any room for error. Leaning around corners for the barest fraction of a second is enough for guards to raise the alarm. It's ridiculous. There should be some tolerance for error. Worse, in some missions this means instant failure. That wouldn't be so bad if the player had gadgets to help him tell which way guards were facing and so forth, but it's simply inexcusable in SoF2.
Second, for a game that otherwise focuses on realism, there are a couple of horrifyingly stupid and unrealistic bits. The one that comes immediately to my mind is the boss who can't be killed. As near as I can tell, he can't be killed until you blow up the panel behind him. Only then will he be electrocuted. As near as I can tell, he is otherwise completely invulnerable. I hate stupid crap like that. I realize that developers like to provide puzzles, and puzzles can be fun. But in a game focused on realism, that kind of crap sticks out like a sore, even gangrenous, thumb.
Third and finally, the game desperately needs a keypress to cancel cut scenes. Maybe there is one, and I was never able to find it. All I know is that I got really tired of hearing the same stupid cut scene over and over before facing a tough situation. Come on, developers, this is so elementary I shouldn't even need to complain about it any more.
Ok, there's this bunch of bad guys, and they're making this bad stuff, and the bad stuff is going to do really bad things if you don't get to the bad guys first. That's probably unfair. SoF2 features some worthwhile sub-plot points and some interesting relationships between certain characters. I guess I'm just tired to death of the bad-guys-are-going-to-use-a-custom-engineered-virus bit. It's been done to death of late in games like Deus Ex, Red Faction, etc. Whatever happened to the villains who just want money? Or how about the homicidal maniacs who just like evil? I guess they're both dying breeds. Everyone who's anyone in the "Who's Who of Evil Organizations" has to be a bio-terrorist these days. Sheesh.
This is where SoF2 really shines; i.e., it's a big-value game. The single-player game is meaty. There are a lot of missions to play, and none of them are trivial. This is not a game you're going to blast through in a few hours. It took me several days of play all told before I had finished it. That's as refreshing as it is rare these days. Further, those missions are chock-full of good stuff. There are so many different weapons, grenades, etc. that I literally lost track of them all. After a while I found some favorites, and I pretty much stuck with them, but there remains quite a bit for me to enjoy during my next replay.
I should also comment specifically on the final scenes of the game. Whereas too many games essentially fail to provide any ending (e.g., Ghost Recon) or provide only ridiculously dystopian imagery (e.g., Deus Ex), SoF2 nails it. The final cut scenes in SoF2 are as artful as they are touching. They give a sense of accomplishment at the same time they remind the player very poignantly of the cost of that victory. They made the end of the game something truly worth reaching in my view.
As if the aforementioned stuff weren't enough, SoF2 has an interesting if not entirely unique instant-action feature. It allows the player to specify some settings, and the game will generate a mission in light of them. True, there are only a few basic designs for all the various permutations, but the mission generator cranks out something relatively fresh and interesting every time nevertheless. I really like this feature, and I find it's a great way to warm up for on-line play. It gives you something interesting to look forward to instead of the same maps with the same enemies in the same places.
My only significant beef with the content of the game is the AI. On all but the easiest levels of the game, these guys are just nuts. They're inhumanly accurate from hundreds of yards out, and they've got the reflexes of a computer. Yet when it comes to movement and choice of tactics, they'll just as likely walk stupidly into your fire as anything else. It's kind of depressing, really. Maybe my expectations are just too high, but what I keep hoping for in a FPS game are enemies that are intelligent in their movement/tactics as well as human (i.e., fallible) in their aim. Maybe someday the state of the industry will meet that expectation, but SoF2 doesn't.
A more trivial complaint with the game is that the level load times are staggering. I have a very beefy system with lots of free memory, yet some of the load times are simply ridiculous. I've sat for almost a minute "quick loading" a game. Note to developers: that is most certainly not a quick load. I shudder to imagine how long others with slower systems are waiting. Maybe this will be addressed in a patch at some point. I sure hope so. It's as annoying with the multi-player game as it is in the single-player game.
Wow. The single-player aspect of the game is really good, but the SoF2 multi-player aspect is great. For starters, SoF2 provides a host of great game modes. The standard deathmatch, capture the flag, etc. are there, as is a very Counterstrike-like mode called "infiltration". The selection of maps is good, the network code is smooth and seamless, and it's a blast to play.
Better still, the Punkbuster anti-cheating software does much to diminish the llama factor. I've played a lot of SoF2 on-line of late, and I've yet to see even one instance of what seems like cheating. True, I've run into some players with some surprisingly good aim, but none of them seem to be using artificial means. I'm sure some jerks out there are probably cheating, but whereas you pretty much can't join a Counterstrike server without running into them, they seem a rare thing indeed in the SoF2 community. And that's a good thing in my view.
SoF2 has some warts, as I've noted, but it is overall a very good buy for any FPS fan. I don't think it's a no-brainer buy, and I don't think it's a must-buy, but I do think it offers an awful lot of gameplay for a pretty reasonable price. Further, though the game itself doesn't require much thought, the issues that it raises in its realistic depiction of violence are worth thinking about. The graphics of SoF2 evoke a certain emotional subtext that has made me think about gaming, violence, human frailty, and a host of other things. That stimulus alone is worth the purchase price in my view.
12/23/2002