reviews

Name: Soldier of Fortune: Payback
Genre: First Person Shooter
Platform: PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox360 (Reviewed)

As an avid fan of the PC version of the previous two installments (especially Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix), I was legitimately excited and somewhat nostalgic about Payback’s potential “next-gen” take on the infamous ultra-violent and ultra-gory franchise, especially after the game was preemptively banned in Australia back in October for its intense violence.  While the Soldier of Fortune series has never wowed any critics with cutting-edge graphics, original gameplay or an enthralling plot; aspects such as these have never been the series’ objective nor were they ever a part of what drew me and many other gamers to the franchise in the first place.

This is because, obviously, the main draw of Soldier of Fortune has always been (and will most likely forever be) the gratuitous use of over-the-top gore and brutal in-game violence.  So, when I heard that the series was making a long-awaited comeback with Soldier of Fortune: Payback, the mere possibility of filling every viewable inch of my HDTV screen with virtual blood and guts had me anxious with prepubescent, boyhood glee.

That glee, however, quickly turned to a mix of horror and utter disappointment.  Soldier of Fortune: Payback, it seems, has little in common with its predecessors that I once knew and loved.

Believe me, this looks way cooler than it actually is.

To put it plainly, there is not a single aspect of this game that is not seriously flawed in some way, shape or form.  In fact, going through the game’s veritable laundry list of problems would be a practice in futility, as there is little in the game itself that is worth the plastic which it was burned to.

While my summation may sound harsh (and it is), it is irrevocably true nonetheless.  The sluggish controls are awkward in any possible configuration, the dodgy frame rate is unstable to say the least, the enemy AI is completely inconsistent, the sound is blandly repetitive, the overpowered weapon arsenal lacks variety, the in-game loading times are awkwardly long, the vague plot is painfully disinteresting, the drab level design is frustratingly confusing, the multiplayer rooms are as barren as a ghost town, and the textures pop up more than illegitimate children of James Brown.

The enemy A.I. leaves much to be desired.

But, I digress, as (by now) you’re probably thinking, “I thought you said that aspects such as these have never been the series’ objective nor were they ever a part of what drew you or many other gamers to the franchise in the first place?”  Well, you thought right.  These shortcomings, as severely detrimental as they may be to most FPS aficionados, could arguably be ignored, providing that the game delivered on its presupposition to give players some of that tried-and-true, Soldier of Fortune blood n’ guts action; the sort of action which has made the series so (in)famous.

Unfortunately, Payback does not deliver even in this respect.  Gone are the well-loved G.H.O.U.L. hit detection/body damage engines which provided the gore and violence in the previous two games; and with it went the only aspect of the game which could have proven to be genuinely decent.

The original G.H.O.U.L. system from the first Soldier of Fortune

This is not to say that there isn’t a sizable amount of blood and gore in Soldier of Fortune: Payback, because there is.  Gallons of the red stuff will smoothly coat any surrounding surface within a certain radius of a person hit with weapons fire and any extremity which finds itself in the line of fire will be inadvertently blown clean off.

However, here within lies the problem.  Payback, and its new developer Cauldron, have forfeited the messy, brutal, and (above all) visceral violence of the G.H.O.U.L. engine for a far more formulaic, cleaner, and completely unrealistic damage system.  In this new system, if a player shoots an enemy in the head, for example, the head itself simply disappears.  No brain matter, no bone fragments, no geyser-like blood eruption; the head is simply gone.  A similar effect happens when limbs are blown off: the NPC model essentially has a scripted polygonal point in which the limb separates from the rest of the model.  Shoot someone in the foot with a desert eagle?  Watch curiously as his entire leg flies off his body at the hip each and every time.

Sometimes more than just an enemy's head will disappear...

Occurrences such as this were not an issue in the previous installments; even the initial year 2000 iteration of the G.H.O.U.L. engine in the original Soldier of Fortune featured more location-specific “break zones” on each enemy than in Payback. For a franchise like Soldier of Fortune, which is so clearly focused on extreme gore and violence, I am very disappointed that Payback couldn’t execute in this regard (pun intended).  That being said, I am positive that the game’s publisher, Activision, clearly understood what fans and/or newcomers to this sort of game truly desire: blood, blood, and more blood.  This is precisely why it is so puzzling that Cauldron has glossed over this crucial characteristic of the game, especially considering how deplorable and seemingly amateurish nearly every other aspect of the game truly is.

All in all, if there was anyone who was rooting for this game, it was me.  While my expectations were admittedly low insofar that I wasn’t anticipating anything close to a mind-blowing, “must-play” experience that would revolution the FPS genre, I expected, at the very least, something along the lines of an updated Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix; something that was bloody fun and not a bloody mess.  Instead, Soldier of Fortune: Payback fails to live up its rather meager expectations and proves to be a gigantic leap backwards in the once great series.

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