24 out of 24 people found the following review helpful:
i believe this leg is yours?
KORNdog from from Hull,
16th November, 2007
Ok, right off the bat I’m going to say there are far better first person shooters out there, especially now the likes of orange box and call of duty 4 have been released. Yet I still believe this game deserves a 4/5...the reason being simple....GORE...and lots of it. If you’re looking for an immersive, high quality, highly polished game look elsewhere, this is not it. This is a budget title through and through, it has a few performance issues, massive AI problems and just a general lack of polish. But if you like violence and gore with no extra “fluff” to get in your way, then this is definitely the game for you. First off, let’s start out with the story....well, what story there is. Basically you've been double crossed and your out for revenge, and if that means tearing off the limbs of countless terrorists then so be it, there is no moral high ground here. Your story is essentially to shoot guys in the face. Now sound is a mixed bag, on the one hand the guns all feel adequately powerful and menacing, the terrorists all speak in their native tongue and overall the game sounds fine in terms of gameplay. Story wise it’s terrible, a half assed script delivered by half assed voice actors. But again, who cares when you’re making a guys skull explode with a single bullet. gameplay is a pretty standard affair with its only saving grace being, yep, you guessed it, the gore....remove the decapitations, the dismemberment and the general violence and your left with a very bellow average game, but considering very few games give you this level of gore, your willing to let it slide. The length while short isn’t much of an issue, the 6-ish hour campaign is perfect for this sort of mindless violence and so it doesn’t have time to truly get repetitive or old. that’s not to say it doesn’t start to however, once you’ve seen a guy lose a leg and crawl away to bleed out in a corner a few hundred times, the effect starts to wear off. Although seeing a group of enemies’ arms and legs fly around a room after an explosion always seems to raise a smile. The one main stand out-ish area of the game besides the gore is the visuals, while there are better, and more consistent games out there, few budget titles look this good. And if it wasn’t for the odd framerate stutter and screen tearing it'd be perfect for what it does. unlike others who will rate this game based on and in comparison to the likes of cod 4 I’m reviewing it based on what it is, a mindless, fun, gory, BUDGET title. If your expecting production values of half life episode 2 then your expectations are set far too high. But in comparison to games of similar price from similar budget ranges, soldier of fortune: payback offers some great, albeit cheap thrills. There’s a certain satisfaction that only a soldier of fortune game can give a player. Those that have played the past games will know what I’m talking about, and for those that haven’t, now’s a great time to start.
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