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The Soldier of Fortune series hits current-generation consoles. The Soldier of Fortune series is best known for its sometimes over-the-top violence and gore, and Payback is no different. The game keeps the series' trademark gore in tact and delivers a decent FPS.
Soldier of Fortune: Payback has you playing as an all-new character. The story is quite generic and really just exists as a reason to go from level to level but basically involves your character being betrayed by an organization and thus, your quest to make things right again. It's not entirely bad just wholly unoriginal.
Soldier of Fortune: Payback does manage to deliver some rather tense gunfights since it relies on heavy scripting and forces you down a linear path. The game does incorporate the now familiar life regeneration system found in other shooters. While the actual shooting is fine, the game's checkpoints are spread too far apart and you end up spending a bit too much time replaying stuff you've already seen. The enemies aren't particularly smart, either. They'll go right at you in a state of rage or stay blindly in one spot and try to shoot at you. That said, the game does throw a good number of enemies at you at one time.
The game includes a limited multi-player mode with five maps and three modes (deathmatch, team deathmatch and capture the flag). The online multiplayer works fine but the opponent selections seems quite limited.
Payback's highlight is easily the details. The game can't go toe to toe with Activision's own Call of Duty 4 but it looks great on its own. The game's various environments feature good architecture and good textures. They are of pretty good size and do a good job of bringing you into the game world. The various character models all look good, with solid animation, too. The lighting system looks especially good, especially the explosions. There are also other cool blur effects (like the one that you see when you reload the weapon) that help bring the game to life. Oh, and as I mentioned above, the game's gore is still there so you still see body parts and limbs go everywhere as you take these enemies out.
The game's music is okay but not stellar. The voice acting is actually not that bad on its own but when coupled with the rather poor script, it doesn't end up sounding too good. The sound effects are also okay, you hear the guns well enough but they lack the oomph seen in other games. The background music fits the game's pace just fine.
Is Soldier of Fortune: Payback a bad game? No, not really. It's a rather enjoyable (if simple) and good looking shooter. It's just that there have been so many amazing playing and looking games in the past few months, that Payback can't compare in comparison. -- Adam Nunez, PGNx Media
---- Jan 10, 2008
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