The story involves the theft of nuclear weapons, and the main enemy turns out to be an Afrikaner neo-fascist group based in Germany, led by South African exile Sergei Dekker. At the beginning of the game, terrorists steal four nuclear weapons from a storage facility in Russia, and proceed to sell them to various nations. This is a prelude to the acquisition of advanced weapons of mass destruction by this terrorist group. John Mullins, working for a U.S.-based mercenary ("soldier of fortune") organization known only as "The Shop", and his partner, Aaron "Hawk" Parsons, are assigned to prevent the nukes from falling into the wrong hands, and stop the terrorists in their plans. His missions take him to New York City, Sudan, Siberia, Tokyo, Kosovo, Iraq, Uganda and finally Germany.
Nash Werner of GamePro said of the PC version, "With its well-written storyline and thought-provoking missions, SoF's singleplayer will keep you thrilled for hours, and you'll probably be playing the Assassin mode for months. Despite ridiculously long load times, Soldier of Fortune is recommended for everyone who appreciates a good FPS."[45][b] Jake the Snake said of the Dreamcast version, "If you're longing for some over-the-top shooting with real weapons, Soldier of Fortune hits its mark with extreme prejudice, but less crazed gamers should steer clear."[46][c] However, The D-Pad Destroyer said of the PlayStation 2 version, "with all its faults, Fortune is fairly fun for hardcore soldier types, but everyone else will just want to keep their membership in Red Faction."[47][d] Nick Valentino of GameZone gave the same console version 6 out of 10, saying that it was "just another FPS trying to jump on the bandwagon of other successful titles and sorely misses the mark. With very little to offer in terms of design or new features, it fails to capture the right FPS feel which other games have effectively achieved. In other words, look someplace else."[48]
This game was banned in some countries for its violence and I thought at the very least that there might be some novelty there because of that but holy shit was I wrong about this one.
Soldier fortune payback may just be one of the worst games I've ever played it's certainly one of the worst games made in the last decade that's for sure. It's comparable to the type of trash that gets released on Steam under early access, it's a buggy, glitchy, ugly unenjoyable, uninspired generic PC shit and the only redeeming feature is that it's over so quickly.
It was developed by a group called Cauldron HQ who developed chaser another lesser-known FPS game from the early two-thousands it has a reputation for being so bad that it's good but the same can't be said about payback. I have no idea why this game has the soldier fortune title. For starters, it has nothing to do with the other game aside from the organization you work for being called the shop.
There's often literally one or two enemy character models per level and you'll just be mowing down waves and waves of these dumb assholes as they run towards your muzzle flash like moths to a flame. These are the most generic enemy types you're ever going to see it's either middle eastern terrorists, Russians or all that kind of thing and there's just an absolute abundance of these brain-dead idiots to kill. Soldier of fortune payback seems like it's trying to follow suit with the other games keeping the violence excessive at all times and yet the gore system in this game is somehow inferior to its predecessors.
On the flip side, these shitheads practically never miss and soldier fortune payback ends up joining the ranks of the multitude of this sort of half-assed modern warfare inspired shooting games where you have the basic regenerating health bar and loads of hits scanning soldier type enemies. At the end of almost every level you'll have to take on a boss fight which is just an enemy with a ridiculous amount of health points it can survive a couple hundred bullets to the face. Often to make things more unfair these guys are given a grenade launcher or an RPG which is able to kill you in a single hit.
But even still, the game just looks so boring and flat um and textures aren't very detailed, there's a lot of bloom to try and mask how crappy everything looks and it's just really subpar.
The jungle areas look half decent I'll admit with some nice lighting but keeping in mind this is the year Crytek engine was unleashed on the world it makes soldier fortune pay back just look like crap.
Soldier fortune payback is one of those rare times when I've been playing a video game and actually started to feel remorseful for what I'm doing like there's so many more productive things I could be doing right now than playing this abomination. The fact it shares its name with one of the greatest of the old shooter's is a travesty and maybe the fact they'd ban this thing where I lived was kind of a blessing in disguise. I would not recommend this to anyone, not on a train, not in a tree not in a car cauldron, let me be, I hope someone at least got that reference.
Soldier fortune payback is one of those rare times when I've been playing a video game and actually started to feel remorseful for what I'm doing like there's so many more productive things I could be doing right now than playing this abomination.
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