So, you’re a gun for hire out to counter terrorist activity. What you’re really out to do is just clear level after level of bone-headed bad guys with a wide array of weaponry. If this is your thing, then this is your game. The control is spot on. Moving, sneaking, sniping, aiming, and unleashing thousands of rounds are all carried out like second nature. I never once died and blamed the controls or poor frame rate. I did, however, die due to poor level design and a sub-par graphics engine.

On top of the whole premise being stale, the level designs are also terribly monotonous. Indoor environments are especially bad, where it’s just one rectangular room with doors after another. It’s not so much a fault with the designers (since how creative can you be in real world buildings), but with the choice to fight in these buildings to begin with. After playing games like Halo and Brute Force, it’s quite difficult to go back to these claustrophobic levels.

The graphics really hurt Soldier of Fortune as well. Characters are low poly, and the levels are terribly dark. This makes navigation a bitch and cheap shots from hidden terrorists a matter of fact. There’s no gamma adjustment to fix the darkness, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to muck with the setting on my TV that I worked so hard to get where I wanted. Getting lost happens far too often, and it’s enough to make you want to put a foot through the XBox. One of the big selling points for this game was supposed to be the level of attrition on bad guys’ body parts. I remember a claim of something like 30+ body parts that could be targeted and shot. This really turned out to be a downer, since even if I could hit some dude’s earlobe, how can I see it from across a dark room on a low poly model? I have seen my share of blown off arms and heads, but this effect seemed even more impressive back on the first Turok the Dinosaur Hunter.

There’s not much to talk about in the way of audio, since it’s mostly gun shots and blood gurgling deaths. What little voice acting is present in the game is pretty atrocious, and may have been better left written in text. Even though SOF II supports Dolby Digital like most other XBox titles, it doesn’t take full advantage of the separation. FPSs seem like the best candidate for this ability in the first place since you should be able to do so much with bullets whizzing past your head.

Multiplayer is well implemented, but it’s not nearly enough on it’s own to rescue the game from impending mediocrity. Standard modes are available including a couple that we’ve recently played in Return to Castle Wolfenstein, which are glorified capture the flag games. I’m still waiting for someone to step up and offer online co-op mode, since co-op seems to be the only saving grace of the FPSs single player mode. With the multiplayer modes not doing enough to break apart from the pack, I’ll gladly just stick to playing Mech Assault.

What you see if what you get. Soldier of Fortune II is an average port of an average first person shooter on the PC. If you can’t get enough of the genre, then feel free to add this finely controlled game to your library. Personally, just when I thought I might be able to get back into the FPS mix, I feel like I’m drowning in these poor games instead. Your best bet is to just stay away and wait for some originality to poke it’s head out.