Soldier of Fortune Platinum Edition

Your name is John Mullins, and your job is to track down nuclear devices before they are used in New York.  Sabotage, assassination, full frontal assaults are the skills that mark the difference between the hunter and the hunted.

Soldier of Fortune (Platinum) is a typical first person shooter.  You’re a soldier of fortune who is on a mission to either retrieve or destroy terrorists and their nuclear weapons before they can be used.  The pluses out weight the minuses though the game does not provide that overwhelming urge to keep at it till the terrorists are destroyed.  Still the game does provide a good deal of entertainment when you’re between games.  The sounds are outstanding and the attention to detail should be admired.  For instance the sounds of the casings hitting the floor is very realistic sounding.  Where a target is hit determines if the target is wounded or killed.  An arm or leg wound will not kill an enemy, though a headshot will take him down like a ton of bricks.  Each weapon has its own sound and uniqueness.  Shotguns are devastating when fired in close, but do little damage to targets that are out of range.  Like wise for accuracy with handguns to ranged targets.  Most weapons perform to true life capabilities.  That’s most weapons.  The sniper rifle was beyond useless.  Anyone with any military knowledge will tell you that sniper rifles use scopes for hitting ranged targets or for specific targets like head shots.  There was no detail given to ranged weapons like those given in Delta Force.  Like wise C-4 was useless in Soldier of Fortune unless you’re using it as a grenade.  I was unable to blow open doors or walls, which is what C-4 is generally used for.  Another disappointing factor was the lack of weapons that you could select before each mission.  Each mission provided the same items, as the last.  Later in the game you can pickup some different items but that’s near the end of the game.  A larger selection of items would have added a lot to this game

The story line is not very strong which is normally the case for these types of games.  Though it does give the end user some background to what is going it provided very little interest to the game itself.  The graphics were pretty good though some of the textures were not very smooth.  Still the lighting and weapon effects were very realistic.  You could empty a 40 round clip into one of the bad guys and you could keep him and dancing.  Blood shots were very good if you’re into the gore side of the game.

The game provides nothing new to this genre but as other games of this type, it provides hours of fun with killing bad guys.  It’s a straight shoot-em up game with a small story line to boot.  Though I wouldn’t put this game on the same level as Delta Force, I would recommend it.

Install: Easy
Standard install.

Gameplay: 8
Game play was straight forward.  Weapons have varying degrees of effectiveness depending where the enemy is hit, if he is wearing body armor, or how far the target is from you.  Several weapons are very disappointing though.  The sniper rifle and C-4 are next to useless.  There should be the ability to use a scope since sniper rifles are meant to reach out and touch someone.  C-4 is used to blow holes in walls or open doors.  Neither of these are possible here.

Graphics: 8.5
Graphics are solid though some of the textures are not very smooth.  The gore factor is outstanding.  If your into seeing the spray of blood from your enemies you won't be disappointed. 

Sound: 9
The sound is very realistic.  From the sound of firing your automatic weapons to hearing the spent cartridges hit the floor.

Difficulty: 8
There are varying degrees of difficulties that can be set giving a wide range of difficulty.

Concept: 6
There's nothing new here.  There's several games of this genre.

Multiplayer: N/A 

Overall: 8.0
Overall this is a decent game.  There are several areas that could have been improved though these are minor and don't affect the game in any way.  One improvement would have been a scope to use with the sniper rifle.  A sniper rifle is used for hitting distant targets, or for hitting a specific body part like the head for instance.   The AI is mediocre.  The enemy can not open doors, nor will they chase you if your detected.  The story line is boring since it's used mainly to add a very limited back ground as a back drop to the game.  Still this is a decent game to have if your looking for a shooter with a limited story plot.