Soldier of Fortune: Payback review

Nov 20, 2007

If the original Soldier of Fortune games are remembered for anything - and let's be honest, they probably aren't - it's probably for being those first-person shooters where you could blow people's limbs off. Even though they were a lot of fun, with tight controls and reasonably intelligent enemies, they're still best known for being gory.

Now we have a new SoF sequel, and if it is destined to be remembered for anything - which it won't - it's that it too is a dismemberment-prone first-person shooter... and not much else.

This isn't to say Payback is terrible, just that it's not terribly original or unique. The game plays like a million other recent first-person shooters; or rather, like someone took the common elements from every recent FPS and assembled a game out of the common elements. It has the controls of every post-Halo shooter (though not as smooth), the "stop getting shot to heal" health system of the Call Of Duty series (though more forgiving), and the all the multiplayer modes you'd expect (Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture The Flag, etc.) and none you won't find everywhere else. It even looks like a lot of other shooters, graphically, with Far Cry-like jungles and Area 51-esque cities (though not rendered with as much detail).