PerfectlyDark

The Soldier of Fortune series has always been a shooter that I adored from afar. Though very few of my friends even know what these games are, the ones who are familiar with the series, also seem to dig its over the top gore and over saturated para-military style. The Series struck a high note in 2002 with Soldier of Fortune II Double Helix, a pretty solid game on its own, and had the coolest shoot em’ up feeling ever found in a shooter sinse Duke Nukem 3D.

The guns have long sinse been silenced and the acclaimed shooter franchise faded away as Raven Software was consumed by another company, and used to make larger scale budget games. But, in June 2007, Activision had employed a small time developer Cauldron, to make a thrid game. The title was called SOF3: Pay Back, later just Pay Back. The game has been shown very little, and the budget price left alot of fans worried that Activision didn’t much care about the fanbase. Its Actually true. The title certainly feels like wasted poteinal, all the while remaining somewhat enjoyable. Call me a jerk for even remotely enjoying this game, but I in fact did.

Yes, the Gameplay is nothing to brag about. Really, the same formula from the last games is being used here, and the shooting is very much the same. The only real noticable additions is the ability to aim down your Iron sights or whatever scope is attached (A staple in the FPSer nowadays). Payback doesn’t do much in terms of innovation, but theres a solid experience to be had. The Single Player campain takes place all over the globe (much like the last game) and the locals are pretty varied. You’ll tackle the middle east deserts, dense rainforest and scale impossible moutains. It all sounds very big and at a glance even looks epic, but this game is the textbook definition of linear. You shouldnt complain though if you’ve played the previous titles, as they too suffered from something much like this. The main purpose of the game is not exploring though. You and I both know that Soldier of Fortune made its livin’ by turning your main character into a killing machine breed with a taste of blood. The best part of the game is the huge assortment of weapons you can use. You name it, they have it. Not only is the variety there with over 40 weapons to choose from, but the game allows pretty much everything outside of hand grenades to modified. Scopes, and grips help your rifles and pistols become much effective and also cooler looking. Silencers and larger magazines also add a nice touch of personalization. But don’t be fooled, this game may sound content heavy, but it will get old, that is more than likely the biggest flaw of Payback, is the simplicity. The reptitive gameplay can easily become tiring, and boring and drawn out levels seem to become very tedious and slow to drag at points.

Visuals and Audio for some scary reason are immpressive. The Weapons all sound very badass, and the graphics are, well, fantastic! This is actually a pretty rad looking game running on your HDTV. The Audio supports 5.1 surround sound as well, which only makes this chesse that much chesser!

 The Crappy budget title feel is great too. I mean, you know what im talkin’ about. The voice acting is laugh out loud funny (but horrific). The gore system in which you dismember heads, legs and arms, and watch human beings scream and bleed gallons of blood, is so juvinile, that it totally works in being criminaly funny. However, the game is just lacking that magic and depth of games like Double Helix. It is in fact noting great, in fact the game is pretty crappy for a shooter, but it beats alot of the other crap out there. Put it this way, its a great looking game, that plays crappy like alot of other shooter (i.e. TimeShift, BlackSite: Area 51 and Turok) but in those games, not only are you paying 30 more dollars, but they lack decapitating goodness, and rivers of crimson blood. So again, the gore is a big selling point.

At 29.99 you really can’t go wrong, and if you don’t like it or get bored, it will make for a good laugh ever couple of months.

6/10