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Not So Fortunate

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: February 18, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I'll start this review by addressing the point that is near the top of almost every gamers list: graphics. IF you can run the game, then the graphics are well done and deserve applause. Running off the Quake III engine, the textures are nice and crisp, special effects such as explosions are convincing and thanks to a system called "Ghoul II," enemy body parts can be blown off realistically (more on that later). But players with even a GeForce 2 and a fast PC will still experience some severe audio clipping and horrible frame rates at some parts of the game, even while running those areas at low resolution! To get the best visuals, this is a game that requires the latest hardware.

The other aspect of the game that stands out is the audio. Much like Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault, everything sounds right. Bullets ricocheting off metal sound different than when they hit wood (wood even splinters when hit). Even the ricochet effects change depending on how the shot was fired. As mentioned above, the Ghoul II engine allows for "tear zones" on enemies that come off when shot or stabbed, and there's nothing quite as disturbing as hearing the squirting sound of an enemy's jugular after you take their head off with a shotgun.

In short, the audio and visuals of the game are definitely above par. Now for the bad... which is, unfortunately, just about everything else. The game is definitely centered around mindless shooting, although the game designers attempt to convince you otherwise (with "stealth missions"). The game is basically one large slaughter-fest. Although this may kick up the adrenaline for the first hour or two of playtime, by the time you've been doing this for eight hours and still are only halfway through the game, it gets tedious, frustrating and boring. In addition throughout the game, and especially annoying during the "stealth missions," the enemies have increadibly good eyesight. Basically this means that if you can see them in any way, shape or form... they can see you, which will set off the alarm. In "non-stealth" levels, once the alarm's been activated in a level, it never goes off. In "stealth missions" if the alarm goes on, you lose the level.

Additionally, one of the largest downfalls of the game is the linear design of the levels. Forget the beautiful, open-ended levels Deus Ex gave us (basically, here are your weapons, here are your skills, you figure out how to pass the level). In Soldier of Fortune II, your objective ALWAYS lies at the end of a long stretch of a large, linear landscape where all the doors (save one or two) are mysteriously and conveniently locked. If you play through the game a second time, it'll be just like the first since any potentially alternate route to reach the object is also conveniently blocked off, closed or otherwise inaccessible. Furthermore, the goals of many of the levels require similar guess work as the "pixel hunting" in old puzzle games did. For example, your objective might be to "enter the chemical building" or something to that effect. To get into the building you have to find the ONE correct door out of the 40 doors that line the street. This becomes frustrating after about ten minutes of no success. Speaking of chemicals, the plot of Soldier of Fortune II centers around thwarting the potential spread of a deadly virus... too bad that's been done too much already.

Finally, the biggest problem I had with the game was the way you actually fired. It sounds obvious, but in a first-person shooter, emphasis should be placed on making the activity of simply shooting the gun relatively easy. Aiming shouldn't be a pain in the ... It may have been my set-up (although I checked my configuration many times to make sure it wasn?t my settings), but when I would move the mouse just the tiniest bit left or right, the crosshairs would jump 5 to 7 pixels in that given direction. That may not seem like much until you realize that unless the enemy is within arms reach, you're likely to actually "jump" over the enemy's head (or entire body depending on their distance from you). Add this to the fact that unless you shoot an enemy in the head or take off one of their limbs, it generally takes around five hits to take an enemy down (shoot them once in the thigh with a pistol and they often just "shake it off" like a bad Steven Seagal movie). This can be annoying since it means you?ll probably reload your save games a lot. I consider myself pretty good at first-person shooters, but this one had me reloading every couple minutes. Very frustrating.

So although there's a lot of eye candy (i.e. "gore") and the audio's pretty good, make sure you play Soldier of Fortune II before you buy it. Just because it looks cool doesn't mean it won't end up being very frustrating.

Excellent FPS for OS X

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: February 22, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The other reviews here give a good idea of what the game consists of, so I won't re-run that information. It's your basic first-person-shooter with lots of action, lots of firepower, lots of body count; and as some other reviewers have noted, lots of gore. If you like fps's, you'll probably enjoy this one. There's nothing too new about it. It's the same old you-against-tons-of-bad-guys thing. The comment I wanted to make is that I have switched to a pure OS X Jaguar environment with no 'classic' MacOS running. This game works perfectly in my new environment with one caveat: you have to manually change one setting in the video controls or you will have intermittent crashes. The change is extremely easy to make. Just go to www.macplay.com tech support section and it's well explained. Once you've done that fix, you're in for hours of spewing hot death.

Low-grade game

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 8
Date: October 01, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I was hoping Soldier Of Fortune 2 would be as great as Return to Castle Wolfenstein or Medal of Honor: Allied Assault.
It is not.
I have a G4, 867 mhz, 768 RAM and a GeForce Nvidia3 with 64MB of memory and I still had problems running this game. The frame rate was so bad that I got nauseous. Even when I turned the settings down, I still had problems. And when I did turn the settings up for the best possible textures, they still looked bad. The limited saves doesn't help either. After you die, instead of a few seconds to re-load your quicksave, you can leave the computer, get some snacks from the kitchen and come back in time for your game to re-load.

RTCW and MoH had incredible graphics and both ran very well at high settings.
Don't expect the same type of graphics or gameplay from SoF2.
Save your money.

OSX in the house

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: November 03, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Honestly the PC guy who says macs aren't for games is living in the old days. Allot of FPS run a little slower on the mac because they were optimized for the pc and then ported to the mac. SOF2 runs well in multiplayer, in single player it can get choppy with the Geforce 4mx. I'm sure it would be fine with a Geforce Ti though.

Mac RULE

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 13
Date: October 23, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I'm sorry, but PC owners should not dis the Apple Power Mac G4! Why? Because Apples are a trillion times better than PC's. The Mhz argument is just plain stupid. My 933 Mhz G4 runs nearly twice as fast as a 2,300 Mhz PC in many applications. How can this be? Because the pentium processor uses old technology. Macintosh processors use new technology- we're talking about different things here- apples and oranges- (by the way- my mac came with a NVDA GeForce4MX- so you're wrong)
The Macintosh operating system (OS X) is the most advanced in the world. My computer hasn't crashed once since I got it 6 months ago! I have not seen a PC yet that comes standard with a SUPER DRIVE, which BURNS DVD's, BURNS CD's, and reads both! I also haven't seen a PC which starts up in 19 seconds. Nor one that comes standard with DVD burning, Digital Video editing, Music Management, Schedule Planning, Digital Photo Managing, and Instant messaging software- for free. Everything is integrated into the operating system.
Macs are the choice of graphics, digital video, and information analysis professionals. Does any PC have a program to compare with Final Cut Pro?
I think the reason PC owners hate Macs is because they know they are superior. Face it, Macs are faster, more capable, more advanced, and much cooler computers. PCs are stuck in the past. Don't be stuck with them!

Great game! Even if you need to tweak

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: October 11, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I disagree with the previous reviewer. Although I WILL contend that you really need ot tweak the settings when running this game, overall this game is awesome! For some reason RtCW runs like a dream on my dual 1 Gig w/ nVidia GeForce 4MX card at even high res settings with ALL the cool effect sturned on, which I would expect given the specs of the machine. With SoF2, I couldn't run the game at high-res settings, and had to turn off some of the higher level effects. That was defintely a bummer. I guess it's a bad port or something. That may be a real big issue to some people, and cause them to give low ratings, which I don't totally understand. Do you buy a game just to run it in hi-res graphics, or do you buy it to play a fun game?

Anyway, I thought this game was a great deal of fun, but be warned about one thing. If you're even a little sqeamish, then you might want to pass this, or just turn off the EXTREME gore effects in this game! Make no mistake, they leave NOTHING to the imagination. When you blast an enemy in the face with your M4 assault rifle or with the 12 gauge shotgun, you REALLY see the effects of what it would do to someone in real life. Enemy AI are modeled with lots of dismemberment zones, so it;s quite common to see arms, legs, heads and other parts get blown off your opponents. It's quite gory at times, (including squirting blood from the dismembered limbs!!) believe me!! There is a parental lock included in the game if your worried about kids playing this accidently. I know I would be. Your kids would probably have nightmares if they played this.

As for the plot, I've seen better, but it's pretty good overall. Basically your worldwide terrorist org trying to spread bioweapons, etc. etc. You play John Mullins, a member of "The Shop", a secret anti-terrorist organization. You can get the drift pretty easily. Some locales you get sent on are: Columbian forests/ruins, Tankers in the Atlantic, Hong Kong, Prague, and many more. The weapons you get are VERY cool! There's some really awesome firepower in this game!

All in all, I think SoF2 is worth getting if you really love 1st person shooters. Of course, like many of them in this genre, it's a little unrealistic that you basically get sent in alone to fight entire armies! But that's what these games are often about. There are a few times when you're part of a team, like with the Marines in Columbia, but overall you go solo on these. I say, give this a look if you like shooters, and DEFINITELY give it a look if gore is your thing; you won't be disappointed by the amount of it in this game!

Great game! Even if you need to tweak

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: October 11, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I disagree with the previous reviewer. Although I WILL contend that you really need ot tweak the settings when running this game, overall this game is awesome! For some reason RtCW runs like a dream on my dual 1 Gig w/ nVidia GeForce 4MX card at even high res settings with ALL the cool effect sturned on, which I would expect given the specs of the machine. With SoF2, I couldn't run the game at high-res settings, and had to turn off some of the higher level effects. That was defintely a bummer. I guess it's a bad port or something. That may be a real big issue to some people, and cause them to give low ratings, which I don't totally understand. Do you buy a game just to run it in hi-res graphics, or do you buy it to play a fun game?

Anyway, I thought this game was a great deal of fun, but be warned about one thing. If you're even a little sqeamish, then you might want to pass this, or just turn off the EXTREME gore effects in this game! Make no mistake, they leave NOTHING to the imagination. When you blast an enemy in the face with your M4 assault rifle or with the 12 gauge shotgun, you REALLY see the effects of what it would do to someone in real life. Enemy AI are modeled with lots of dismemberment zones, so it;s quite common to see arms, legs, heads and other parts get blown off your opponents. It's quite gory at times, (including squirting blood from the dismembered limbs!!) believe me!! There is a parental lock included in the game if your worried about kids playing this accidently. I know I would be. Your kids would probably have nightmares if they played this.

As for the plot, I've seen better, but it's pretty good overall. Basically your worldwide terrorist org trying to spread bioweapons, etc. etc. You play John Mullins, a member of "The Shop", a secret anti-terrorist organization. You can get the drift pretty easily. Some locales you get sent on are: Columbian forests/ruins, Tankers in the Atlantic, Hong Kong, Prague, and many more. The weapons you get are VERY cool! There's some really awesome firepower in this game!

All in all, I think SoF2 is worth getting if you really love 1st person shooters. Of course, like many of them in this genre, it's a little unrealistic that you basically get sent in alone to fight entire armies! But that's what these games are often about. There are a few times when you're part of a team, like with the Marines in Columbia, but overall you go solo on these. I say, give this a look if you like shooters, and DEFINITELY give it a look if gore is your thing; you won't be disappointed by the amount of it in this game!

One Of The Best!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: April 07, 2003
Author: Amazon User

Soldier Of Fortune II has to be one of the best online FPS's for the Mac! There are a lot of weapons to choose from, lots of maps, many different gameplay options, and numerous voting options. The replay value is incredible...I had this game since day one and I'm still playing! The only bad thing about SOFII is that its very demanding. Make sure you have the hardware before you buy it. I reccomend 1GHZ proccessor or higher for good performance.

Great Muliplayer game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: February 10, 2004
Author: Amazon User

I found the single player to be rather lacking and unoriginal, but SoFII still offers a fun multiplayer experiance, I even got my Dad playing! A good game, but more one to go play at a friend's than buy yourself...

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