It was the year 2000, and it was a fantastic year in First Person Shooters. It was the year of The Operative: No One Lives Forever, Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force, Perfect Dark, Timesplitters, Medal of Honor: Underground, and Counter-Strike got it’s first boxed release to the public. Amongst these classics is Raven Software’s Soldier of Fortune.
Developed by Raven Software and published by Activision, Soldier of Fortune was released on February 29th, 2000 on the PC, and was later released for the PlayStation 2 and Dreamcast, as well as being ported to Linux by Loki Software. The game was named after the magazine with the same name, which was aimed at actual mercenaries. Currently the magazine is still going, but is a shell of it’s former self due to several controversies, including multiple people placing “GUN FOR HIRE” ads in the magazine for the murder of man. How the multiple people this would have had to go through missed this, I still have no idea.
The main character of the game is John Mullins, based on real life John Mullins, who is a Vietnam vet and former mercenary, and was brought in as a consultant to make the game more authentic. Although i don’t know what parts of the game were made authentic, because it goes with an 80s/90s action movie style instead of being a more realistic game like SWAT 3/4 or Rainbow Six. Although, in a video interview that came with the Platinum Edition of the game, John Mullins said that there are small parts of the story that mirror his real life, which makes me hope that he fought a psychopath in a highly advanced cyber suit at some point his life.
In the game, Mullins, who is a mercenary just like the real Mullins, gets his contracts from a cloak & dagger anti-terrorism outfit called “The Shop”. The current contract that “The Shop” has given to Mullins involves the theft of four nuclear weapons stolen by a Afrikaner Neo-Nazi group based in Germany, led by a man called Sergei Dekker. They plan to sell the four nuclear weapons to various nations, and you’re the guy entrusted to stop them.
Helping you with your contract is your partner Aaron “Hawk” Parsons, who also works for “The Shop” like Mullins, joins you in a few of your missions on the ground. The other person who helps you is your other friend, Sam Gladstone, who debriefs you on your contracts before you leave on your mission.
Surprisingly, Soldier of Fortune has a pretty good voice cast behind it, including Michael Clarke Duncun (The Green Mile), Earl Boen (The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgement Day), Brian Thompson (The Terminator, Cobra), Michael De Santo (The English dub of the 1995 Ghost in the Shell movie), and John Mullins himself is played by Tod Sussman (The Taking of Pellam 1 2 3, Beverly Hills Cop II). At lot of the voice acting is pretty cheesy, but the good type of cheesy.
The plot takes you all over the world, from NYC, Iraq and Japan to Germany, Sudan and Siberia, which means that the areas you visit are diverse to say the least, ranging from snowy mountains to jungles to deserts to the high tech city of Japan, meaning that you won’t just get the generic browns and grey of the modern shooters. Its pretty refreshing compared to the Call of Duty’s and Battlefield’s of today. There is even one level taking place in a slaughter house and is one of the highlights of the game.
Graphically, the game holds up fairly well, running on a modified Quake II engine. The game also uses the GHOUL damage model for the enemies, which allows you to blow the arms, legs and hands off of your enemies with your shotgun, or blow then into small gibs with your rocket launcher. Although i don’t think that a meager pistol could cause your lower intestines to burst our of your stomach quite like this.
Enemies react to where you shoot them. Shoot someone in the hand or leg, and they’ll clutch onto it out of pain. There was one instance where I blew the legs off of a guy and he still fell over like he still had them. The weapons also have some good sound design it, with the shotgun standing out, having some kick to it.
The game was the center of some controversy over the GHOUL engine. After the game was released, it received a complaint from a member of the public about the extreme violence to the British Columbia Film Classification Office, who then investigated the game. The BCFCO decided that the acts of violence and gore were not suitable for persons under the age of 18. In a controversial decision, the game was labeled as an “adult motion picture” and was rated as a pornographic film. In Germany, the game was placed on the Federal Department for Media Harmful to Young Persons index.
If you look at the game today, the game doesn’t seem as violent compared to some of the games released these days games (such as Mortal Kombat X and Hotline Miami), especially when games have been getting more realistic in the 14 years since the game came out. I wouldn’t exactly call it tame either. But the game does come with an option to disable all of the gore and password protect the option from younger people. There even was a version of the game with the gore permanently locked-out, titled “Soldier of Fortune: Tactical Low-Violence Version”, specifically made for Wal-Mart.
The game plays pretty much your standard First Person Shooter. There is an inventory, but it isn’t all that great. You get your standard grenades and explosives with C4 Explosives and M24 Frag Grenades.They work exactly the same away and you have to go through the inventory to select each one, so there is no point to having the C4 Explosives. There are also Flashbangs, which you can use to blind your enemies, which i never used outside of just the once just to see how effective it was.
There are also First Aid Pack’s that you can pick up, which are frustrating to use because you have to use it the same way you use other items in your inventory. I don’t know why you couldn’t just pick it up to replenish your health the same way you pick up Bulletproof Vests to replenish your armor. Finally, there are Night Vision Goggles, which I’ve never had to use. Ever. So really, the inventory is completely useless since items could have been left our and whatever is left could have just been associated with a key, like G for grenades or N for Night Vision.
The weapons are what you’d expect for a FPS for the most part. You have two handguns, the 9mm Handgun and .44 Magnum, a Combat Shotgun, a Sniper Rifle, a sub-machine Gun, a Silenced SMG, a Heavy Machine Gun, and a Rocket Launcher. There’s also the Combat Knife, which you can throw at enemies but are limited. You can pick up off the floor or pull them out of your enemies when they’re dead. Finally there is the H-24 Slugthrower, which can take out almost everyone immediately, and a Flamethrower that I also never used but works well.
The one gun that stands out however is the Microwave Pulse Gun, which i guess is one of the liberties that Raven Software took when John Mullins was consulting for them. Before you go on your mission, you can select what weapons and equipment you want to take with you. By default, i took the Bulletproof Vest and Health Kits because a few of the enemies are a little difficult to get past. I also take the Heavy Machine Gun because enemies drop the most amount of ammo for it and its generally the most effective against enemies.
The enemies are on the more difficult side but aren’t too bad, although you may have to go one difficulty setting under what you normally play so it doesn’t feel unfair. My only major complain is about the final boss. He’s not only a bullet sponge, but he has an overpowered gun that can pretty much kill you in one shot. There are also automated turrets during the boss battle that can kill you within seconds.
You pretty much have to get in a place he can’t reach, strafe left and right to avoid his one shot kills, and continually hit him with your most powerful gun, the Microwave Pulse Gun. That might be considered a bit of a spoiler, but its such a major complaint that i couldn’t avoid mentioning it.
The game also comes with a multiplayer component like most other FPS games at the time. It comes with your standard fare, like Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag, but it has some good variety in it’s other game modes. Realistic Deathmatch is more difficult, and has you carry only one weapon, increased weapon damage, and a fatigue meter.
Arsenal is another variant of deathmatch, but you get all of the weapons, and you get one kill with each of them to win the match. Assassin has you chasing after a specific target, whom you have to kill, all while someone is trying to assassinate you. You can only kill these two people, or you will lose points. Finally, there is Conquer the Bunker, in which there are capture points all around the map but touching easily identifiable by flags. The longer you hold down these capture points, the more points you get. The more capture points you have, the quicker you get those points. It’s pretty much Domination from Unreal Tournament.
The game is very easy to get working on modem systems. There is a mod out there called SoFplus for people who already own the game, and it helps a lot. Not only does it get it running on modern systems, but it comes with a bundle of other features, including widescreen support, FOV, fixes, a multitude of new graphical features that made it easier on the eyes, and the ability to play online without GameSpy.
There is a “Community Edition” of the game that has the game as well as a lot of other features. Since the game isn’t being sold, you shouldn’t feel too bad for downloading this. But if at some point the game gets sold on Steam or GoG, you may want to avoid it as stick with SoFplus.
Looking back at Soldier of Fortune, it does hold up fairly well. Well enough that if you look past the controversial content it’s most know for, the can be some fun to be had here, Copies are hard to find though, but I’d recommend finding a copy if you can find a cheap enough copy. I also recommend the Platinum Edition of the game. Not only does it include all of the improvements of the Gold Edition, such as improved AI, new multiplayer modes, a top of new multiplayer maps among many other fixes, improvements, and new features, but it also includes 5 more maps, the strategy guide in PDF format, and a preview for it’s sequel, Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix.
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