Soldier of Fortune Demo

When a game is released under the FPS genre, violence is a given, otherwise the “shooter” part of the acronym would not make too much sense to begin with. However, most titles choose to justify the violence using various gimmicks, such as portraying the enemies as evil terrorists, zombies, or Nazis during the second World War.

Soldier of Fortune decided to combine two of the most evil things out there into one for its purposes, but not even that was enough to prevent people everywhere from complaining at the excessive gore displayed by the game. However, the realistic violence became a strong point for the title as well, in the meantime, since the players were rather excited about the prospect and quite impressed by the capabilities of the graphics engine.

As far as the background story is concerned, you play as John Mullins, who is a mercenary working for whoever pays the most. In this case, the mission is to track and kill a group of Neo-Nazi terrorists, after they have successfully managed to steal a few nuclear missiles from Russia and they are attempting to sell the loot to various shady governments around the world.

Violence aside, the game is very refined when it comes to the mechanics and the physics engine, since the shooting sequences are intense and unpredictable. The fact that your bullets have a real effect on the targets, whether by crippling a leg or shooting the gun out of their hands, means that there are countless ways a confrontation can turn out in the end. Moreover, a critical hit to the head or the stomach is always lethal, regardless of what weapon you happen to use.

The actual graphics engine was rather advanced for its era as well, considering the fact that it was just a modified version of the Quake 2 engine. The developers brought their own modifications to it, by integrating the so called GHOUL engine, which is responsible for the localized damage zones on the enemy bodies. A great deal of effort went into the level design too, although you can sometimes get a bit disoriented, due to the somewhat repetitive environments.

Soldier of Fortunes may have its fair share of enemies out there, but the truth is that the violence does greatly improve the gameplay mechanics and it makes for very entertaining gaming sessions. It is worth noting, however, that you can turn off the gore at any point, or even choose to do so during the installation phase. There are many warning screens before you actually get to play it, so it is definitely not like you can be surprised at it.