Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix - Gold Edition

It's tons of fun clearing out levels with the good old fashioned Grease Gun/AK-74/M4/OICW that is so prominently featured in this game. Word of warning however, I recommend playing on easy mode and turning off the weapon inaccuracy setting, as the game is more frustrating than fun otherwise.

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I won't say "don't get it". I will say that maybe you should reconsider getting it. While it has great response mechanics, Soldier of Fortune 2's faults are unfortunately overwhelming: - artificial difficulty (enemy grenades and emplaced MG's that the player won't know about on a first time playthrough being the worst offenders) - poor level design - terribly slow paced start - excessive headbobbing in crouch, extremely slow movement speed while prone - unnecessary mechanics such as weapon loadouts before deploying on a mission - forced stealth sections, while having underdeveloped stealth - terrible pacing of the plot - overly long and poorly written cutscenes where characters talk for long periods of time and say very little - poor voice acting - abundant unfinished animations - exaggerated terrible accuracy makes shooting more tedious than enjoyable at times - dramatic gameplay and narrative shift from the first game (not necessarily a bad thing, but not always desirable) The game is truly just not very good. It is worth checking out, but be warned that the opening part of the game is likely the worst part. Honestly though, the main reason to check out Soldier of Fortune 2 - and likely the main reason the game is still remembered today - is the gore. Beyond the entertainment value of seeing what the controversy was about (and how tame it is by modern standards), the interactivity in this regard is great. NPCs respond dynamically to what the player does, and even the environment can interact with NPC corpses (for example, broken glass). I truly believe that without the game's gore system, and the controversy that these mechanics caused, the game would have been forgotten much faster than it has been. There really just isn't much that Soldier of Fortune 2 does that other games don't do better.

Buggy mess that shouldn't have been released, it is a task to get this game to work properly.

While the original Soldier of Fortune was very much a run'n'gun shooter, with its realistic military theme being more of a gimmick, Soldier of Fortune II attempts to tackle this disconnect between the theme and gameplay by being a much more grounded and realistic experience. Sadly, I don't think that Raven managed to pull this one off. To be quite honest, this might be the only title out of the entire developer's portfolio that I not only dislike but genuinely hate at times. Some of the design decisions are pretty ridiculous and take the concept of realism way too far. For example, whenever you pick up an automatic weapon, then you're better off switching it to semi-auto because the amount of recoil and spread in a full auto mode is so over the top that you'd think John Mullins has arthritis. Isn't this game about a veteran mercenary? It really makes the gunplay feel dodgy when your badass hero can't even handle a burst from a machine gun without spraying bullets all over the place. You'll also spend most of the game leaning from behind corners and trying to pick off dudes at a distance because trying to advance at even a slightly faster pace will get you killed in no time, plus the enemies have a tendency to chuck grenades at you with accuracy of a clairvoyant. I only finished this game once before but the jungle level is usually the moment that breaks me whenever I try to give the campaign another go. It's just terrible. And don't even get me started on stealth mechanics, it's basically trial-and-error and isn't fun at all. Story-wise I don't think the game is terribly interesting either. The concept shows promise at first but the in-between-mission sections where you have to sit through uninspired dialogue scenes or explore the non-combat areas are very boring and go on for far too long. The first game always dropped you right into the action and any filler that was there was brief and purposeful but in this game, I was really struggling to care.