Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix - Gold Edition

Aften the first set of levels, the game moves to Colombia, where you'll have to endure rather alert and accurate opponents constantly obstructed by foliage that isn't a problem for them. Add to that highly effective and sometimes poorly telegraphed enemy grenades and scripts that often will just outright kill you for not playing along. If you make it through Colombia and the subsequent brief level with forced dodgy stealth, you're in for a few hours of a decent FPS - but only decent, not brilliant. To be honest, however, promises the game gets better after a couple hours of utter misery isn't a good recommendation. Especially since what follows even at its best is never as fun as the previous game. There are loads of great or even brilliant games on here and elsewhere that you can do much better with your time and money.

I was so happy to see this was for sale again. It's been too long since we've had a legitimate way to purchase this game. Multiplayer is still going strong, BUT, it doesn't work right out of the box. Have to add some lines to your config file in the game directory (Google should point you in the right direction). A lot of servers are full of bots, but there's a few servers with a community keeping it together. Thank you, GOG, for bringing this game back to me!

I spent hours playing multiplayer back in the day and I truly miss this game. There's never been a FPS quite like this (as far as I'm concerned). The sounds, the maps, the nostalgia! And whenever I felt the need, I brought a knife to a gun fight. This game will forever hold a place in my heart.

The second Soldier of Fortune game came out in a time when games where changing. It kind of moved away from fast paced run and gun, but in a way it didn't. The shooting is generally good and the mission locations are varied, while the story does a decent enough job of moving the game forward. Getting headshots and killing multiple opponents in a short time feels satisfying and the level design often gives you some options on how to approach a lot of the situations. I still have the original discs, but re-bought it on GoG as I fondly remembered the games high points, and they still deliver, even though the game hasn't aged as gracefully as other titles from it's era. The graphics are serviceable, but you will have to check a lot of options to get them right and geometry and lighting feels dated. The bad news is that SoF2 is heavily influenced by shooters like medal of honor, no one lives forever and the first game in the series. This causes it to fall somewhere in between, but not in a good way. Movement is somewhere between true old school shooters and more realism oriented games, but enemies are quite accurate so you need to play the cover game. Unfortunately there are a few sections of with jungle, which kind of breaks the game and are just as frustrating today as when it came out (always hated the jungle missions). There are also a few several tedious "with your allies" kind of missions as well as story segments in which your pace is limited. These sections severely detract from the game's overall pacing and takes away 1 star from my score. Without these sections I would give the game a 4 star rating. Overall I will give a cautious recommendation. If you like old school shooters, you will likely have a good time in this game as long as you suffer through the bad parts.

Bought the game with nostalgic feelings as I enjoyed it back in 2002. Now looking back at it with recent (but reasonable) expectations - it is a _major_ disappointment. Almost feels like an amateur fanbased bug-filled FPS. You can meet: - enemies visibly popping out of nowhere, hitscanning and shooting your eye out through trees, walls and foliage from a mile away - cover hitboxes are huge and cheating. Enemies pop out of cover and hit you, however you cannot hit them, even leaning out they are STILL behind the cover. - a "stealth meter" which is completely useless (when stealth is needed the whole stuf is scripted so, when not, basically you CANNOT be stealthy, even prone crawling draws attention) - surprisingly linear, tubelike and ugly cubefest maps (with TONS of crates - cmon, devs tried to avoid "crate mazes" even back in 2002 - suprisingly chunky textures (even for 2002) - the only good thing is the sound design, it still has the well-recognized Hollywood-style gun SFX. Raven's similar-aged (basically came out a month earlier) Jedi Outcast is STILL a masterpiece in 2020. This.....thing, it just ain't my cup of tea. Unfortunately the nostalgy wore off almost instantly.