Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix - Gold Edition

Man, I was looking forward to playing this game. I wanted to play it ever since I read about it so long ago... The first game was mindless run and gun fun. I have few complaints about it. This one? Well... I wanted to love it. This is one of the goriest games ever made and I was stoked to see how awesome it played. I hated it. The Good: The gunplay feels meaty and impactful. Guns are loud and enemies drop in a few shots. Obviously, the game is incredibly gory, even moreso than most games on the market today. It's frankly embarrassing that a 20 year old game has better gore than most games on the market. The head alone can be split into 12 pieces. Holy shit. Enemies scream when you blow off limbs, they gargle on their own blood, they catch their guts as they spill out, it's nasty stuff. Very satisfying. The weaponry is more grounded, but that's okay. The guns feel good, that's all that matters. The Bad: Man, I fucking HATE the enemies in this game. They're smart: they'll use cover and try to flush you out with grenades instead of blindly rushing you. That's a good thing! However, they're total fucking BULLSHIT to deal with as the game goes on. They will dump so much lead into you with laser precision from seemingly across the map. A lot of people talk about how the jungle is total hell (it is), but the game never ever lets up. It is relentlessly difficult on Consultant and higher. They're all hitscan and they never miss. I will drop dead within seconds. The Hong Kong level is just a total clusterfuck of enemies coming out of nowhere and popping you in the face. I hate it. Being hard is great, if the challenge is fair. This isn't. This is trial and error bullshit at its worst. It honestly makes me sad that I dislike this game, but I don't think I've gotten this angry at a game in a long, long time. I have other myriad complaints, but the blatant artificial difficulty ruined this game for me. A shame, really.

I beat this on Consultant and boy was it a chore at times. This isn't a run n' gun game, but hot damn, some sections are super frustrating, and not in ways I enjoyed. Take RTCW, a game released about 2 years before SOF2. That game was hard and frustrating as hell, but man did I want to get back in every time I died. Not so with this game. The ai, on Consultant at least, can mow you down before you ever see them, and unfortunately before they ever see you it seems. And their nades are F***ING ANNOYING! For some reason, they throw nades AS SOON AS THEY SEE YOU many times and you barely have any sort of way of knowing then - boom - instakill, start over yet again. Yes, you will git gud as you progress, but it still feels frustrating knowing that some ai fixes and balancing could've made it much more enjoyable. Oh yeah, and the stealth "mechanic". Absolute garbage. Even GoldenEye, released 6 years prior had the ai actually trigger an alarm before the whole level became aware of you. Nope, as soon as the ai spots you, the alarm is blaring and you can't turn it off. Lame. All this being said, this game was epic when it first came out, so you should experience it. My suggestion, use the customized difficulty and turn on autosaves. You'll be saving yourself some major frustration, unless you enjoy self-flagellation, you kinky b*tch, you.

The single player campaign was OK, but where this game really shined was MP. There are still servers running today. I played countless hours online playing this, and it was the only game I loved enough to join a clan and compete in TWL. The RNG maps added a new, refreshing dimension to every match. I really like the slower pace than the original SOF. It was perfect.

Not a bad game overall, story and enviroments are kind of boring and repetitive but the shooting is enjoyable, gore is very very good to this day, once you get used to its old charm you will love it. +point for the Random Level Generator, there is infinite fun to be had with the inclusion of that.

First one made you feel like rambo/robocop with awasome fast action, here we got bad level design (I thought monkeys where desinging that vents section also most of the levels are just empty nothing), hitscan enemies (they can shoot you thru solid objects because as soon as they detect you they lock on you and their weapons can clip thru it), weapons design (im suprised at this point why weapons are not falling from player hand when shoot), garbage stealth mechanic (if you hit enemies and they not die instantly it will trigger alarm, yes no button pressing just magic alarm from nowhere)