Soldier of Fortune: Payback

Positives: + bodyparts fly when hit + various weapons and costumization to choose from + varied landscapes + sniping option + good graphics + good sound and music + partly entertaining Negatives: - the AI is not the best, and is often unfair - some parts are too hard - the checkpoint system is not polished enough - damage model is to simple - unstable and buggy - enemies often keeps popping up and respawning - does not have a quick save function - not as good as the first two games Total Score: 6/10 Recommended modifications: Widescreen fix: Go to the Save map Open profile.dat with HxD Find the string which displays the resolution, e.g. 1600x1050x60. Replace it with the resolution of your display. FPS lock: Use RivaTuner Statistics Server and lock the FPS to 60. Anything higher will make the game glitchy and hard to play.

This game is NOT a soldier of fortune follow up. Nor is it the same devs. This was done by Activision Budget, and that's exactly what it was. NO investment. They utilized the SOF IP to sell this horrible excuse for a game. That was all. If you purchase it , buyer beware... I mean, REALLY BEWARE. If you look at the EXE file, the name on it is " Mercenaries Wanted ". That was how we in the SOF2 community knew it was not what they wanted it to be. Game play is retched and filled with bugs that never got fixed. Merrick Former moderator of Gamingforums.com Former Poster for soffiles.com

This game is a black mark on an otherwise very solid FPS franchise. This isn't the worst game of all time but it is definitely in smelling range of the worst shooter of all time. I've played some bad games, Daikatana, Duke Nukem Forever, Warhammer 40K: Fire Warrior. Those are all bad but have at least some redeeming factor, even if its just so bad its fun to laugh at (see Daikatana). SoF:Payback has no redeeming features. The closest it comes is the limb based damage with gibbing functions (ala blowing a guys arm/leg/head clean off). Unfortunately, with poor hit detection, even after manually setting framerate to 60fps, and ungodly bad AI, there is little joy to be found in the gibbing of braindead AI. The map design is equally as awful as the gameplay and AI. Many enemies dont spawn until you've passed an invisible line and often spawn from behind you in areas you've just cleared leading to numerous cheap deaths, requiring memorization of spawn points and triggers. I'm not gonna talk about the story as the writers clearly didn't put in any effort and neither shall I. Just understand that at the end of the game, you are no closer to catching the bad guy than at the start. The biggest FU given to the players is the fact that even if you force yourself to beat this sorry excuse for a game, you get nothing. Not even the ability to take the weapons unlocked thru the campaign back to early levels and wreck people. The weapons available to you are purely map dependant. If, for some unknown reason, you feel compelled to play this steaming pile of software, DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES PAY MORE THAN 5 USD. That gives you roughly one dollar per hour to beat it. Most of those hours will be spent repeating the same level over and over as you try to figure out where that one guy with the grenade launcher is shooting you from, but I digress. Seriously, don't buy this, dont play this. It's terrible with no redeeming qualities.

I said it when it was first released and i'll say it again. Horrible game with terrible animation, stupid AI, dodgy hit detection and lacklustre maps. This game has some references to 'The Shop' in it and the Soldier of Fortune name slapped on the box. There is nothing here worthy of the Soldier of Fortune name.

Compared to SOF 1&2 this is a rough game however the series was always rough the game itself is not terrible however the glitches present in the base game (I am unaware of any patches or fixes by gog) are more than annoying and tend to render the game broken however there are ways around the more pressing glitches such as hitboxes not working (windowed mode) and the more pressing issues being silencers not working as the AI acts as though they dont exist and the lightly put difficultly spikes that go from bad to insane as the enemies get better weaponry if you love this series it is worth trying however know what you are getting into as imersion and stability are not this games forte