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Soldier of Fortune is a first-person shooter series known for its graphic violence. Dismemberment and gore is the draw and, personally, I think it makes for very satisfying gameplay. The first two games feel like action movies in video game form. They’re not perfect and Solider of Fortune II is noticeably unpolished but they are good fun, nonetheless. Raven Software was responsible for the first two titles but the reins were handed over to a new developer for the third entry, Solider of Fortune: Payback, which was met with negative reviews. Developed by Cauldron HQ and published by Activision, Soldier of Fortune: Payback was released for PC, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 in November, 2007. For this review, I played the PC version. I did consult the game’s PCGamingWiki page before playing to see what I might need to do to get it running properly on a modern system and I discovered I had to use a hex editor to force my desired resolution.
Payback does not see the return of John Mullins. Instead, the story follows a new protagonist, Thomas Mason, a mercenary who works for the organization known as The Shop. He’s sent to Iraq to rescue a diplomat only to be betrayed by a fellow operative. After that, Thomas seeks revenge against the terrorist organization the operative is connected to. Ultimately, the plot is terrible due to poor writing and dialogue and uninteresting characters. It’s also very short and ends on a cliffhanger. You can beat the campaign in under five hours. Payback does feel like it was made on a budget and it lacks the charm of the previous entries. I’m not going to say the first two games told incredible stories but they at least had some interesting characters and, to me, felt like action movies in video game form. Payback’s entire campaign feels like it was made by people that know very little about the series and only delivered the bare basics, failing to capture what made the previous games so enjoyable.
Payback is a run and gun shooter with an emphasis on gore not unlike the previous entries. You run around and shoot bad guys spilling their blood all over the environments. The campaign plays out in missions and before jumping into a mission, you can choose what weapons to bring with you. More are unlocked as you progress through the story and the game does offer a decent selection. The gunplay is okay. Most weapons sound pretty powerful and the gore is what really drives home any sense of satisfaction. You can once again blow off enemy heads and limbs, enemy death animations look pretty cool, and a firefight typically results in blood splattered everywhere. Wounded enemies will sometimes stagger around and downed but not dead enemies can still shoot at you. Enemies seem to break apart very easily in Payback and the result is typically blood spraying everywhere. While it can look cool, I do think it looks ridiculous at times. It’s hard to put into words but I feel the gore effects here don’t always convey the same kind of balance of cartoony and realism like the previous games did.
Several elements from the previous games have not been brought over to Payback. For one thing, there are no health and armor pickups anymore. Instead, health regenerates. You can no longer lean, there’s no equipment, the P.A.D.D. is gone, and there’s no custom difficulty mode. You can play through the campaign on Easy, Normal, and Hard and several missions towards the end are just cheap bullshit. Such bullshit that I would recommend first time players play on Easy. But even on Easy, those missions can still be frustrating. I do want to mention that I played through the game on Normal and then went back and played through select missions on Easy. Payback does come with a multiplayer component but I was unable to find any matches.
Unfortunately, the gore is the only thing Payback has going for it and it’s not enough to mask the fact that this is a very average and dull shooter. You run around the environments blasting away bad guys. That’s it. From beginning to end and it’s as basic as it gets. Enemies run around and shoot at you and they often come pouring out from multiple directions. They’re not very bright and will rush you every so often and sometimes even run right past you. Most bosses are spongey, there’s no cool set pieces, and I would say the only cool scenario is the first mission. You run around a town that looks like a war zone with explosions frequently going off around you. The way it’s presented, I thought it was kind of cool.
Most of the time, it didn’t really matter what weapons I brought with me or what attachments I chose for them. Weapons can be equipped with different optics, suppressors, grenade launchers, and some other stuff. Some do affect a weapon’s stats but the game rarely required me to alter my approach. I never had to worry about recoil or handling no matter what weapons or attachments I equipped and stealth isn’t really an option in my experience. I was picking off distant foes and enemies in towers with submachine guns and assault rifles just as easy as I was with sniper rifles and most weapons seem to be able to blow enemies to pieces.
There is a couple of things I don’t care for regarding the Gear or in other words, the weapon selection system. For one thing, there’s four slots and one of them is reserved for grenades. But you can only bring frag grenades so the slot is always grayed out. There’s no other grenade types to choose from which is disappointing. Second, weapons of the same type don’t share ammo here so it doesn’t really matter if you carefully choose your loadout and attachments, unless you bring weapons the enemies are carrying, once you run out of ammo, that’s it. You’ll have to take a weapon dropped by an enemy.
On the Normal difficulty level, all the missions up to the last three or four were pretty much smooth sailing for me. I died every so often, typically from enemies that seemed to come out of nowhere or from foes with grenade launchers but I can’t say I ever struggled or had a particularly tough time. Then I got to the final missions where the difficulty spikes hard. Enemies can drop you instantly if you’re not careful making the final set of missions more frustrating than anything else. For example, as soon as you turn a corner or enter a room you’re immediately killed. It’s that kind of thing. It’s horrible. In my experience, the frustration of these missions is alleviated on Easy but not by much. What makes this even worse is that you can’t lean around corners. These missions become a serious test in patience. It’s infuriating trial-and-error gameplay.
Most bosses are spongey as I mentioned earlier. One in particular is equipped with a grenade launcher so he can basically drop you in one shot and he takes an insane amount of damage to kill. After he killed me for maybe the tenth time, I tried a different approach that finally worked. If you’re having trouble avoiding his shots, stay close to the motherfucker. I stayed close enough to him that I triggered him to perform melee attacks and whenever he would try to back away I found that if I just stayed in his face, he wouldn’t launch any grenades. At the same time, I unloaded my weapons into him until he dropped. In the end, the entire fight is ludicrous. It’s cheap and not fun. He’s by far the worst boss in the game and he’s not even the final boss.
Payback does take you to different locations around the world, much like the previous games do. The environments are linear and waypoints or objective markers appear on the HUD so you should never have trouble figuring out where to go or how to proceed. There’s nothing to collect and no real reasons to explore. You’ll shoot your way through a town, jungles, caves, prison camp, brothel, and club, among other locations. All the major locations are distinct but some areas do feel copied and pasted like several prison buildings for example. Missions will have you destroy things, kill people, and rescue prisoners. Enemies can be found everywhere and the enemy models reflect the different lets call them factions, not unlike those in the previous games. There’s not much to say about the environmental design since it’s pretty straightforward and there’s very little that’s interesting or exciting about the environments.
For it’s time, I think Payback looked good. The character models and animations look good and the gore effects are solid. I also think some of the reload animations look great and explosions look cool. Some aspects of the presentation definitely show their age now and I would say the game’s biggest eyesore is the frequent pop-in. On the audio side, weapons sound pretty good, explosions sound booming, and firefights are typically accompanied by a lot of shouting. So the action typically sounds loud and intense. As for the the soundtrack, tunes kick in when the bullets start flying but I can’t say there’s anything special or memorable about the music. On the technical side, the game ran fine and I encountered no major issues. The only real bug I noticed was certain interaction cut scenes (if you want to call them that) being presented upside down. I should tell you that I did force some settings through Nvidia Control Panel because they were unavailable in-game like vsync and anti-aliasing and as I indicated earlier, I used a hex editor to force my desired resolution.
I did not enjoy Soldier of Fortune: Payback. At all. I guess you could say it’s a franchise killer. Although, technically it’s not the last game. From what I understand, it was followed up by Soldier of Fortune Online in Korea. Nevertheless, Payback is awful and a piss poor representation of what makes the series enjoyable. Say what you want about the unpolished Soldier of Fortune II but at least it’s got heart and feels like some actual care was put into it. It just needed more time in the oven. Payback is what happens when you only scrape the surface. When you only take the basic elements that make something fun but have no real understanding of why it’s fun. Yes, over-the-top violence and gore is the gimmick of the series but that’s all the people behind Payback seemed to understand.
I don’t know if Payback is the result of a low budget, rushed development, or if it was simply designed to be a cash grab, or maybe all of the above, but I do know it’s an average run and gun gory shooter with the “Soldier of Fortune” title slapped on it. To me, it doesn’t feel like Soldier of Fortune at all. There’s more to the name than just blood spraying everywhere. Payback doesn’t convey an action movie feel like the previous entries, the plot is terrible and feels like an afterthought, all the characters are uninteresting, there’s nothing particularly exciting about the campaign, and certain aspects of the game are poorly designed. The difficulty spike near the end is so sharp that I wonder if it was actually play tested thoroughly. Because it’s certainly not fun.
I would not recommend Soldier of Fortune: Payback. It’s an average shooter and terrible Soldier of Fortune title. It feels empty. Hollow. It feels like no actual thought or care was put into it. The gore is the only thing it has going for it but it doesn’t carry the game nor does it hide the fact that the gameplay is dull. Payback fails to reach the quality of its contemporaries and predecessors in terms of action and excitement. Avoid it at all costs.