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Horrible

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 9 / 12
Date: November 16, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Let me first say I am a huge fan of the Soldier of Fortune franchise. However this third installment is absolutely atrocious! The developer definitely dropped the ball. The game play is horrible, limited controls, you can't adjust the visual settings other than the resolution, and sounds are the worst I've heard in a game. For example, if an enemy is shooting at you 10 feet away there is no sound, you can't tell if you're being shot at by an enemy or listening to the background noise which is repetitive and loud! The only way you know you're getting shot at is by the screen flashing! There is no GHOUL; you can easily dismember your opponent with a BB gun or take an enemy's arm of by blowing on it hard enough if you want. Forget about an interesting storyline this is easily a competitor for worst game of the year. Multiplayer is nothing like SOF 2 its soo bad I won't even comment because it makes me nauseous! In short I have nothing good to say about this game... 30mins after I loaded it up I wanted my money back. If you feel like blowing $40 bucks on a game that will bore you to tears before you even finish the 1st level go for it, but if you're smart wait till this game hits the $5 valusoft rack where it belongs and pick up something worthwhile like CoD 4 or Crysis.

This is part 3?

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 5 / 26
Date: November 17, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Fans of the previous installments, especially SoF2, are very likely to be disappointed by this. RMG? Not here. Video options? Maybe, if you're only planning to change the resolution. Fun gameplay? The enemy spawn behind you and whack you across the back of your head. In short, this is a budget title and it shows. Only it isn't priced like one. At $40 this is way overpriced. If you were a fan of SoF2 you have two options. One, you can buy it knowing it is a sequel in name only, or two, you can ignore this release and find something of higher quality. Another game that has a cd key, that was developed to compete, and has the fans in mind at the development stage.

The best scenario would have been to make it multiplayer only and to mimic the settings and options of the previous game with an upgraded engine. The second installment had the Random Map Generator which was certainly unique and would have been nice to see back for this one. As it is this is just a new game that is SoF-like but is a mess. No understanding of those things that made the previous game the success that it was is to blame. For that they will find that this game will have been a waste of time to develop.

I would have given it two stars if they had better game options, such as audio and video, and if the game had better audio in-game. I'd have a hard time justifying more than one star with this overpriced, uninspired, empty game. Which is too bad, as I was really looking forward to it.

HUGE Disappointment

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: January 07, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This is an unfortunate blemish on what is a great series. The dismemberment killings are poorly done and make the enemies seem like mannequins. In previous Soldier of Fortune games the enemies would scream in pain as they slowly died from blood loss after having a leg shot off. In this one enemies simply fall to the ground, it's like fighting lifeless robots. The weapons are bland and boring with nothing you haven't played in a million other FPS games and the sound and music isn't even worth mentioning.

From what I've read Raven, who did the first two SOF games, had nothing to do with this one and it shows. Multiplayer was just terrible and it makes me angry to think about it. This was easily one of the worst games I've played in a long time and is 100% the worst SOF game in the series. I just can't recommend it all. The only positive thing I can think of is that the graphics are very nicely done......but that's pretty much it and it's not enough to make up for how poor the overall presentation of the game is.

Activision BUDGET says it all

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 3 / 5
Date: December 29, 2007
Author: Amazon User

What the heck is this crap? This is NOT even worth of soldier of fortune branding, but thats what you get when you have BUDGET in the production company. Maybe if they'd have stayed with Raven it would have been half decent.
But I still tried it anyway, thankfully I got it in the new/used section for $19 bucks instead of $40, and I STRONGLY suggest you do the same, IF you ABSOLUTELY MUST try this waste of code.
Yeah its fun to see the blood, but it gets old after the same baddie model shows up every third enemy. at least the rag doll physics were updated, but the dismemberment seems to have been toned down. Its too easy to blow off a leg, and in double helix, at least you still shoot of the foot or hand of the dismembered appendange, and remeber shooting the head bit by bit till the brain was out then, pop, it exploded on the next round? Nope, no more, a head shot turns the next into a crater from the chin up, no brain. which is about what I can say for the idiot who approved this game for release.
Two thumbs down and a third if I had another hand.
Save the cash and buy Crysis or maybe COD 4.

A poor tribute to the SoF series

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: January 22, 2008
Author: Amazon User

This is not like the original Soldier of Fortune games. Lame checkpoint save system that doesn't work correctly all of the time (i.e., you'll see multiple "save game" textual pop-ups, but if you die, you restart at the beginning of the level in my experience). Ridiculously unrealistic boss fights where 200+ rounds need to be dealt to a single man who isn't wearing body armor in order to "kill" him. A drastically toned down body dismemberment system (contrary to the advertising about this game being true to previous games in the way you can shoot parts of the enemy body off, while you "can" shoot pieces off, this isn't anywhere near as graphic as the previous SoF games were). Irritating Doom 3-style enemy spawns in areas you've already cleared (i.e., on one level, you'll shoot a sniper out of a tower and as you advance over a bridge another sniper magically appears in the tower in his exact place and starts head shooting you...)

The level environments are very linear with little or no reward for attempting to explore out of the way areas and machine gun placements are poor and nearly unusable in their turn radius (i.e., in one part of a level, I grabbed a stationary machine gun hoping to mow down droves of enemies in a mindless one way fire fight and the tangos spawned so far to the left that the gun couldn't turn to actually shoot them...I had to unequip the mounted MG and switch to a scope-equipped weapon to take them down before they killed me).

A poor tribute to the SoF series is this and not worth more than $10.00 bargin bin price at that (IMHO).

Worthless... no really it is.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 2 / 5
Date: January 23, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Soldier of Fortune is a good game. So is Soldier of Fortune II. Soldier of Fortune Payback? Garbage. I really haven't been this frustrated with a game in a very long time. I also was reminded why I NEVER buy anything electronic anymore without looking up several reviews.

So what about this wonderful *cough* game? Well for starters you pop out into the middle of a war zone that makes Iraq look like a pacifist location. Odds of survival? 0.0. You're going to die. I played the game for a while on easy. I tried many times to actually enjoy this game. Did I? No! I still can't get past one part on level 1. So true I don't have a HUGE amount of experience, but I have given up on this game. Here's the breakdown.

Graphics: 5. Ok I could let this slide, as graphics aren't everything (though to some they are). It was probably a lower budget game than most.

Sound: 0. Could the voice acting be any worse or repetitive? The answer is no. It wasn't bad enough to be hokey, nor good enough to actually pass as more than some guys with a freeware voice recorder.

Music: 3. Hey, I figured I'd be generous. It's ok for the first 50 runs of the same part of level one, and then it starts to grate on you.

Fun: 1. It's fun to blow off a few heads and arms and watch people jump around for a minute, and then you realize Hey! I have had this enjoyment since Mortal Kombat in the 90's, not impressive. If there was actually something more than a pistol blowing an arm clean off, I would be impressed.

Gameplay: 0. Terrible. The controls can be customized, but so what. Guys take 10-20 AK-47 rounds to kill unless head shot, you have no hit point indicator, fire in any proxemity of you kills you almost instantly, you can't hit the boadside of a barn with a shotgun, and for all the unrealistic other crap (blowing up cars by shooting their windshield, random mortars raining form the sky, etc.) you would think they might as well have suspended disbelief a little more so that you could actually reload your damn gun quicker than 8 seconds. And being covert? Forget it! They saw you, it's too late. Oh, and bad guys also spawn out of walls, dead bodies, etc. It's a riot. Honestly people testing for mines by running through fields have a better survival rate than players in this game.

Overall 1. If you really want to shoot arms off with a single shot, yet take 10 to kill people. Want accuracy like a storm trooper. Have that need to blow up cars by shooting windshields, then this is the game for you.

But if you are sane like me (ok so it's debatable), then you will AVOID this game, and save that $20-$40 for a game that is actually worth the CD it's printed on. Oh and as a bonus, this game was banned in Austrailia! Yeah, banned for being so pathetically awful. Really, please, do yourself a favor and avoid this junk.

Amazon's still great but the game sucks

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 2
Date: February 16, 2008
Author: Amazon User

As usual Amazon did thier job just fine but when the game arrived (I own the two previous versions) I eagerly opened it and loaded it on my computer only to find it would not run, it loaded fine but would not start. I immediately went to the internet to find patches or upgrades only to find there were none and no plans by Activision to put any out. Every forum was full of the same complaints I had. I threw it in the trash and will never buy Activision games again. Payback is an apropos title as they should payback all of the money they stole from loyal unsuspecting customers.

Far from the greatest

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 1 / 1
Date: March 04, 2008
Author: Amazon User

AI is horrible and overall it was not the greatest of games. I'd wait till it is in the 10 dollar bin.

Ooh That Smell

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 1
Date: April 24, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I started gaming in 1982-3 on a 64K Apple 2+ and started playing FPS with the very first Castle Wolfenstein and I have played FPS and RPG games continually since then. Yup, I am an old guy. I played the first two versions of this game and I found Soldier of Fortune one to be maybe worthy of 2.5 stars. The second version was much better maybe a 3.5-4 star game. It was a better game in every sense than the first. This new title "Payback" is appropriate... I really want my money back. This is one of the worst games I have played in 25 years of gaming. The word sucks shows up a lot in game reviews. This game warrants a rating of "perfect vacuum causing the complete implosion of the universe and the ending of time". I didn't even offer to give this game away. I was embarrassed to even own it. Its been gone and off my PC for months and my computer is still ticked off at me.

VERY Disapointed

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: November 24, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I have to say that I am very disappointed with this game. I really enjoyed the first two Soldier of Fortune games but this game did not live up to the franchise.

My first complaint, this game is broken out of the box! Yes, some of the updates help (at least I have sound now) but it lacks the polish of even mediocre FPS.

Second, the aiming in the game is terrible. You can be 30feet away with a M249 machine gun empty 100 rounds with the sight on the enemy and not hit him once!! It is extremely frustrating!

Third, even the dismemberment which Soldier of Fortune is known for, is surprisingly lame. It is hard to describe, whether it is too much blood (making it look like a cartoon) or the poor physics implementation, it just doesn't work for me.

Fourth, the options menu is pathetic! The game is extremely limited on customizable video, sounds, playability options and the options that are available and poorly done (why do I have to scroll through 30 resolutions and refresh rates to pick the one I want... what is this 1998??)

Overall, I just cannot recommend this game to all but the must fervent SoF fans and even then wait until this game is about 10 bucks.. you will thank me..

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