First Comment! review Tiem!

Hoo-dawgie! First off I'd like to welcome new and old to my ranthole. What better way to start off than to get some of MY views on some sort of .. product... instead of the usual anime
TODAY

I present...

Soldier of Fortune:Payback (Australian Edition)

Now, SOFP is the apparent logical succesor to the original Soldier of Fortune series, under a new developer and different plotline. Yeah, I'm not entirely sure why they dumped Mullins and his badassery (perhaps something to do with making the plot more PC and party-line than what was before), but it seemed pretty silly in my books. so, you play as this mercenary for a further diluted apparition of the "The Shop" from the original games, and you must save the world and make with some payback for being betrayed during the first mission (sorry, but if I didn't spoil that, this whole game review thing would be ignoring the white elephant in the room). Okay, it's not a brilliant plot by any stretch of imagination, but really, you don't expect all THAT much from a game into it's 3rd installment.
For all it's vapid vagueness in the storyline, the game is fairly straight to the point in directing you everywhere, so no complaints about being lost in the occaisionally maze-like levels. The gameplay behind Payback is fairly standard FPS fare, with your typical arsenal of doom. What is different, apart fro mthe sheer number of attachments for some weapons, is weapon stances. Take for Example pistols- by default, pistols are a one-hand held deal, but press the magic button (also is the Grenade launcher button), and it switches to the much more real-world-accurate two-hand hold. it gives more accuracy, drops recoil ,but you can't sprint. It's actually handy, because it means not having to resort to some downright shitty "ironsights".

Level Designs are 100% linear shoot-em-all arenas, almost all the way through the game. That, combined with waypoints, make the game play fairly fluidly. To the deveopler's credit, for hte most part, the levels look pretty nice. Sure there are some ugly spots, but there are a lot of nice spots. Props there. And a good look at some opium fields(in a country I can only assume is Afghansitan, for real-world-grit). Oh, and there are decidedly boss-like boss fights. You know the kind, the ones where you only can damage it at certain points where the game decides you can. That kind. Not necessarily bad, but it does take a few points of reasonability out of it.

Onto detail art (characters, guns, etc). For the most, all the art in is solid, and I'd have to say that animation and character lists must have been high in their list of priorities, because both are pretty nice. Effects are aright, but I must admit, they're nothing you haven't seen before these days. HDR standard, same with soft shadowing.
You've heard the good,noe here's the skinny on the shit.
Controls are stiff at best, unresposive half the time at worst. Damage for weaponry is way off proportion for most of the weapons in the game, same for accuracy. Stealth is impossible. I mean, they give us the option to knife fuckers in the back, and equip silencers. Neither are worth a diddly-fuck if the AI will see you through walls, see you even if you turn or blink. It's a paradox, I swear to god.
Shooting enemies in the game feels like shooting paper targets. I'm serious, Thanks to the removal of the gore system in the AU version of the game, there is so very little tactile feedback from shooting, you may as well be shooting walls.
The Menu Interface was designed by a bunch of guys who just found photoshop for the first time, too. It's horrid, especially compared to SOF2, which was brilliant.
Also, the MP is SHIT. Not that i could play mind, there are no servers online, and you can't jsut run around the levels. Oh no, needs at least 1 other player to play, but lets face it, WHO else bought this game, apart from me?

Now, if we also compare SOFP's feature list to SOF2', you'll notice a significant downgrade from it's predecessor too, notably losing the random mission generator, GHOUL2 technology, and a few extra things that SOF2 had as niceties.
It is a shame really the the RMG went, because that weas truly clever and handy to have something like that, it really made the game replayable.

To sum up, SOF payback, I think, was a game that wanted to be mainstream and big bidget, but had none of either to back it up. THe result, some good intentions that were ufotunately not enough to make the game anything more than mediocre.
I gave it a Waffle Hut waffle out of Kitten.