Soldier of Fortune (video game)

What happens when you take Video Game Cruelty Potential and Ludicrous Gibs to their extreme. The main selling point of the SOF series by Raven Software is the extremely detailed damage system that simulates many areas of bodily damage (and gruesome deaths to go along with it). You are given many tools to play with said damage system, from Shotguns for full limb chopping action to Pistols and other such weapons for those precision groin shots, along with extras like Flamethrowers and Microwave guns (pretty much as insane as it sounds). The game apparently had the real-life mercenary John Mullins (who also starred in the game) make sure the game was as realistic as possible. The storyline and weapons like the microwave gun puts the extent of his guidance under serious dispute, but nobody cared. It also stood out for being a surprisingly decent FPS even without the gore system, as well as having some interesting ideas like the possibility to customise your difficulty setting ("stock" options were provided that scaled up, but you could also have stuff like very limited inventory space but easy enemies, or vice versa, along with other options like the save system).

Soldier of Fortune 2 attempted to build on everything from the first game, with more detail to the gore system, a longer game, more weapons (but with the crazier ones removed) and a very advanced graphics engine for its time. Some say further focus on realism makes the gore system less amusing (despite the higher detail level) and that the weapons and locations being less OTT (despite there being more of both) causes the game to be nowhere near as enjoyable as the first, but Your Mileage May Vary. On the other hand, the multiplayer is said to be incredibly good and suffer from none of the issues the single-player side does. The detail of the damage system in both games still beats the majority of games made today. It also has a random mission generator which worked quite well.

Soldier of Fortune: Payback was made by another company whose traditional focus was budget games. The results are pretty much what you'd expect.


 * Absurdly Spacious Sewer: The opening level in Kosovo in the first game.
 * Awesome but Impractical: The OICW in the 2nd game is an experimental futuristic assault rifle with a computerized scope that allows you to zoom in at long range, see in nightvision, and even highlights enemies with red targeting boxes. It also comes with a semi-automatic grenade cannon with a laser-targeting system and computer-assisted range-finder that can be used to set grenades to airburst at whatever range you like. It's also incredibly clunky, with an awkward menu-driven interface that requires 5 separate buttons to use. The grenade launcher is impossible to fire without using this system.
 * The trusty M4 assault rifle, on the other hand, is Awesome Yet Practical. All you have to do to lob an impact grenade at your enemies is to press the alt-fire button. Very useful for clearing out corridors at medium range, especially in the later levels where almost every enemy drops grenade ammo. Unfortunately, the M4 lacks a scope, so the OICW still has it beat for sniping.
 * Awesomeness Meter: Sort of.
 * Badass Bystander: The security guard standing outside Sam Gladstone's room in the Hospital mission of the 2nd game. Genre savvy players will think "he's toast!", but he is actually quite capable of defending himself against the attacking mooks despite only being armed with a regular handgun. He may still die, but it's not unlikely that he'll survive either.
 * Banned In Canada: It's classified similarly to a porn movie. Not surprising.
 * Blasting It Out of Their Hands: One consequence of the component damage system is you can actually disarm enemies by shooting their guns out of their hands. In the first game, this caused enemies to basically surrender and cower in terror. It's much less useful in the second game, as enemies will simply run over to the nearest weapon and pick it up to continue fighting you. The third game does away with this entirely.
 * Body Armor As Hit Points: Seen in the first two games. In the second game, some weapons do have minor armor-piercing ability, but the effect is so small as to be inconsequential gameplay-wise.
 * In the first game, magnum and sniper shots can damage you through your armor.
 * The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard: Ridiculously overdone in Soldier of Fortune 2.
 * Alternate Continuity: The third game.
 * Chunky Salsa Rule: Exploded head, severed limb, or spilled guts equals instant death.
 * Critical Existence Failure: Played straight. The most hilarious variant is that if you shoot a civilian in 2, Mullins is apparently so overcome with guilt he spontaneously dies.
 * Dead Character Walking: A rarely triggering glitch can cause an enemy to not notice they're supposed to be dead. Due to the game's damage system, this can result in an enemy continuing to run around and shoot even after they've been reduced to just a bloodied torso.
 * Dead Sidekick: Hawk. Taylor, not so much.
 * Devil in Plain Sight: The second game. Let's see, who could the Big Bad The Mole possibly be? Is it our wise old mentor, our heroic captain, our plucky female sidekick, or the creepy thin guy who hates our guts, constantly gives bad advice, always acts negative whenever good news happens, and is voiced by Mark Hamill?
 * Difficulty Spike: The first several levels of Payback are your standard Call of Duty-style FPS, with your character possessing regenerating health and the ability to soak more than a dozen assault rifle rounds before croaking. However, in the last 3 levels, the enemy receive a massive increase to their damage level, allowing them to kill you in just 2 or 3 shots from a SMG.
 * Disney Villain Death: Wilhelm "Saber" Dekker suffers this fate affter he is shot by Mullins.
 * Dropped a Bridge On Him / Disposable Woman: In the second game, Madeline Taylor is unceremoniously gunned down by a Mook at the beginning of the Hospital mission, just halfway through the game.
 * Evil Laugh: Sabre shows quite a bit of mirth as he escapes in the first level of the first game. Also exhibited by Sergei Dekker after he kills Hawk.
 * Fackler Scale of FPS Realism: The first game was heavily on the "classic" end of the scale, with very fast "Quake"-style running-around-shooting-everything gameplay. The second game was much more towards the realistic side, with "Counterstrike"-style gameplay involving lots of firing from cover and leaning around corners. The third game falls somewhere in the middle; the weapons and character movements are realistic, but you have regenerating health and the enemies are brain-dead drones who simply run towards you while shooting and screaming.
 * Faux Action Girl - The female Prometheus soldiers in SOF 2 are noticeably weaker and poorer equipped than their male counterparts, the game code makes it obvious this was a very deliberate choice. Also, the female boss in Payback is probably the easiest to kill of all the game's bosses.
 * And Deviant 1, who isn't much of a threat, despite being part of a Dual Boss battle, the other opponent in which is the Interrogator, That One Boss.
 * Alas, poor Taylor.
 * Gameplay Ally Immortality: In the 2nd game, the Marine fireteam that follows you through the last few Columbia missions is seemingly unkillable (unless you shoot one of them, upon which they kill you). In fact, given the Nintendo Hard nature of the game, you'll be better off taking cover and letting them do most of the work. The buddy who helps you through the last Hong Kong level is killable, but he has a butt-load of hit points, making it unlikely anything short of the M60-wielding level boss will kill him.
 * Gorn
 * Hand Cannon: The Silver Talon.
 * Harder Than Hard: Unfair difficulty. Noise meter goes up very quickly, leading to tons of Respawning Enemies, which can get you overwhelmed, killing one wave of enemies only to cause more noise and summon more enemies. Not as unfair as it sounds, though.
 * Soldier of Fortune II's "Soldier of Fortune" difficulty setting; seriously limited saves, enemies do significantly more damage with their weapons, etc. in a game which is already Nintendo Hard on the normal difficulty setting.
 * Have a Nice Death - If you jeopardize the mission or accidentally hit one of your allies, they yell "execute him" and you die instantly(they don't even actually shoot you).
 * Heroic Bystander: Due to how the A.I. works, the civilians in the Hong Kong levels may occasionally pick up fallen weapons and use them to fight the gangsters attacking you. They're not exactly the best combatants, but they can still kill a gangster or two if favored by the Random Numbers God.
 * Hey It's That Voice: Michael Clarke Duncan and Earl "Dr. Silberman" Boen in the first game. Lots of Hey It's That Voice moments in the second game; your boss is Liquid Snake(Cam Clarke), and your mission is to save Skeletor(Alan Oppenheimer) and Duke(Michael Bell) from Luke Skywalker The Joker/Fire Lord Ozai(Mark Hamill).
 * Instant Death Radius: Enemies in Payback do quadruple damage if they can shoot you from point-blank range.
 * Kick the Dog: The mooks in the Subway mission of the 1st game will commit acts like shooting a hostage for "being annoying" and push another in front of an incoming train, probably so you won't feel guilty about blowing them into Ludicrous Gibs. Later, the Big Bad does this to Hawk.
 * Ludicrous Gibs: Expect plenty of this while indulging in the above.
 * Made of Iron - Whereas the first two Soldier of Fortune games featured semi-realistic enemies that could only survive a couple assault rifle bullets (with the exception of the first game's armor-plated final boss), Payback features several boss fights against enemy mercs who can take a few clips of assault rifle fire before dying. Most of these bosses aren't even wearing body armor.
 * The Torturer and Deviant 1 bosses in the second game are made of iron, too. Specifically, they take 10-20 assault rifle shots to kill, despite not wearing armor (or, heck, even clothes), whereas standard enemies in full body armor go down after a handful of shots.
 * Mooks
 * Elite Mooks - The Order soldiers in the first game who appeared in the last few levels and were equipped with body armor and automatic slugthrowers. The second game has elite Prometheus soldiers wearing a blue suit of full body armor (making them look exactly like Rainbow Six operatives), which allowed them to withstand multiple assault rifle shots (in a game where 1 or 2 shots is usually sufficient to kill) and even allowed them to survival a few headshots from lower-caliber firearms.
 * Gas Mask Mooks - Various enemies in the first game, although somewhat justified in that they work in a WMD plant. The Prometheus soldiers in the second game also wear gas masks.
 * Ninja: Japan in the first game (see Refuge in Audacity again).
 * MoralGuardians/MurderSimulators : Oddly averted considering its nature.
 * Nintendo Hard - Soldier of Fortune 2. Full stop.
 * Especially on the hardest difficulty.
 * The last 3 levels of Payback are also like this, as the enemies get a massive damage increase to their weapons, despite the fact they're still using the exact same weapons as in all the previous levels (with the result that you die after only 2 shots from an MP5, whereas all the previous levels played like a standard action movie FPS where you could take more than a dozen rounds to the face before having to worry).
 * Pacifist Run: Hard to pull off but quite possible (with a few exceptions where you have to kill) on lower difficulty levels in both the 1st and 2nd games thanks to you being able to shoot the weapons out of your enemies hands.
 * Porn Stache: Yeah...
 * Reed Richards Is Useless: In the first game, Mullins confronts Saddam Hussein face-to-face but is unable to simply shoot him because this was back in the 1990s when the real life Saddam was the guy considred to be in charge of Iraq, for better or worse. May also be considered a Funny Aneurysm Moment.
 * Refuge in Audacity: In the first game, in case the Ludicrous Gibs and weapons like the Microwave gun weren't a clue, the part where you fight your way through a nuclear base under a slaughterhouse is the point you realise the game doesn't take itself the slightest bit seriously.
 * Red Shirt: Most allies that don't directly accompany you fill this role, usually having scripted deaths. The police in the Subway mission, The KLA soldiers in the Kosovo mission etc.
 * Rule of Cool: See Refuge in Audacity again. Also the more outlandish weapons in the first game, and, at one point, busting into one of Saddam Hussein's fortresses and having in your sniper sight, unfortunately you can't shoot him.
 * Short-Range Long-Range Weapon: One of the many failings of the A.I. in Payback is that many enemy soldiers will actually run at you from several dozen feet away to club you with their rifles instead of actually, you know, shooting at you.
 * Shout Out - During the Helicopter Extraction level in part 2, for a little "mood music", the pilot puts on "Ride Of The Valkyries", an ode to Apocalypse Now. The box gets destroyed by gunfire shortly after.
 * Sliding Scale of Silliness Versus Seriousness: The first game very much rests towards the "silliness" side. The second game much more towards the "seriousness" side. The third game falls somewhere in the middle.
 * Sociopathic Hero - Mason in Payback definitely comes across as one of these. Notably, while both Mullins and Mason shoot an unarmed prisoner in the face, Mullins does it to The Dragon after he mocks the deaths of Mullins' friends (which he has just recently caused), whereas Mason does it to some random Arab accountant for calling him names.
 * Well Mason WAS going to let him live, until the accountant stupidly bragged that if he was in Mason's position, he wouldn't have hesitated to kill him, then Mason probably realized that letting him live wouldn't be a very smart idea.
 * Stock Scream - The second game uses a number of stock screams for Mullins' death sounds.
 * Take Me Instead: Used by John in the first game when Hawk is held hostage by Sergei Dekker. It fails.
 * Teleporting Keycard Squad: The first game does it right in the first level when you enter an otherwise unoccupied room to grab some ammo. Sometimes justified with enemies arriving through locked doors, but in the worst cases, they pop into existence right in front of you.
 * Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: They're great if you're a sadist, but they take a while to catch someone on fire and don't have much spread.