By John Walker on January 29th, 2008 at 12:29 pm.
A review of mine snuck up on the PC Gamer website last week, without my noticing. If I paid attention, imagine the things I’d get done!
So, for your unbridled pleasure, here’s the not-truly-at-all wonderful Soldier Of Fortune: Payback.
An excerpt:
Payback is remarkably awful. In fact, it borders on the territory of gaming’s most bugged FPS ever. Tyres hover in midair, vehicles float two inches above the ground, severed limbs spin in a crazed dance above their former host. It’s laugh-out-loud terrible, interrupting any chance you might have of being offended.
29/01/2008 at 12:45 Meat Circus says:
2/10? Why such a high score? You been getting those BUNGS again? I demand a recount.
29/01/2008 at 12:52 mno says:
What do you expect from a budget game. Where other sell for E 69.95 nowadays this thing has hit the stores with a whopping E 29,95 and lacking any kind of copy protection. It is nothing like any of its predecessors.
For a game that lacking its still an amusing 4 hours of single player gib shooting. Don’t start about the online capabilities, the server browser is as budget as the game is but also amusing for a while. Although i doubt a strong mapping community will surround this game if it did have some mappers it would be more attractive yet.
Maybe not worth E 29,95 but it will pretty soon be in the budget bin for less.
29/01/2008 at 12:55 SteveTheBlack says:
I never really expected much from this game (to the point of forgetting about it entirely), but I do love a good review of a bad game.
The venom in each sentence makes it so enjoyable to read. I salute you, sir, for your hilarious review!
29/01/2008 at 13:01 AbyssUK says:
Why does nobody mention the comical voice acting in this… its brilliant!!
29/01/2008 at 13:52 Alex says:
Not at all surprising – “Double Helix” (or whatever the second SoF game was called) was terribly cheesy and childishly bloodthirsty (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I guess).
It was a bit like the videogame equivalent of a mild video nasty – trying hard to be really shocking, but never really managing just that.
29/01/2008 at 15:48 Babs says:
You seriously can’t turn while running?
I’d think that would be major disadvantage when fighting terrorism.
29/01/2008 at 16:35 Wrestlevania says:
It’s Boiling Point 2 then, essentially? Just without the ridiculous “it’s brilliant / it’s complete arse” flip-floppery that Eurogamer engaged in last time around.
29/01/2008 at 16:45 Kieron Gillen says:
No, it’s just shit.
KG
29/01/2008 at 16:57 Max says:
I trust the screenshot wasn’t taken in-game, since there’s a mouse pointer hourglass visible on it?
Or is it really that buggy? =P
29/01/2008 at 18:32 Janek says:
It was probably taken mid-crash or something.
I’m not really sure how they managed to fuck this up. High art the other SoF games might not have been, but they were silly, B-game fun.
Having played some of this.. yeah. It’s just horrible.
30/01/2008 at 00:06 Steve says:
KG laying down the beans there.
30/01/2008 at 00:07 Steve says:
Ok just noticed this new edit feature, great! But it failed 5 times to load my comment :(
Ps sorry for the double post.
30/01/2008 at 18:07 lio says:
i didn’t think sof3 was that bad… it actually had moments where i thought “damn, this looks really good” – the part with the uphill battle was pretty good imo.
of course it’s very different from the other sof titles but it’s actually the only sof game i finished.
however even the budged nature doesn’t justify the total lack of options (especially in the graphics department… only being able to change the resolution just isn’t enough).
the game ran like a dog on the x1950pro which i had until 4 weeks ago in 1280×800 (well, it was playable but not really smooth) and now with the 8800gts (g92) it ran smoother in 1920×1200 but still, very un-optimized game with a total lack of options… oh, i said that already…
@Babs:
you can turn while running… just not as much as while walking… sort of like running in gears of war but not even as bad…
30/01/2008 at 20:05 Garth says:
You cannot call an FPS “possibly one of the buggiest” unless you’ve played Fire Warrior.
Just… ouch.
30/01/2008 at 20:28 Kieron Gillen says:
I hadn’t heard it was that buggy actually. What was novelly broken about it?
It doesn’t compare to Soldner. It really couldn’t.
KG
30/01/2008 at 22:49 malkav11 says:
Many, many things were broken about Fire Warrior. I can’t give you an exact list because I didn’t get very far before quitting in disgust. (But bugwise, I dunno.)
I was rather horrified to discover that there were people who actually thought it was a good game.
31/01/2008 at 09:06 KBKarma says:
I showed my copy of the original review to a friend. After he’d stopped laughing, I told him about this place. He’s probably here already. Watching. Waiting.
Learning…