Is Soldier of Fortune: Payback a bad game? No, not really. It's a rather enjoyable (if simple) and good looking shooter. It's just that there have been so many amazing playing and looking games in the past few months, that Payback can't compare in comparison.
As cliché shooters go, Payback is no "Black," but it's not bad either. If all you're looking for is a predictable, middle-of-the-road shooter - you know, like if you just beat "Mass Effect" and want to rent a couple hours of mindless mayhem - you could do better, but you could also do a lot worse.
Just paid $10 (NZ) for this and I have given it a 7 even though I am still playing the single player campaign for the first time. What a time warp. Developed in 2007 it looks more like a 20th Century N64 game. Basically, it looks TERRIBLE, Sounds TERRIBLE, (some of the worst voice acting ever) and is infested with more flaws than I care to name. BUT................... It's a cracking, old school shooter that asks nothing of you but to blast your way through every mission, no thought required. Brilliant......... Ten Bucks well spent.
The best thing Activision could have done is discounted the price making Payback closer to a budget title. At the current price point, I can’t recommend Solider of Fortune: Payback for anything more than a rental.
For some unknown reason Activision took a pretty respectable franchise (I still play SoF2 from time to time to this day, and it is still installed on my PC), and chucked it in the garbage.
Soldier of Fortune’s damage model is probably its major selling point and, lamentably, the only thing that makes its combat entertaining. [Feb 2008, p.96]
Well is the first game of the series i played. The history is rather secondary and empty in the beginning but started to get good later on. The gameplay is rather good, point and shoot and move... if you stop you die. Easy enough to understand how to play.
Overall the game isn't totally horrible. The problems are unstable frame rates, terrible animations, ridicules AI, and overall low budget graphics and sound. Once you get past all of that, the game is mildly entertaining.
I had heard about Soldier of Fortune: Payback's ridiculous level of violence and decided that I would give it a try as it was only 4 dollars. Overall, I was very disappointed by this game, even if it was very cheap. While the extreme gore is kind of cool at first, the novelty wears off after the first 20 minutes. After that the gore just feels gimmicky. The game is also extremely frustrating due to the very poor AI. The enemies are programmed to do a grand total of two things: suicide charge at you and attempt to beat you to death with the butt of their gun, or stand in the open and shoot at you. This makes the game feel extremely tedious and boring. The terrible controls only add to the mess, as they are very unresponsive and make targeting a pain, even at close range. Overall, Soldier of Fortune: Payback is a tedious and boring mess that isn't worth your money, no matter how low the price is.
A sheer disappointment in comparison to Double Helix. It's generic and unpolished. To make things even worse, the developer decided to strip away the interesting and unsettling gore systems of the last two games in favor of buckets of faking looking blood and limbs that fly off and subsequently disappear.
SummarySoldier of Fortune Payback evolves the signature gameplay of its predecessors with refined controls, tension-packed warzones, and an enemy damage system that may be shocking to even experienced FPS players. Boasting more weapons options than any previous Soldier of Fortune installment, Soldier of Fortune Payback's impressive arsenal inc...