Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix

Xbox review by Philip Morton, published on Saturday 14th June 2003

John Mullins is an extraordinary man. He can he fit around 25 weapons in his pockets, recover from gunshot wounds within seconds and remains a skilled marksman at all times. He’s a rare breed, a long lost relative who was born in a different time. These days heroes walk around in shiny green armour and can only carry two weapons at a time. Sure, they get to drive tanks, but they never get the spacious pockets that John Mullins has. It’s nice then, to play a good, old, Rambo-style shooter once in a while. Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix is one of these - a no-nonsense ‘blast everything in sight’ fragfest. It’s time to put those bulging pockets to use.

Single player is split up into two modes; Double Helix and Random Mission Generator. The first allows you to play through all 55 missions, connected by the story while the latter mode lets you play all the maps in several different scenarios. Double Helix is all about a new threat that has arisen in the form of a bio-terrorist organization and their two-pronged Gemini Virus. Now, you’re off on a transcontinental mission to stop the terrorists and destroy the virus before it’s unleashed on humanity.

It was the Random Mission Generator that interested me the most when I started though. First of all, you select where you want to fight and what scenario you want to play, and then it’ll pick a random map for you. A notable addition is the ability to pick your own weapons, which allows you to try out ones that you haven’t previously sampled in the story mode. During these missions, you are accompanied by another soldier, who I found was surprisingly intelligent. He won’t get stuck on scenery, he can open doors all by himself and holds his own in combat.

Sadly, the opposite can be said for your enemies. The ‘bad guys’ don’t give chase or take cover, they just blunder around, waiting for their heads to be blown off - literally. You get the feeling that some guy with a beard has placed them on a spot with orders to shoot at someone if they come past. The ironic thing is, is that this lack of intelligence rarely matters, because you will have blown them apart before they get the chance to do anything stupid. They are admittedly cannon-fodder for your sizable arsenal of weapons, but that’s really what the game is all about - killing people and blowing stuff up.

Now the Soldier of Fortune series has a bit of a reputation for violence, don’t you think? SOFII uses the GHOUL II engine which “allows per-pixel hit locations that allow ultra realistic damage modeling”. That load of jargon translates to, “if you shoot someone in the leg, the leg comes off”. To be fair though, the gore isn’t as bad as I expected - limbs don’t come off as if everyone is made out of Lego. Sure, there’s plenty of blood, but I prefer that over the clean, sanitised Medal of Honor games.

What about the game itself? What does it feel like? SOFII is surprisingly similar Return To Castle Wolfenstein on the Xbox. In fact, both are published by Activision. Now I’m not suggesting anything dodgy has been going on, like code being copied, but it seems a bit strange to release two fairly similar games at the same time. However, the similarities in gameplay only come up when you consider movement, speed and level design. The controls are well set out, but movement in-game is a bit slow, like RTCW. John Mullins seems to jog around, never in a real hurry.

The levels aren’t particularly open ended, nor are they as tight as Medal of Honor’s. There isn’t exactly a choice of where to go, but you don’t necessarily feel pressured into going in a certain direction. However, there are problems with this. You’re never quite sure where you are - there’s no arrow, compass to guide you, just your curiosity and sense of direction. Most of the time, you can just follow the sound of gunfire, but when you get towards the end of the level and there’s no signs or clues around, it gets confusing.

Soldier of Fortune II does have some redeeming gameplay features though. Unlike Ghost Recon, you can’t zoom in all the time to aim, so the Gratuitous Games (the developer) have made a couple of half-moon shapes appear around the crosshairs when they pass over an enemy. Without this, you’d be struggling to hit anything. Small red arrows appear on-screen when you’re hit, indicating when fire is coming from. This also caters for enemies above and below you, which proves invaluable.

The graphics is where SOFII really trips up though. They’re not particularly bad, they’re just extremely bland. Character models are fine, but the landscape is all the same. The desert levels have exactly the same shade of sandy-yellow everywhere. The outside levels are a bit too foggy and all the bushes are 2D and revolve around when you move so you think they’re 3D. The levels in Double Helix mode are much better though, so it’s really a mixed bag. There’s also a few problems with collision detection, and a bit of slowdown occasionally.

The sound is fairly standard, nothing special. You also seem to have the ability to hear enemies talk at the same volume when they’re right next to you, as when they’re 50 meters away. Although it doesn’t come under audio, I have to mention that the vibration function’s also a bit odd. It seems to come on when you least expect it, like when the character strokes his gun or clenches his fist. Only a minor annoyance, but still noteworthy.

Now before you go and cancel that pre-order, there is a saving grace to Soldier of Fortune II - Xbox Live. You can fight up to 11 other people online in 6 different gameplay modes. Deathmatch, Capture the Flag and Team Deathmatch are, I’m sure, self-explanatory. Infiltration sees one team having to retrieve an item and get it back to their base, Demolition has one team attempting to plant a bomb at one of two sites to win, and Elimination is a basic ‘last team standing wins’ match.

The usual features of Live are present - Quick Match, Optimatch, friends and players lists, and voice in-game. Online play is good fun, running round blasting people in the face with a shotgun. The 20 multiplayer levels seem to have more effort put into them than the single player ones, although the blandness of the graphics is still apparent. There also seems to be more weapons in multiplayer than in single player, and some cool ones at that. It seems John Mullins has expanded his colossal pockets even more.

If you don’t have Xbox Live, then you can play via system link over a LAN - it’s exactly the same as Live play, but without any lag. The only downside is getting all those people to your house to play it, which can be a pain. There’s no co-operative mode, which is a shame, and no bots available, so if just the two of you want to play, you’re on your own.

What’s going to keep you playing it in the long run? If you have got Xbox Live, then the lifespan is greatly increased, otherwise there’s not much incentive to keep playing after the first few weeks. On a side note, there’s plenty of multiplayer maps, with 5 being planned as downloadable content. A single player arcade mode with bots and the multiplayer maps would have increased it significantly, but sadly there isn’t one.

Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix isn’t one of the best games around, but it’s enjoyable while it lasts. Single player will keep you occupied for a couple of weeks, but after that you’ll have to rely on online play to keep you entertained. If you’ve got Xbox Live, then it’s certainly worth buying. If you’re not yet on broadband though, then I’d strongly recommend a rental first. It looks like those heroes in their shiny green armour still have the upper hand.