Soldier of Fortune (computer game) |
Soldier of Fortune is a .
==Background==
Soldier of Fortune was developed to be based on the Soldier of Fortune magazine. About midway through the game s development, Raven Software hired a professional mercenary, John Mullins, to act as a consultant on the game for purposes of realism and accuracy. A fictional version of Mullins was eventually made into the game s main character.
Soldier of Fortune was one of the first real-world first-person shooters, with modern weapons and human opponents, as opposed to more fantasy/sci-fi oriented games like Doom or Duke Nukem 3D .
==Gameplay==
A very controversial video game, Soldier of Fortune was best known for its graphic depictions of firearms dismembering the human body. This graphic violence was the game s main gimmick, much like geo-mod of Red Faction or bullet-time of Max Payne . The game detailed extreme graphic violence, in which character models were based on body parts that could each independently sustain damage (gore zones). There were 26 zones in total, and the makers called this the GHOUL system. A shot to the head with a powerful gun would often make the enemy s head explode, leaving nothing but a bloody stump of a spine remaining, a close-range shot to the stomach with a shotgun would leave an enemy s bowels in a bloody mess with his or her intestines oozing out, and a shot to the nether regions would leave the victim clutching their groin in agony for a few seconds before keeling over dead. It was possible to shoot off an enemy s limbs (head, arms, legs) leaving nothing left but a bloody torso. Non-violence was also a possibility, if you were a good shot it was possible to shoot an enemy s weapon out of their hand, causing them to cower on the floor in surrender.
In spite of its claims of being a realistic and accurate shooter, Soldier of Fortunes gameplay was fairly arcade-ish and not particularly different from other more fantasy-oriented first-person shooters. Because of this it was criticized for basically being Quake with Terrorists instead of Demons. Weapons have perfect accuracy even when you re moving around, and basic gameplay would often involve running into a room, then strafing around shooting everything that moves. Much like a standard shooter character, the player moved extremely fast and could survive a few dozen bullets before dying. In fact, John Mullins could survive more than 4 direct rocket launcher shots to the head. Additionally, in the last few levels the game would introduce futuristic science fiction weapons, the most notable of which was a Microwave Pulse Gun that basically acted like a continuous laser beam. In the final battle, the game s main villain came at you with a railgun-like laser while wearing body armor that allowed him to survive hundreds of machinegun bullets or 17 direct head shots from a high powered sniper rifle before dying.
Many gamers also complained that the plot was too over-the-top and Hollywood . The story involved the theft of nuclear weapons, and the main enemy turned out to be an Afrikaner Neo-Nazism group based in Germany.
==Story==
The story was the basic action movie plot. At the beginning of the game, Terrorists steal 4 nuclear weapons from a storage facility in Russia, and proceed to sell them to Third World nations around the world. This is a prelude to the acquisition of advanced Weapons of mass destruction by this terrorist group.
John Mullins, working as a Soldier of Fortune for a Mercenary Organization known only has The Shop , and his partner, Hawk, are assigned to prevent the nukes from falling into the wrong hands, and stop the terrorists in their plans.
The first level featured skinheads who had taken people hostage in a New York City] subway system. It also included levels in [[Iraq (featuring Saddam Hussein), Kosovo, and Sudan.
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