Back in 1999, when I first saw screenshots for Soldier of Fortune in PC Gamer, I was appalled. There was a series of bloody scenes featuring huge splotches of blood and gunmen with heads and limbs blown off. The philosophical side of me began bemoaning the way human beings were treated in the media. As someone who tried to "protect" his kid brother from violent anime and Sub-Zero's MK2 spine-rip fatality, and almost walked out when the nice guy got snapped in half in Jurassic Park II>, I was sickened but still surprised that such a realistically gory game was going to see mainstream release. The days of justifying video game massacres by saying, "They're only aliens [or demons or Nazis or mushrooms]," were over.

Then, another issue of PC Gamer shipped with a demo of the game. I installed it and had a blast. Of course, being the paladin that I am, I always went for the hand shots, to disable the threat without killing the perpetrator. I handed control over to that same kid brother I had tried to shield from Ninja Scroll, and watched as he went through gleefully blasting people's heads off with a shotgun and mutilating the remains with a knife. I guess we both had an eye-opening of sorts that day.

Shoot to thrill, play to kill

In Soldier of Fortune, players assume the role of John Mullins, a real-life mercenary and Vietnam War veteran. John travels the world on a quest to recover four nuclear devices stolen by a mysterious terrorist group. Along the way, he shoots and stabs the living hell out of anything with a tattoo and plants the occasional C4 charge. If that sounds like a nice way to spend your day off, and if you don't easily get FPS motion sickness, then you just might fall in love with this game. Yes, you too can experience the unparalleled joy of blasting out the kneecaps of hired thugs while running through subways wearing camouflage pants.

The game goes for realism, and in that regard, it succeeds admirably. Besides the protagonist being based on a real person, the story attempts to feel real by incorporating post-Cold War political references and, of course, artillery and vehicles ripped straight out of the latest military magazines. Its real coup, however, lies at the heart of its GHOUL rendering system.

Taking location-based damage to new extremes, GHOUL maps 26 separate "gore" points on each enemy. As in Virtua Cop and countless games after, enemies react differently according to where your shots hit them. The difference here is that if you shoot a guy in the leg with heavy artillery, he will not limp around to play it up, he will fall to the ground about five feet from his freshly severed limb. Shoot at the head, and there will be no head left. Combining the number of impact points with the variety of weapons in Mullins' arsenal yields enough wound/maim/kill animations to occupy even hired guns with the shortest attention spans.

You start with small armaments, including the obligatory knife, and pick up more weapons as the game progresses. Eventually, you will find yourself in possession of rocket launchers, super sub-machine guns, and microwaves pulse guns that can burn enemies to a crisp from the inside out in seconds while simultaneously preparing any breakfast burritos or popcorn bags they may have been hoarding. Weapons can be retrieved from the steaming corpses of those who dared oppose you and they can also be bought between missions at your friendly neighborhood survivalist bookstore.

The enemies start out extremely dumb and only slightly improve during the course of the game. It's really the difference between an opponent who stands still while you blow him to high heaven and one that somersaults away from you, still in your line of fire. Either way, that sucker is dead, fast. Some morons are even nice enough to carry gas tanks on their backs, the better to crisp them up without wasting your precious propane.

The missions take place in various exotic locales, but you are mostly presented with a lot of twisting corridors that look the same within any one area. At some points, it feels like the developers just handed some underachieving kid a level editor and told him to go to town. In other words, the backgrounds are flat. While the thought of visiting Japan, Siberia, and Africa is exciting, I would have gladly stuck to one city if some thought had been put into making the levels themselves more exciting.

What's so civil about war, anyway?

SOF may be lacking in textures, but it sure isn't short on visceral thrills. While the backgrounds aren't terribly interactive, the enemies offer a wealth of possibilities to the depraved. Many weapons are equipped a secondary attack for your killing pleasure. For example, Mullins wields the knife like a fencer wields a foil, but, as entertaining and effective as that is, it's comforting to know you have the option to just throw the blade between the hoodlum's eyes and be done with it. Many of the larger guns have an attachment to shoot explosives, should you be the type that likes it quick and dirty.

A lot of attention was placed on the weapons; consequently, each one has a unique, realistic feel to it. I was particularly impressed with the kick from the heavy machine gun. The deep rumbling of the Dual Shock and the inaccurate spray of bullets added greatly to the realism (not that I've used any of those things in real life). The shotgun provides a nice satisfying bang. Adding to the atmosphere are the various idle animations for each weapon and the fact that it takes time to put in a new clip. Loading guns is not instantaneous, so don't get caught with your chamber open.

Though enemies eventually fade from the ground after death, while they are there you can slash into their trunks, hack off their limbs, or fill them with hot lead. Alive or dead, bodies react to your aggression by bleeding, burning, or twitching, as the case may be.

Mullins also carries various items that may be of use, such as nightvision goggles and blinding flash packs. Like weapons, items are available for purchase in-between missions.

There are a couple of major downsides to the game that really drag down the final score: the frame rate (horrible) and the loading time (inexcusable).

The original title premiered a couple of years ago on the PC, and it shows. Usually, bland graphics are not a major concern for me, and that is the case here as well. What I find harder to stomach (literally) is a choppy frame rate in an FPS. First-person shooting plus thirty frames per second plus jumping onto crates equals major queasiness. The picture is not nearly as smooth as it should be, and the action even occasionally pauses and stutters when you are being swarmed. If I were running this on a Pentium 233 with a TNT2 graphics card, I would overlook that, but on the powerful PlayStation 2, it is a travesty.

Maybe the worst part of all is the ridiculous loading time. Since the levels are big, I can understand the need for ten or fifteen seconds at the beginning of each section. What puzzles me is the loading after you lose a guy. As if falling off a train or being cut to pieces by machine gun fire weren't punishment enough, after losing a life, you are forced to load the entire level over again! Why? I'd rather be subject to ten seconds of mocking laughter than watching the loading animation. At least that would make some kind of sense.

Wha-at is it good for?

Most of the care in designing Soldier of Fortune seems to have gone into making enemies die. They scream, they twitch, they plead, they bleed in exacting detail. If you are into low-budget Cinemax action fare and want the freedom to hack up whomever you please, however you please, change my rating to a B. If you are a typical die-hard gamer, though - one who has experienced Half-Life and Deus Ex, especially - please let John Mullins stay in retirement and sit out this mission. You both deserve better.

· · · Nick