One of our first glimpses of this Middle East-set FPS was a trailer showing off the brutality involved. While the first two games in the series were hardly without controversy, they didn't set out to court it quite so obviously as this.
Great care was taken to show how, after you've blown a man's leg off, you can shoot off the remaining limbs one by one; the same calculated cruelty a child displays in torturing a spider. But with realistic, human reactions.
When playing the game it quickly becomes apparent why they chose to promote the violence. That's all they've got.
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.
You're cast as mercenary Thomas Mason, a man with less personality than a table leg. He is tasked with shooting at foreigners in the name of fighting terrorism, and nothing else at all. This is a special kind of linear, which doesn't even pretend to offer anything other than prescribed corridors.
Any notion of employing tactics must be immediately abandoned. You run, you gun. Try to take an alternative route and you'll be quickly punished with an invisible barrier. It is, essentially, a shooting gallery.
So: SoF's famous damage modelling. Somehow devolving from those of SoF2, enemies have about seven points at which they display significant harm. You can shoot off arms, thighs and knees, and of course, heads.
However, Payback's so stupendously crap that shooting an enemy in the shoulder can make his leg fall off. The attempt to be incredibly gory just becomes laughable, with awful comedy spurts of blood ejaculating from every stump, as victims stagger about as if trying to stand up on a floor of marbles.
This slapstick foolery negates any notions of disgust or visceral pleasure. It's cartoon rubbish.
Like a guide for what not to do in an FPS, Payback leaps upon any opportunity to suck. Saving? No. Instead, the most ridiculously spaced-out checkpoints. So having the baddies constantly spawn behind you and shoot you in the back is oh-so-much more rewarding.
Completing some sections became a matter of obsession, the wanton violence a means of you punishing the game. BLAM! That was the game's head I just exploded. SPLAT! That's the game's leg that I chopped up into three pieces.
Oh God, what else? You can't turn while running, cover rarely provides protection, washing hanging from a line is an impenetrable barrier, and there are boss humans who take literally hundreds of shots to die, and are invincible to ROCKETS. And SoF2's best feature, the multiplayer? Forget it. It's as generic as can be, across five uninspired maps.
If only it were truly as bad as Soldner, then it would have the redeeming value of being fun to show your friends. But this is an embarrassment that you'll rather hide in the attic.
Totally getting this when it hits bargain buckets for a fiver just for the sheer fun of laughing at a terrible mess of a game and seeing how far you can push massive flaws
Totally getting this when it hits bargain buckets for a fiver just for the sheer fun of laughing at a terrible mess of a game and seeing how far you can push massive flaws
Please don't, trust me, it's a horrible waste of a fiver. Don't give these people your money, they deserve nothing, for not only making a terrible game, but also completely ruining the reputation of a great series of games.
When this comes out on budget, sitting next to it will probably be Quake Wars or Cod4. If you never got them, let those games have your fiver instead.
Soldier of Fortune: Payback obviously is not worth a full-price purchase, but I bought it from the bargain bin and enjoyed some cheap thrills. Except for the final two levels (why does a brothel have a giant underground garage?), this game sports great-looking graphics, but still runs smoothly. I also liked the wide variety of weapons, and the ability to accessorize said boom sticks. Creative inspiration for Payback seems to come from an adolescent, Eastern European imitation of 1980s Hollywood action movies, but that's okay. Like those movies, Payback is "so-bad-it's-good" entertainment. If it crashed, I would not be so forgiving, but the patched version exhibited zero technical problems on my PC. A score of 2/10 is too harsh. I think 5.5/10 is fair.
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