Reception
Soldier of Fortune was praised as being a solid and entertaining shooter, with one of the game's greatest praises being its graphic depiction of gore and violence, which both proponents and detractors consider to be more realistic than most first-person shooter games.
The PC version of Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix received mostly positive reviews, however, there was some speculation that it had been rushed in order to avoid cannibalizing sales of Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast (also produced by Raven Software), another title released within weeks that was also based on the Quake III: Team Arena engine. As a result of its apparent premature release, parts of the game seem unbalanced or unpolished, presumably due to a lack of extensive playtesting.
The stealth mode was criticized as overly simplistic since alerting sentries triggers alarms which can not be turned off for the duration of the mission. This nullified further attempts at proceeding through clandestine means, making sneaking and silenced weapons useless, and forcing the player to resort to a straightforward attack in order to complete the level. However, assaulting was very difficult in certain situations as engaging in firefights could be deadly. The only practical way to overcome this was to reload the level or start from scratch.
Upon release the game was filled with many crippling bugs such as problems with performance and a tendency to lock up easily, which was fixed in the Gold edition. The Gold edition also boasted new content such as more maps and new weapons to use. This additional content was also included in the Xbox port.
The Xbox version was heavily criticized since it did not improve on any of the PC version's flaws despite an additional year of development time, so it did not keep pace with the advancements in competing first person shooter games. It also had graphics far below what was expected for the Xbox, with bland textures and a low polygon count that led some reviewers to describe it as a "PC to Dreamcast to Xbox port".
Read more about this topic: Soldier Of Fortune II: Double Helix
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