| Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Raven Software Gratuitous Games (Xbox port) |
| Publisher(s) | Activision |
| Engine | Quake III: Team Arena (with Raven's custom SDK) |
| Version | 1.03 |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows Mac OS X Xbox |
| Release date(s) | May 20, 2002 |
| Genre(s) | First-person shooter |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, multiplayer |
| Rating(s) | |
| Media/distribution | Optical disc |
| System requirements
Pentium II 450 MHz or equivalent, 128 MB RAM, 16 MB DirectX-compatible video card |
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Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix is a video game created by Raven Software, a sequel to Soldier of Fortune. It was developed using the Quake III: Team Arena engine. Once again, Raven hired John Mullins to act as a consultant on the game. Based on comments and criticisms of the original game, Raven Software developed Soldier of Fortune II to be a more "realistic" game, with tactical shooters like Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis and Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six as inspirations rather than Quake. A sequel titled Soldier of Fortune: Payback, made by Cauldron HQ was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in 2007.
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The theme of the sequel is germ warfare, as the mercenary Mullins and his new partner Madeline Taylor travel to Colombia to investigate a viral outbreak in a small town, only to link it to a shadowy organization called Prometheus. The virus, called Romulus, is followed by a computer virus called Remus which is programmed to delete files on any computer in the world, in this case, files relating to Prometheus and Romulus, so an anti-virus cannot be formulated. Prometheus then plans to blackmail the G8 countries at a summit in Switzerland for billions of dollars. It is revealed throughout the course of the game that a mole inside The Shop may be feeding information to the terrorists.
Other characters in the game includes Assistant Director Wilson (Mark Hamill), Deviant1 (Rosalind Chao), Manuel Vergara (Gustavo Vargas) and Alex 'Skip' Larson (Dee Bradley Baker).
The series' focal point, graphic depiction of human bodily dismemberment, makes another appearance in Soldier of Fortune II. GHOUL 2.0, as the new engine was called, features 36 gore zones, allowing for increasingly detailed depictions of gore and carnage.
In contrast with the first game, Soldier of Fortune II has a more diverse number of real-life weapons. Several of the weapons can have special attachments such as a laser sight. In the single player campaign, it is also possible to have mixed akimbo weapons.
Unlike the original game, there are no futuristic weapons or sci-fi elements. The most advanced weapon encountered is the OICW, which is based on a former weapon prototype of the United States military.
In multiplayer mode, there are five gametypes: team deathmatch, infiltration, capture the flag, deathmatch and Demolition. In Demolition, elimination, and infiltration modes, gameplay takes place in rounds, and players cannot respawn when killed until the end of the round.
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.[1]
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".[1]
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