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Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix

by Joe "Impaler" Highman

Article Type: Review
Article Date: July 03, 2002

Product Info

Product Name: Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix
Category: Squad-based Tactical Shooter
Developer: ActiVision
Publisher: Raven Games
Release Date:
System Spec: Click Here
Files & Links: Click Here

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They Prefer the Term “Consultants”
How does the world protect itself against an army of bloodthirsty terrorists hell-bent on mass murder by means of biological warfare? According to the good folks at Raven Games in conjunction with Soldier of Fortune magazine, simply take one part mercenary weapons expert, add a dash of assorted small arms, heavy weapons, and explosives to taste; mix in a goodly amount of motion-captured adversaries; spread over several real-world locations; slice into 10 single player missions across 70 levels. Serve warm to an established and enthusiastic following.

This is the recipe for Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix, the newly released two-disc sequel to the highly acclaimed Soldier of Fortune. Chez Raven has served up some of the better non-combat simulation titles on the market today, including Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast and Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force, both featuring the power of the venerable id Software Quake III “Team Arena” Engine. This engine has demonstrated time and time again an expertise in rendering complex yet seamless graphics quickly and efficiently, and providing an excellent atmosphere for multiple player online running-and-gunning.

I feel like the Predator

Adaptive System Requirements
One of the nice features of the Quake III engine, and incorporated into Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix is the adaptive performance scaling depending on the class of the station that runs the executable. The code supports what it calls “Low-End” systems in the P-II family all the way up to “High-End” gaming platforms with P-IV 1.4GHz CPUs. The game will automatically detect the system hardware, including graphics adapter, and scale itself accordingly, but those players that are willing to sacrifice detailed shadows in favor of more blood can override these settings!

Redefines 'Strafing', doesn't it?

Some titles are just awash in a sea of blood, and Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix is no exception. In fact, it was the visceral power of the Doom and Quake engines by id Software that first introduced the term “gibs” into the lexicon of the modern gamer, and Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix certainly follows this legacy nicely. Parental controls and lock-outs, as well as user adjustable controls allow the violence to be as grim (or not so grim) as one prefers, but the first time a not-so-well-aimed shotgun blast vaporizes the head of your foe, even Atticus Finch would be screaming for more.

We think we can save his arm. Where would you like it sent?

Enemy trooper models are outfitted with up 32 to 36 “Gore Effect” zones, from which a myriad of pain-inflicting opportunities abound. Put a 5.56mm round into the exposed shoulder of a sentry, and the impact of the round traveling 2300 feet per second will spin him partially around. Score only a glancing blow, and your .45 caliber ACP rounds leave your pistol and enter the left thigh of the bad guy, and he will drag the all-but-worthless leg along for all he’s worth. Or, if you’re feeling particularly anti-social, and use the 20x zoom of your sniper rifle to aim one round for the “naughty bits,” and the woeful recipient of the full-metal jacket round will drop his weapon and protectively grasp the grievous defacement of his manhood and slowly sink into a welcomed death.


I Dismember Momma
As mentioned, what would a Quake based game be if you couldn’t separate a bad guys arms, legs, and head like some misfortunate Barbie doll left behind for an evil little brother’s mischief? The player is equipped with enough firepower and wherewithal to wreak some serious havoc on opposing multiplayer mercs and the A-not-so-I flunkies placed in your path.

Several offenses against the virtually living and the virtually dead are rendered spectacularly. If an extremity can be severed, it will be! Feet, shins, thighs and hips, hands, forearms, arms, shoulders and heads can all be sent packing with the appropriate measure of firepower. Blood spurts, flesh flies, and bones shatter under the brunt of the heavy weapons power. Severed limbs litter the battlefield like a deranged Hansel and Gretel had marked their passage.

I know its cold out here, but this is ridiculous

Think You Used Enough Dynamite There, Butch?
The tools of the trade of the modern weapons specialist include a bevy of assault rifles, small machine guns, pistols, explosives, and assorted bags of tricks. Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix provides players with 14 different types of projectile weapons, most with some alternate fire method. Vicious-looking knives can be thrown, pistols can whip and bash unsuspecting sentries into unconsciousness, bayonets thrust, and sniper scopes zoom in on their quarry eagerly.

As if that wasn’t a wide enough array of destructive machines, our hero is also outfitted with up to 10 different types of grenade weapons. In addition to the ever popular and old reliable fragmentation anti-personnel grenades, players can find other useful members of the family. Thermite grenades, which were used to great effect by the Rangers assaulting the 155mm cannons at Pointe-du-Hoc during the Normandy invasion of WWII, make an appearance here, with fiery results. A thermite grenade burns with intense heat; hot enough to fuse steel together, as was the effect in the recoil and traverse mechanisms of the nazi cannons.

Another proven veteran is the white phosphorous grenade, also called a WP or “Willy Peter” grenade. This chemical compound ignites in the air and no only cause severe burns to anything it comes in contact with, but also provides a dense cloud of smoke and steam to cover and conceal the movements of the player. In fact, the atmospheric effects work in conjunction with this weapon, so the cooler the outside air, the denser the smoke provided becomes.

Lastly, we find a familiar member of the FPS arsenal, the flashbang. As veterans of tactical FPS games and their ilk will attest, a flashbang provides a brilliant burst of bright light along with an immense noise. The result, disorientation of a bad guy long enough for your iron sights to fall onto his bridgework before his eyes react enough to even realize that he’s already dead.


Have Homicidal Tendencies, Will Travel
The single player missions in Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix span several continents and put the player square on the rain soaked streets of Prague, the steamy jungles of Colombia across the wind-swept tundras and rolling hills of some of the worlds most diverse locations.

Ten separate mission objectives, spanning 70 levels of action, await the game player, and will call upon all skills learned in a virtual lifetime of FPS gaming, including such objectives as assassinations of key personnel, demolitions of strategic assets, and protection of vital informants and defectors.

Purportedly, running about and wildly gunning down everyone and everything you see is not the best strategy, but frankly, it is often the ONLY available strategy. Certain levels will require a stealthy, more subversive approach, while others still will require choosing your battle carefully.

I see you in the darkness

Fans of the modern advances in FPS technology will be saddened to learn that this title is a pure run-and-gun title with no drivable vehicles at all. However, as if to make up for this, Raven Games has allowed the player character to commandeer heavier weapons mounted onto vehicles, such as heavy gatling cannons on a helicopter, or a belt-fed heavy machine gun atop a moving truck. While this extra and more sustainable rate of fire is welcomed, its too little to overcome the nagging fact that there are no player controlled vehicles available, which was one of the gripes the community raised about the original Soldier of Fortune title. I wish I could say that this were the end of the complaints in what otherwise is an exceptional title, but sadly, this is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.


Darned Mosquitoes
The visuals contained within the Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix code are splendid, at least from a motion-captured animation standpoint. The enemy soldiers move decisively and fluidly, including reacting to incoming, and impacting, rounds! The motions, and almost EMOTIONS, displayed by the bad guys while taking fire are remarkable. Strike an opponent in the hand or wrist, and the target will drop his weapon and hold the wrist up and near the body, as is human instinct to immobilize a fracture or sprain as tightly as possible. Hit the soft tissue of the belly, and one arm will immediately close over the wound. Blast a round into the skull from a high powered rifle, and well, frankly, there isn’t a whole lot of emotion to show…the body will sometimes stand rigid and defiant before you until gravity takes over and the soldier-turned-corpse slumps to the ground. Want to have some real nasty fun? Equip yourself with the dual Micro Uzi’s and empty an entire round into your foe! Chances are that the entire carcass will be shredded into nothingness before having a chance to hit the floor.

I broke a nail!

The animations even in death are spectacular, but again, it takes more than bloody action to make for a compelling title. It takes believable and enriching sound effects. Anybody who has read enough of my pieces knows that I am a hard-core believer in sound. An odd sentiment given that only too recently, I used to say, “Sound is sound” as I played games using my $5 headphones so as not to wake the wife and kids! That rationale held up until I added a 4.1 surround system to my gaming suite. Now, I am a devotee of sound for creating an atmosphere, and this is an area where Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix earns some respectability points.


Have Your People Call My Agent
Raven Games enlisted the support of veteran voice actors, including such talents as Mark Hamill (yes, THAT Mark Hamill) of Luke Skywalker fame. Oddly enough, he does NOT reprise his Skywalker role in another Raven Games best-seller, Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast. The voice acting helps to move the story line along nicely, with a very expert feel to it.

Other vocal features help establish the urgency of the battleground. Enemy soldiers will call to others to raise the alarm, close on your position, or otherwise spit epithets in your character’s general direction. The lament of the dying is expressed with all manner of groans, moans, and gasps…unless of course you liquefy his head, in which case, he is surprisingly stoic.

Ambient sounds, like the fall of thick raindrops on the cobblestone streets of Prague help to put the player completely into the new atmosphere. And as in real life, the scattered noise of a steady rainfall helps to lessen the likelihood that your movements will be heard and thereby raise the wrath of the local gentry. Controlling the noise you make can play a critical part in the game, and the developers at Raven Games have included a “noise meter” very similar in function to the one found in Thief: The Dark Project. Stealth is often encouraged, but is in no means the central strategy in Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix.


Surely There Is A Catch
On the plus sides so far, we have excellent motion-captured figures moving in realistic and engrossing environments. We have a solid array of weaponry with which to decimate the hoards of villains before us. So, why then does this game not occupy my every waking gaming thought and gaming moment?

For starters, even on a Pentium III 1.2 GHz system with 640MB of PC133 SDRAM and a GeForce2 32MB card, this game took forever to load. I remember this attribute from many Quake III games, but ironically, the long load time seems to help the in-game performance move right along. An average mission requires a long load time at the mission start, and then, similarly to its older brother, Soldier of Fortune, Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix only supports up to five save games per level. This feature will prove amazingly annoying very rapidly, especially if you have used all your saves before coming to a very heavy point in the action. If you survive the ensuing onslaught, but cannot finish the mission alive, its back to the pre-massacre point. Also, on some missions where stealth is the order of the day, the least provocation might alert the guards, thus requiring a reload back to a point far removed from your actual success. While this might guarantee a bizarre form of replayability, it is not exactly the way to reduce stress! Unless you find it relaxing to watch loading splash screens.

Another less than stellar feature is the AI, or as I have come to call it, the A-not-quite-so-I. On the one hand, the enemy sentries seem to be able to see you regardless of distance, weather, or even lack of motion. In other titles, we have deemed this “Uber AI” and combined with the almost magical ability of their weapons to strike with pinpoint precision from nearly impossible ranges, can prove more frustrating than the effort is worth.

On the flip side, we have some enemy troops that can take a sniper round in the shoulder or leg and fail to realize that he has become shot! He might stop his patrol and stand idle, or maybe even look around a wee bit, but rarely will he hit the protective security of the deck. To that same end, while divulging your position with noisy weapons fire will surely bring every available sentry to your location, they are guilty of the age old folly of walking one after the other into a snipers kill zone, apparently oblivious to the hail of rifle fire that greets anyone to stand in that spot. It is not uncommon to stack bodies three or even four deep.

Speaking of maliciously placing shots into shoulders, legs, and hands, this title suffers from one of the more common mistakes in damage modeling among the FPS genre. Some members of the terrorist cells come equipped with ballistic helmets and full torso body armor, including shoulder pads, elbow pads and kneepads. These armored brutes storm the battlefield like disgruntled SWAT members, lusting for a new skull to add to the mantle. The Kevlar breastplate and helmet deflect most small arms fire, and in fact, I have placed four .45 caliber rounds into the bread basket of the nearest bulletproofed foe, only to watch him move into position and blast away at me later. However, take the same juggernaut at a safe range and aim at an exposed shin and ankle from the relative safety of a sniper scope, and three rounds will score a kill. You see the obvious disparity.

How'd you get the Beans above the Frank?!?

And sadly, flesh is just about the only thing you CAN destroy in this title. Despite the intricate level designs and the attention to detail, you cannot damage the surrounding environment, save a few key selected items. Strafe a wall full of windows with your grease gun, and not a single window breaks, cracks, or so much as makes a sound effect. Shoot a grenade up into a tree and the explosion will bring a brief flutter of leaves to the ground, but cause no damage to the tree itself. In fact, with the sole exception of certain special item boxes, I found that the environment was all but immune to my passing. And even in missions where demolishing an objective was called for, the explosions and resulting destruction lacked the visual oomph of even the most poorly played Jenga game.

Ooooh! Aaahhh!

Too Much Time on Your Hands?
You may find yourself asking, “Impaler, how on earth is it that you were so bored as to find time to mutilate corpses, shoot trees, and in general forgo the missions of the game in favor of seeing how long you could keep a dead man standing by peppering him with machine gun fire?”

A healthy diet should include plenty of iron

And I would answer, “That’s just the problem, mate.” Ultimately, the game became so boring to me that I would reduce play to seeing just how creatively I could slaughter people and defame their shattered corpses. At first, the oohs and aahs were enough to make me want to finish the mission, but eventually, even that goal faded in favor of getting another knife kill or seeing if I could complete the level just using the pistol whip…which I don’t recommend trying! That was far from a sound strategy. But for all the fun the blood and guts portion of the game is, that just isn’t enough, especially with so many other excellent titles out there competing for precious playing time, not to mention my gaming dollar.

In the final analysis, this game is simply uncompelling from start to finish. The slow load times, limited saves, sub-par AI enemy, and lack of other features to be found in circa 2002 FPS title simply outweigh the good points. However, Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix is not without its highlights, including good performance across a variety of platform types, entertaining mayhem, and an established and loyal following from the old Soldier of Fortune days.

Can I please have my knives back?

If you are looking for a true simulation of the land combat experience, put this title back on the shelf. However, if your aim is to enter a frag-fest with an experienced and skilled fan-base, the multiplayer capabilities to be had are certainly worth investigating. For me, however, I’m probably going to retire this title to the archives and get back to playing more of Raven Games’ Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast.




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