The devs point their pistols at the sky James Bond sneak-style and get barked at, “What are you doing?!” They’re in the middle of the desert in Arizona at “the premier firearms training facility in the world,” Gunsite, where the only other entertainment oriented student has been Tom Cruise during the making of Collateral. They are holding their guns all wrong.

In order to make Soldier of Fortune: Payback as realistic as computerly possible, Activision sent their team out for some heavy duty tactical combat training. Having experience shooting nearly every gun in your game will give you all the edges detailed research is likely to entail. The recoil, reload times, damage, range, and swing rate are all as realistic as fun dictates, and the handling will change depending on what sort of extras you add on like scopes or grenade launchers. There are over forty different weapons to choose from, ranging from old stand-bys to prototype guns like the ALX pistol, with four-barrels lined with bullets that all spray out when you fire. With so many strings of deadly letters and numbers, selecting which ones your soldier will take on his mission is a skill in and of itself.

The other hyper-researched aspect of this game is the violence. After going through footage of people being gunned down, how exactly their bodies get hit and ripped and exploded, they decided that when it comes down to it, nobody needs a game that real. It should be intense, but fun—not traumatizing. People have speculated that they chose to release later due to the controversy over the over-the-top violence factor in Manhunt 2, but Patrick Kelly of Activision said they were just concerned with making the game “appropriate for the Soldier of Fortune audience.” In other words, they weren’t thinking of the children!

But then, this isn’t a game for the youngsters. We got hands on in a Middle Eastern street fight (where your enemies are members of Al Qu’im, a fictitious group causing all sorts of familiar sounding trouble.) Not everything in the environment is destructible, but you can definitely blast cars. Despite the fact that bodies don’t really go flying quite so much in real life, the dev team decided it was too fun to leave out. Zooming in, we can shoot off arms or legs (or dangly bits) as we chose, even popping heads now and then. Not for the squeamish, either. The combination of mo-cap animation and heavy duty anatomical physics does a good job of keeping your enemies reeling in fresh ways, rather than feeling like the same canned fall-down action over and over.

Multiplayer matches breed contempt and hatred by keeping the kill cam on while the remaining players in the match shoot your body to pieces. You can hold out sniping from the ground until you bleed out, but after that you’ll have to just watch the carnage. Just what Xbox Live needs– more swearing!

Soldier of Fortune: Payback ships for 360, PS3, and PC in late November, so you’ll be fighting in Middle Eastern caves, in the jungles of Burma, down the street, soon enough. We asked why they chose to release so close to Call of Duty 4—weren’t they worried COD would steal SOF’s thunder? Since SOF is more run ‘n gun as a one man vs. a forest of bad guys honing in on you, Kelly feels its style stays distinct from COD’s more tactical squad flavor. Plus, if you like your shooters, you like your shooters, right? Payback just means Activision has one more sweet one coming out this fall.

Tags: Activision, Cauldron, Soldier-of-Fortune-Payback

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1 Comment » Sandbox Strategies » Blog Archive » Soldier of Fortune first previews on October 22, 2007 12:30 pm [...] IGN preview with homepage placement. Also previews on Gamespot, 1up, and Ripten. [...] RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL Comment Now Note: Commenting on Ripten does not currently require registration, however to be eligible for contests on the site, you must be a registered user. Name (required) Mail (will not be published) (required) Website Commenting Rules: No hate speech allowed. If you must argue, please debate intelligently. Comments containing selected keywords or outbound links will be put into moderation to help prevent spam. Ripten reserves the right to delete comments and ban anyone who doesn't follow the rules. Thanks. Notify me of followup comments Tired of the Goomba? Upload your own custom comment avatar.