Post by Super27 on Nov 18, 2007 21:59:50 GMT 1
SOF Payback Review
by infrequent
17-nov-2007
by infrequent
17-nov-2007
Noone loves SOF more than me. I played SOF1 but mostly SinglePlayer. I’ve played SOF2 since the year it
was released and played it at least 5 days a week. I’ve modded for it (ReFrag and ReFrag:2). I’ve made
tools for it (infrequents Name Editor) and I’ve tried to entertain people with hundreds of pictures based on
the game and the community around the game. In short … I LOVE SOF2.
I’ve jumped to attention at every rumour of a SOF3 over the years - but every time it turned out to be
just that … a rumour. When a rumour started spreading again here I summer/autumn 2007 I had a hard
time believing it and it was not until the first video footage appeared that I started to believe.
The game looked rather good and seemed true to the SOF legacy with more gore than in other FPS
games. Other than the videos there was not much info released about the game…. and now I understand
why ! More info would have revealed that SOF Payback if not even close to what most players want or
what most players expected ! In the following I’ll refer to SOF Payback as SOF3 for convenience.
SOF Payback is an Activision game developed by Cauldron and is released as a value-title so it’s unfair to
expect it to be a rival to COD4 or Crysis but I’ll give you my opinion anyway. SOF Payback is released for
both PC and for consoles such as Xbox and PS3.
Let’s take a look
SOF2 was not just SOF1 with upgraded graphics so we had no right expecting SOF3 to be SOF2 with
everything made better. What we did not expect was that SOF3 would be SOF2 with everything made
worse.
It’s actually not fair comparing SOF3 to SOF2 because apart from the “Soldier of Fortune” part of the
names and the same gametypes in multiplayer (apart from INF which is missing in SOF3) they have
nothing in common.
Installation worked without any problems and I soon had Payback up and running.
Ooops… first surprise. The interface is very simple. Not “simple” as in easy-to-use. It’s more “simple” as in
does-not-have-many-features And with BIG easy-to-read-on-a-TV-screen letter. Unlike SOF2 it’s the
same game you run no matter if you want to play SinglePlayer or Multiplayer.
The game starts up in 640x480 which is way too small for my 22” widescreen. So the first I do is go into
options to correct that. Second surprise ! Not many options available AT ALL ! You can adjust resolution
and it does have widescreen resolutions but other than that there is nothing you can adjust about the
graphics. So if your graphics card has problems running Payback then there is nothing you can adjust or
turn off to make it run better. The picture below shows your limited options.
I don’t use standard controls when playing so I have to set that up too. The setup works ok except that it
does not prevent you from using the same key for multiple actions. On the picture below you can see both
Melee attack and Throw Grenade bound to Q. I didn’t see that at first and was surprised when I drew a
knife every time I tried to throw a grenade
Want to set up a nice multicoloured playername for multiplayer ? Just as in SOF2 ? Forget it ! Names
cannot contain color … and not many character at all besides letters and digits. And the way you write you
name is a joke - You have to write it using an on-screen-keyboard and cannot just write it using your
normal keyboard. This does more than anything show that the PC version is a direct port of a console
game.
Let’s play
I started out with a game of Singleplayer just to see how it worked (no reason to embarrass myself on
multiplayer yet). Into the game and … whooooaaaa ! Just a little movement of the mouse and I made a
360 turn. Back into options and turn mouse sensitivity down from the normal 5 to 0. After that the mouse
is still way to sensitive for my liking but at least I have some control.
Ok, scene is starting with me behind a car. I run forward and two badguys jump over the wall and I aim
for one of them and prepare to send him to hell. Luckily for him the game now crashed and I had to do a
CTRL-ALT-DELETE to get back to Windows. It seems the game has a problem with Windows Vista (which
Cauldron apparently has not tested the game on). Luckily a patch to v1.1 has been released that fixed
that problem. Apply patch and now it works – the badguys are nor dying like flies. They are pretty easy
on normal difficulty but never mind that.
I play through the first level and shoot down enemies and have a little fun shooting off heads, legs and
arms of both live and dead enemies. Let me warn you here … don’t die ! There is no Save feature and
when you die the game decides how far back you have to start over. It’s is really fun playing the same
sequence over and over again and hearing your partner saying the same things over and over again –
NOOOT !
When in the game you are normally walking and when you jump it has a slowness to it like if you were in
low gravity. You can sprint but your player is in very bad shape and can only run about 60-70 meters.
Another thing about running is that you cannot turn while running so you have to aim where you want to
go before you start running … or you’ll end up running into walls half the time. You cannot shoot while
running. Movement is generally very different from SOF2 as you cannot lean and the crouch key toggles
so you have to press it again to stand up. Thus there’s no jump-crouch combination to give higher jumps
as in SOF2.
When you reload then things in the distance gets blurred as if you’re focusing your eyes on your weapon.
Some will be annoyed by this but I kind of like it. Your crosshair grows when you move to indicate less
accuracy. This has been seen in many other games too but many hardcore SOF2 players will miss their
unchanging dot-crosshair a lot.
You have no health bar and you can only judge your health by the color of the screen. There are no
healthpacks lying around but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. When you’re seriously hurt the screen
turns more or less red and if you keep out the fire you’ll soon return to good health.
I didn’t get all the way through the Singleplayer part and probably never will – it’s seems like nothing but
killing the same enemies over and over again.
At the end of the first level your partner turns out to be a
traitor and instead of killing you he runs away 100 meters and wait for you to hunt him. When you try to kill him it takes a ridiculous
amount of bullets to do so
Cauldron have really saved time on this game by skipping scenes. In thetraitor and instead of killing you he runs away 100 meters and wait for you to hunt him. When you try to kill him it takes a ridiculous
amount of bullets to do so
second level you have to take an elevator and the scene just fades out and when it fades in you’re
somewhere else and not in the elevator.
Let’s go Multiplayer
Multiplayer is where I spend my time on SOF2. Multiplayer is where you kill your buddies, annoy your
enemies and try and come out on top. But SOF3 multiplayer is not like SOF2 multiplayer. SOF3 has the
same gametypes except INF. I have so far only tried a few gametypes simply because there are so few
servers online.
Next bug I found was on the server list. I can move the mouse to any server but I cannot enter it by
doubleclicking on it. There’s a “Join game” button at the button of the screen but if I move the mouse
down there then SOF3 automatically selects the last server on the list. So no matter how many servers on
the list I have not found out how to join any except the last one. At last I found out that I have to select
the server I wanted and then press ENTER to join it. That means that the “Join game” button is useless.
Notice that there’s no ping in the serverlist so you have no way of knowing whether you’ll have lag on the
server or not !
Although you can set your multiplayer name before entering a game you cannot select or modify your
weapons or select your player-skin until you have the server.
SOF3 comes without any CD-key so it will be difficult if not impossible to enforce any kind of banning
online and anyone can pretend to be anyone. There’s also no anti-cheat software such as Punkbuster.
You cannot record demos in SOF3 !!! You thus cannot record a game with the purpose of showing it to
other to determine if someone was cheating (what would be the point – you cannot ban them anyway).
You cannot record a game with the purpose of later making a movie showing your skills. These features
have existed in FPS games the last 10 years but not in SOF3. No ReFrag:3 coming for SOF3 !
SOF3 have often crashed on me when I’ve tried entering a server.
So now you enter a server. If you’ve expected to start off by asking the other player what they think
about SOF3 then think again. THERE IS NO CHAT IN SOF3 !! You cannot chat with anyone and you cannot
coordinate a teamgame through chat. You’re on your own and can do nothing but shoot. There’s no
spectator-mode either.
You cannot setup a dedicated server ! All servers have to run on someones own PC so when that player
leaves you’re simply thrown out of the game. There seems to be no way of setting up a map-rotation so
you just play the same map. In fact there are very limited options for setting up a server and you cannot
not allow more than 12 players in the server. If you set up a server then you cannot even enter it yourself
until someone else comes along.
The scoreboard only shows your kills – not how many times you have been killed and not how long you
have played.
Even in deathmatch there’s a spawn delay when you die and you have to press ENTER to spawn.
Other SOF2<->SOF3 differences
There’s not the beloved fragsound in deathmatch so you don’t always know when you kill someone
with a grenade.
There’s a knife in the game but you cannot throw it. Throwing grenades is also very different from
SOF2. In SOF3 a grenade is thrown immediately when you press the key.
You cannot assign a weapon directly to a key but have to scroll through weapons to switch weapon.
There’s no console in the game and no commands and settings that you can use in a console anyway.
Multiplayer Bugs Encountered in a Short Time
There seems to be so many things for Cauldron yet to fix.
- I frequently crash when entering a game.
- I’ve experienced spawning without weapons and just running around like an idiot.
- I’ve seen players appearing out of nothing and disappearing too (not disconnecting)
- I’ve seen players die and suddenly their bodies jump up and just stand there without a head.
- I’ve seen teamdeathmatch game without empty scoreboard after 8 players had played for almost an
hour.
- Animations seem to sometime happen in instantaneously like players going to and from crouch in no
time.
Final words
As mentioned I’m a huge fan of SOF2 and SOF Payback does in no way satisfy my thirst for a
successor. I’m my opinion Cauldron has to perform miracles for this SOF Payback to become a game
worth playing. They have to get rid of the console-port look and feel and the have to start adding
features that the PC community cannot live without.
The initial videos of Payback indicated that the developers had listened to and cared for the SOF
community. My hands-on experience shows that they have not.
So for now don’t look for me in the SOF Payback server (there’s no player-search feature anyway ;-)
-infrequent
LINKS:
Developers Site: www.cauldron.sk/
Activision support site: www.activisionvalue.com/
SOF Payback official site: www.mercenarieswanted.com/
SOF Payback forum: www.sofpayback.com/
Infrequent’s site (SOF2): infreq.vores-web.dk/