Difficulty:

Easy

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"Old-school"

In Payback, you play as a mercenary who has been double-crossed. That's really about as deep as the story gets. All that matters is you have a moral justification for dissecting terrorists and guerillas with the insanely powerful bullets from your guns. The story, like the on-screen button prompts and pre-game menus, is second-rate. But, this is a shooter, so a story is often seen as a nice bonus. What really counts is that it's fun.

To its credit, Soldier of Fortune: Payback is fun in certain moments. Though you are often surrounded by enemies (many of whom are often difficult to see), it never translates to intensity. There are few moments where my heart rate jumped and my hands squeeze the controller a little tighter. The fun comes in performing vivisections on every enemy on screen. Arms and legs blow off, heads explode like watermelons at a Gallagher concert -- it's like a slasher flick with bullets. This is the equivalent of the recent footage from the new Rambo movie. There is something sadistic, but oddly pleasing, about blowing off limbs. There are some guns so powerful that you can actually send bodies flinging sideways until they bounce of trees or buildings. I can't deny that there are many times I was laughing out loud.

That giddy fun doesn't hold up in the long run. Despite being a fairly short single-player game (5-7 hours on normal difficulty), the high level of violence isn't enough to keep Payback interesting from start to finish. After a while the poor AI and cheap shots you take from enemies become too much. If terrorists were really like their counterparts in Soldier of Fortune: Payback, then we would have nothing to fear. These guys are just plain dumb. Enemies run straight at you (and sometimes past you) without firing; an enemy coming up from behind will attempt a melee attack rather than just cap you; and these idiots turn and run back towards a grenade. Even the terrorists want to put the Havok engine to work by having their limbs go flying.