Soldier of Fortune is a 3D first-person shooter video game developed by Raven Software in 2000 for Windows. Later in 2001 platinum edition was released that brought new multiplayer modes.

Game used to be very well known for it's very realistic depictions of violence, especially by allowing to cut off multiple body parts and explosions tear enemies apart completly including head. For this reason, this game was banned in Canada. It uses GHOUL engine that was at it's time one of the most realistic body engine for games available. Game was highly optimized in my opinion therefore you were not required to have top spec PC to run it. Original game supports up to 1600x1200 resolution, most of available resolutions has 4:3 aspect ratio, but reworked version available on digital platforms like steam supports all the modern resolutions.

The story revolves about Sergei Dekker, a south african terrorist leading a group called "The Order". At the beginning of story he successfully steal nuclear warheads from a U.S. military base. This act sets the global stage for chaos, with world governments scrambling to respond to the imminent threat of nuclear terrorism. John Mullins, a seasoned mercenary, and his partner, Sam Gladstone, are tasked by The Shop to recover the stolen weapons and neutralize the threat.

When starting a new game, you can select difficulty that will affect a lot of things including enemy thoughness, your inventory limit, number of saves etc. When you are new to this game I recommend lowest possible difficulty to get used to it and enjoy its violence :-) because on harder difficulties all you will do will be swearing that you won't turn on this game anymore :D You can also customize game by selecting "custom" difficulty. If you struggle to beat the game by having very limited number of saves, but still want to have hard time, you can set difficulty to hardest and select unlimited saves. This might save a broken mouse or keyboard.

There are 12 weapons in the game, and 5 tools available. The game consists of 13 missions, some of them are divided into multiple parts ( maps ). Before each mission ( except of first ), you can select desired weapons, they are added as you progress through the game. You don't need any money ( altough you are earning them lol ) to buy weapon \ tool. I really like the "login" screen with your nickname which you can change anytime in settings. Keep in mind that you are limited by inventory space for weapon selection, same for tools. But you can still pickup more weapons in the game ( based on difficulty -> higher difficulty means less additional inventory space ). There are many crates in the game that can be destroyed, sometimes they hide an ammo or tool like granade or medkit. Use knife to destroy them so you don't waste ammo for that. There are also many wall healthkits found across all maps, they heal double amount of regular medkit which you can carry with you ( max 2 ) but these wall healthkits can be used only once.

You can prevent losing health by wearing armor which is found more frequently than health ( in later stages of the game, almost every enemy wears armor and drops it afterwards ).

Sometimes you have to play hide & seek game in order to make your life a bit easier, there are many gadgets especially the ones for surviving hidden all around the world, in most cases you will find them in least predictable places like under stairs, crates, and even in wardrobe ! once you set higher difficulty level, believe me that you will spend decent amount of time of searching for them.

Additionally, developers went even further and brought us a CCTV right into the game ! :-) You can find monitors that looks like old god-like undestroyable steel bricks. You can use them using "use" key to start observing it's view, they even transfer sound lol. To exit view, press the use key again.

Shooting regular objects that looks "fragile" will cause them to become damaged or even destroyed. Developers paid special attention to "water" objects like toilets and washbasin. If you destroy them, water will start spraying in a thick stream.

And well there are immortal objects aswell :-) anyways you can always at least damage them if your day was bad enough. Unlike half-life you can't use them to order some drink during your journey. So well yeah they deserve that destiny go and do what you must to make them ugly. At least enemies will know there is someone with heavy firepower nearby and they won't chase you. Just kidding they doesn't really care and will try to kill you anyway :D

You will meet a lot of NPCs all around the game, especially HAWK who is your main assistant during missions. Second most seen NPCs will be policemans, but don't expect them to be huge help.

But what hurts the most, are the unexpected ambushes out of nowhere, and i really mean nowhere. Windows, leans out of wall, seemingly empty tunnels, roofs and so on. These are things that you will hate most on higher difficulty levels, because these ambushes are so hard to avoid and shots from enemies hits like a truck on difficulty medium and higher. You will have to work with your memory in case you have passed this game already on lower difficulty and remember all hard parts of this game.

If you shoot enemies to their hands \ weapons, they will temporarily stop shooting at you due to pain. In case you hit their weapon properly, they will just lose it becoming harmless asking for mercy in case you press the "use" key. They won't grab weapon and shoot you anymore in case you decide to spare their life.

Before each mission. There is nice cutscene that explains very clearly what next mission will be about and what is your goal. You can cancel cutscene at any point by pressing ESC key.

Keep in mind, this game is rated as "M" which means mature content included. Therefore kids shouldn't really play this game as there is a lot of violence and gore and especially blood in this game, even some adults might find it disturbing, but what else can we expect from FPS game, at it's time, people loved this game especially for this stuff as there was no game like this one on the market.

Before each mission, you can select an equipment with which you will start a mission. It is free, however, you have limited number of slots that can be occupied, and each weapon takes different amount of these slots, the better the weapon, then more slots it takes, check weapons sections for detailed information. You can also select additional equipment like armor, granades, flashbangs and so on. They are very useful especially at higher level of difficulty. Overall invetory space might be higher after mission starts ( depending on difficulty level ) and you can collect more weapons \ tools later during mission.

There are many details all around you during almost entire game. Pictures on walls, beautiful fireplaces, values on random devices etc. I have played this game only on max graphical settings so i can't really tell if they are so detailed at lower settings. But i still think this game was wonderful at it's time.

You are surrounded by nice enviroment whenever you find yourself in the exterior. When you are not actually under fire, stop for a moment and enjoy the view :-) Game is not open-world but that is pretty typical for FPS type of games.

John mullins is a true hero, almost like Chuck Norris i would say :D he gets out of every dangerous situation without a scratch. And he doesn't fear to face hordes of enemies along with their boss with just a pistol. Interesting fact: he is using pistol during all the cutscenes, even if you don't have one in your inventory during gameplay.

Amogn other gadgets, there is one called "nightvision". When you select and use it, you will feel like in a real tomb rider mission. Or more like in a matrix. The green effect is just epic and its primary use in night \ dark works just perfectly.

Interesting fact is that you won't be hurted by fireplace, one of the rare kind of flames where you can stand all day long without fear that you gonna be perfectly grilled. Most other flames will hurt you hard in high difficulty levels so take care ! this effect is most noticable when using flamethrower and you somehow win huge fight leaving shitload of corpses laying all around, then you should stop for a short moment, take a deep breath and wait for corpses to stop burning. Take that hint :-)

Sometimes you have to solve some puzzles, so you have to be gifted a little bit with vitamins I and Q, they are useful in everyday life aswell. When you are stuck at some point of the game, most likely there is some button either hidden or clearly visible that needs to be pressed, but it can be also valve or any other stuff that needs to be interacted, sometimes even destroyed. In this particular example you have to press crane button twice.. First to make it throw first crate, and second push will cause to grab another crate and throw it aswell.

Like in any other games, this one is not perfect aswell. Body parts passing thru wall are pretty much common for games of that era, but to be honest, it is pretty common even for modern games :-) but sometimes you might also face some special kind of bugs, like this unlucky guy on balcony who is already dead with no movement and heavily colored body with blood, and holes but somehow he still stands like mannequin :D

Well and bonus at the end, this game is not left without any easter egg. We are used to them right ? This one is a bit sigusting, but i didn't find any better example :D feel free to recommend me something else, anyways i won't say exactly where this one can be found, but once you find it, you would test just like me what will cause to shoot at micro-brown titanic lol. Mullins will say some nice words regarding your action. You won't be able to hold your laught :-)