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If you want more blood and gore than you can shake a lightsaber stick at, SOF2: Double Helix is for you.
The game feels and looks great - like a modern version of Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault. The single player is a blast to
play, and the random mission generator works great too.
Go ahead and call me sadistic, but for me the most fun part is carving up corpses like a Christmas turkey after you've capped them. (If you're queasy, grab a sick bag before reading on) The knife is perfect for this job... it will take a while, but you can seperate all the guy's limbs. When the legs come off, you can see the bone on the body and on the severed limb. Likewise for the arms. Blood fountains out of slash wounds, and sometimes you can actually see the hole left by your bullet in the guy's head, if you got him full on with the shotgun, you're gonna have to search for the head. When you cut open his head you might even see his brain fall out. The blood caked on the walls has black solid stuff I don't want to know about. You can turn off the violence, but you miss out on a lot of good, clean, sadistic fun.
The single player levels are well-designed, not easy to get lost or get stuck. They look really nice too. All the weapons are real-life, like the M4 Carbine and the AK-74 (successor to the AK-47, if you think that's a typo...). There is quite a bit of interaction, like turning on the microwave or flushing the loo. It's these small details that make me go WOW... From swimming around in Vergara's pool or sneaking around a Russian train station, the graphics are meant to impress and they do. This is the Quake 3: Arena engine working very, very well.
This game would be among the greatest if not for the unrealistic AI. In the stealth missions, especially Vergara's mansion, it is insanely difficult not to raise the alarm. The AI shouldn't be able to see you when you're crawling prone in the grass at night from a good 150 meters away, with no lights anywhere nearby. How would your presence be detected from hearing a soft, strangled gurgle (if you don't kill the guard with the first slash)?? The AI also shouldn't be able to launch grenades at insane ROFs with insane accuracy when most of the time they can't even see you.
Sound effects are exceptional. The guns sound like guns - loud and "bangy", if only I had an Audigy card, because SB Live!'s EAX is apparently out-of-date. But I tried it with my neighbour's Audigy, and with EAX there's a subtle difference but it makes a difference. From a coolness factor of 8, it leaps to 10.
Ambient sounds also work with the great texturing to create an absorbing atmosphere. The weather effects help too. Also, the cinematics are great, the plot is actually interesting, although I think Raven was trying to capitalise on the bioterror paranoia after the anthrax-in-the-mail thing over in the States.
SOF 2 is an incredibly good game, tripped up by bad AI. Pity.
FINAL SCORE
GOOD: Blood and Gore! Nice, detailed, slightly linear levels - hard to get lost/stuck. Good sound effects, helped by
Creative EAX.
BAD: AI is too godlike.
OVERALL: GREAT GAME! TOTALLY FUCKED AI!
RATING: 88%
Minimum Requirements
450MhZ processor
128MB RAM
Windows 9x, ME, 2000 or XP
16MB DirectX compatible video card
1 GB Hard disk space
4x or better CD-ROM
