Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix

Published by Activision
Designed by Gratuitous Games
Platform: Xbox
Price £39.99
Released: Out Now

The Soldier of Fortune series on PC has proved to be very popular. Whilst the media went crazy with the gratuitous violence and limb dismemberment being the main cause of the controversy, it's difficult to ignore the fact that both the original game and its sequel were good FPS games. Now the series moves on to Xbox with a conversion of the sequel, Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix.

You play the role of John Mullins. A bio-terrorist organisation is threatening to unleash the Gemini Virus unless all their demands are met. You have been called upon to put an end to the threat and wipe out this organisation. To aid you in this quest you will have access to over 25 weapons that range from the Commando Knife to multiple types of grenades to ultra powerful OICW.

The one thing that surprised me is just how difficult the game can be on the higher difficulty settings. The AI gives you no margin for error and it can be a struggle to complete a level. To make matters worse on the higher difficulty settings you are restricted on the amount of saves you can make. Playing on Consultant difficulty or higher is extremely difficult. On the whole the game is enjoyable but the irritating stealth elements do their level best to ruin the experience. If you are caught or raise an alarm you have to keep retrying until you succeed.

When you've completed the game you'll be pleased to know that there is a random mission generator that you can take advantage of. You select the type of mission you want, the location, difficulty, time limit and a mission is generated for you. The missions are OK and offer a decent amount of replay value to the game for the single player.

When you are through with the single player side of the game you can head online to take advantage of the Xbox Live portion of the game. There's Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture The Flag, Elimination and Infiltration. All of these modes are variations of modes seen in other FPS games and work well. The games can also be played via the system link option if you don't have Xbox Live.

The impressive framerates is one area which highlights how well the game has been optimised for the Xbox. When we reviewed the PC version it was on a 900MHz Athlon and it chugged like hell. In fact the framerate is a lot better on the Xbox than it was on our PC at the time. There are times when the framerate dips but on the whole it's very impressive when you consider the specification PC you need to run the PC version well.

Unbelievably, whilst the PC version of SoF2 was quite good for deaf gamers, the Xbox version is virtually impossible. All the subtitles have been taken out. The tutorial is now useless for deaf gamers and the main game isn't much better either. You are shown in text when your objectives have changed (pressing the back button will show you your objectives in a very brief form) but in every other sense the game is completely deaf gamer unfriendly. The PC game had a gauge that showed you how much noise you were making and this has been stripped out of the Xbox version.

Overall SoF 2 is a solid FPS and certainly another commendable PC to Xbox port. However deaf gamers should really steer clear of this Xbox version and purchase the PC version instead. This Xbox version is virtually impossible for a deaf gamer whereas the PC version is subtitled and far more deaf gamer friendly.

Overall Game Rating: 4.5/10 Virtually all deaf gamer support has been stripped out of this Xbox version of Soldier of Fortune II.

Deaf Gamers comment: No subtitles which makes the tutorial useless and the main game virtually impossible.