I love 6th gen shooters, especially ones on the Xbox & Ps2. Its not even just nostalgia because I enjoy titles I never played as a youngster. May you all have a lovely day. Great review mister
Any FPS made by one of my absolute favorite developers "Raven Software" I always enjoy playing. I personally love this game with it's more serious tone & gore gimmicks! The first in the series on the PS2 is a gem too! You did a great job going over the finer points of the game!
This was one of the "Evil Killergames" that was even mentioned beside Doom 3 in one of my School book. Here in Germany we have a decade of videogame discussion with the high of it in the mid 2000s. Thx to a now well known TH-camr and game journalist it wasn't banned here. He was the first guy who actually played the games at our ESRB equivalent (USK/BPJM) he started around 2000 and is also the reason other adults games like Hitman 2 could be released.
Had a random thought of this game today after not playing it since its release. Wow thank you for posting the footage. Brought back many good gory memories
Man, my clan and I played this game's MP so much back in the day when this came out and for YEARS after. As with most Quake 3 based games, the mods and what not available make the game really fun to play online, not to mention all the crazy maps that were made and the (for the lack of a better word) mutators available to this day. I haven't installed the game in a while so I don't know how MP community is holding up these days, but in 2020 when I last played there were still 3 or 4 full servers of players, which is awesome.
Multiplayer was definitely the highlight. With a full lobby games are really chaotic and always busy. Funny how every FPS in this era seemed to use the Quake 3 engine. The violence felt like the naughtiest thing when I was a kid. If my parents saw what happened to the enemies you kill they'd have thought twice buying me it!
Just recently found your channel, and it's been pretty cool remembering my beloved Xbox. I really like how straight to the point and well explained your videos are. If you allow me one observation though, it's kinda odd that your videos have no sound of the games, just a narration. Sound is an integral part of gaming and every time I watch one of your videos I find myself finding gameplay videos after to hear how the games sound. It's especially odd when you comment on the music of the game. Or how annoying or cartoonish the death of the enemies sound, then I have to interrupt the video to watch a gameplay and then return. Nevertheless I intend to watch many other videos you made. Keep rocking man.
Thanks for the feedback. I'm glad you enjoy my writing style. I've left straight footage out of my videos because I haven't felt a good way where it works cohesively with my style. This is a concern I've heard a lot and I want to try implementing sometime in coming months.
So many hours played on Xbox Live with my friends a ridiculously great single player. I might have had too much fun slicing off the limbs of dead corpses in the game 😅 I also had a blast playing the first game on PC, Dreamcast, and PS2.
I remember playing the heck out of the SoF2 Demo from the Xbox Magazine Demo disc, because my parents wouldn't allow me to get this game because you can literally chop up enemies with a knife after they're dead!
NO ONE CANT EVEN SAY A WORD UNLESS U LIVED THRU DIS ERA.. This just turned your xbox into gold back in the day when you are playing socom on yo ps2 network adapter kit wit headset...the headset and dismemberment and online 8 vs 8 fast nasty good senarios..what made yo xbox into a controller sweating pc shooterish kind of game..some much blood for its time too.. man i love bein born in the 80s and got to live thru dis.
The original pc versions of the first two SOF games are some of my favorite shooters of all time. I notice this Xbox version of SOF2 was actually easier than the pc version that game is so brutally difficult its up there with R6 Raven Shield they completely changed their game design approach since the first one was too much of an arena shooter.
This game always looked interesting to me but I never played it for whatever reason. The multiplayer looked fun though when you were playing it on Insignia.
Definitely not a bad port, but certainly not a great one either. The Rainbow Six games, Black and even Urban Chaos Riot Response would probably be better to play overall and I'm leaving out many other FPS games that lean more on the Sci-Fi side of things rather than modernish era shooters. Ther's just too many better FPS games on the Xbox to consider over Soldier of Fortune 2 even if you leave out the Sci-Fi stuff and go for the more realistic-era titles. Nevertheless, I can appreciate what SoF2 tried to do here, just only as a part of FPS console history and not as a game I'd actually pull off the shelf.
Didn't realize how good I had it back then until it's gone. Now? I really got dig to find new FPS games that are like those from the 6th and 7th gen. Way too many Indies just keep copy pasting Doom/Quake/early 1990s FPS design.
@@Gruntvc To be fair, Doom/Quake-style FPS games are still plenty of fun. They just have a different "flavor" to them despite also being a general FPS. Its like chicken🐔 vs turkey🦃: they're both birds and they both taste great but have totally different sizes, flavors and textures to each other. Great, now I'm hungry rofl. 🤣
You need to make sure your OG Xbox is modded and using component cables and probably a solid component->HDMI converter to really bring up the lighting levels. I use an mClassic too and that helps with the relatively muted colours in a lot of games. PS If you ever get a chance to play BLACK *in 720p on a modded 128mb OG*... you won't believe your eyes. It's literally a 360 game in disguise.
Okay I will agree that the stealth and the missions where you accompany a crew are pretty fucking bad! But I found this game overall to be pretty good. I don't really care about graphics that much.
Soldier of Fortune 1 was a better game, but 2 is still pretty solid. On PC, the game's defining flaw (aside from the fatally flawed "smart AI" system) was Weapon Spray: A system where when you keep firing, the gun's projectiles spread further. Sounds good on paper given the game's new focus on realistic combat (and Halo Reach proved that such a system COULD work in 2010), but FATAL in execution. Because of this, playing the game with custom difficulty is mandatory due to the option to turn it off. 1 doesn't have this problem and is more run-and-gun, and is also much better because of it and more traditional Quake II engine AI to be honest. A similar game to Soldier of Fortune would be Kingpin: Life of Crime by Grey Matter and Interplay. The game sought to deliver one of the first true adult FPS experiences by casting you as a criminal in a Tarantino-inspired crime-ridden city with a combat system as gory as Soldier of Fortune's and lots of R-rated Swearing not unlike Tarantino's films. Needless to say, it didn't do so well and was a financial flop due to releasing in the wake of the Columbine Massacre... Which sucks, because beneath the uberviolence and profanity was an actually competent and fun semi-open FPS that suffered from terrible balancing. Interplay's first game in the 2020s was and is a rebalancing of Kingpin, but that version suffers from a botched launch.
SoF2 mp on the PC is one of my most played multiplayer games of all time. Needless to say, I was extremely hyped for the Xbox port so I could play with all my friends on Xbox. It ended up being one of the worst PC to Xbox ports. If you go back and look at reviews they're much lower than the PC counterpart, and rightfully so. It was inferior in every single way, and a bit buggy. One of my most disappointing ports ever.
Yeah its definitely not the most fun plot. I'm always happy to try new games to gain an opinion on them, but this one isn't going to be the strongest in my memory as time goes on.
@@campxbox Ever play Beyond Good and Evil? Much easier on the eyes and the map for Ubisoft future in open world games. I'd like to hear and see your thoughts.
@@JustDatBoi Playing on anything but a decent CRT would seemingly make these dark visuals of the console version nearly unplayable for me. I would have quit as I had my Xbox on an early LCD and black levels should have been called gray levels at the time.
A virus that destroys files, somehow making the creation of an anti-virus impossible? Okay, I realize that shooters rarely have stories that are well thought out, but you have to try to come up with something that stupid.
This game has fun gore, but it was smoked visually a year before by console games like MGS2 and Halo, which is disappointing given it’s PC roots, and the gameplay is nothing special. This game could have run at 60 on Xbox and maybe even GameCube/PS2. Jedi Outcast on the same engine runs at 60 on Xbox/GC.
I love 6th gen shooters, especially ones on the Xbox & Ps2. Its not even just nostalgia because I enjoy titles I never played as a youngster. May you all have a lovely day. Great review mister
Glad you enjoyed!
So many fun FPS games on both consoles and pc back then. I miss them a lot today.
Any FPS made by one of my absolute favorite developers "Raven Software" I always enjoy playing. I personally love this game with it's more serious tone & gore gimmicks! The first in the series on the PS2 is a gem too!
You did a great job going over the finer points of the game!
Raven Software put out some great stuff back in the day!
They're one of the studios I'm hoping will get freed from the cod mines after the Xbox acquisition
This was one of the "Evil Killergames" that was even mentioned beside Doom 3 in one of my School book. Here in Germany we have a decade of videogame discussion with the high of it in the mid 2000s. Thx to a now well known TH-camr and game journalist it wasn't banned here. He was the first guy who actually played the games at our ESRB equivalent (USK/BPJM) he started around 2000 and is also the reason other adults games like Hitman 2 could be released.
Thanks for sharing that info. Helps me find certain games places in gaming history.
Had a random thought of this game today after not playing it since its release. Wow thank you for posting the footage. Brought back many good gory memories
I played this a ton back in 2003 on the original Xbox on xbox live. Such a great multiplayer game. I still have my original copy.
Man, my clan and I played this game's MP so much back in the day when this came out and for YEARS after. As with most Quake 3 based games, the mods and what not available make the game really fun to play online, not to mention all the crazy maps that were made and the (for the lack of a better word) mutators available to this day. I haven't installed the game in a while so I don't know how MP community is holding up these days, but in 2020 when I last played there were still 3 or 4 full servers of players, which is awesome.
I remember when my clan was dda and there was a rival clan called SC lol
Multiplayer was definitely the highlight. With a full lobby games are really chaotic and always busy. Funny how every FPS in this era seemed to use the Quake 3 engine. The violence felt like the naughtiest thing when I was a kid. If my parents saw what happened to the enemies you kill they'd have thought twice buying me it!
Just recently found your channel, and it's been pretty cool remembering my beloved Xbox. I really like how straight to the point and well explained your videos are. If you allow me one observation though, it's kinda odd that your videos have no sound of the games, just a narration. Sound is an integral part of gaming and every time I watch one of your videos I find myself finding gameplay videos after to hear how the games sound. It's especially odd when you comment on the music of the game. Or how annoying or cartoonish the death of the enemies sound, then I have to interrupt the video to watch a gameplay and then return. Nevertheless I intend to watch many other videos you made. Keep rocking man.
Thanks for the feedback. I'm glad you enjoy my writing style. I've left straight footage out of my videos because I haven't felt a good way where it works cohesively with my style. This is a concern I've heard a lot and I want to try implementing sometime in coming months.
I love all the SOF games. Simplistic but appeals to the caveman in me.
So many hours played on Xbox Live with my friends a ridiculously great single player. I might have had too much fun slicing off the limbs of dead corpses in the game 😅 I also had a blast playing the first game on PC, Dreamcast, and PS2.
I remember playing the heck out of the SoF2 Demo from the Xbox Magazine Demo disc, because my parents wouldn't allow me to get this game because you can literally chop up enemies with a knife after they're dead!
NO ONE CANT EVEN SAY A WORD UNLESS U LIVED THRU DIS ERA.. This just turned your xbox into gold back in the day when you are playing socom on yo ps2 network adapter kit wit headset...the headset and dismemberment and online 8 vs 8 fast nasty good senarios..what made yo xbox into a controller sweating pc shooterish kind of game..some much blood for its time too.. man i love bein born in the 80s and got to live thru dis.
I loved playing SoF2 multiplayer on pc when I was in middle school.
I tried out for a clan, failed horribly, and was bummed for like a week 😂😂
Loved this game back in the day,will have to get it again as it’s only £1 on most stores
The original pc versions of the first two SOF games are some of my favorite shooters of all time. I notice this Xbox version of SOF2 was actually easier than the pc version that game is so brutally difficult its up there with R6 Raven Shield they completely changed their game design approach since the first one was too much of an arena shooter.
Great as always!!
Thank you!
Played tones online when it came out i was like 14 trying to find it now for series x
This game always looked interesting to me but I never played it for whatever reason. The multiplayer looked fun though when you were playing it on Insignia.
Yeah and thanks for watching that when I was playing. The multiplayer is definitely the strongest part of this game.
Definitely not a bad port, but certainly not a great one either. The Rainbow Six games, Black and even Urban Chaos Riot Response would probably be better to play overall and I'm leaving out many other FPS games that lean more on the Sci-Fi side of things rather than modernish era shooters. Ther's just too many better FPS games on the Xbox to consider over Soldier of Fortune 2 even if you leave out the Sci-Fi stuff and go for the more realistic-era titles. Nevertheless, I can appreciate what SoF2 tried to do here, just only as a part of FPS console history and not as a game I'd actually pull off the shelf.
Yeah I totally understand and I agree. There's definitely a lot better first person shooters that are more grounded.
Didn't realize how good I had it back then until it's gone. Now? I really got dig to find new FPS games that are like those from the 6th and 7th gen. Way too many Indies just keep copy pasting Doom/Quake/early 1990s FPS design.
@@Gruntvc To be fair, Doom/Quake-style FPS games are still plenty of fun. They just have a different "flavor" to them despite also being a general FPS. Its like chicken🐔 vs turkey🦃: they're both birds and they both taste great but have totally different sizes, flavors and textures to each other. Great, now I'm hungry rofl. 🤣
This is a technically bad port. 60 on a game that looks this muddy wouldn’t even be unfeasible on the less capable PS2, with enough optimization.
You need to make sure your OG Xbox is modded and using component cables and probably a solid component->HDMI converter to really bring up the lighting levels. I use an mClassic too and that helps with the relatively muted colours in a lot of games. PS If you ever get a chance to play BLACK *in 720p on a modded 128mb OG*... you won't believe your eyes. It's literally a 360 game in disguise.
can you do a review on a game called "breakdown" it was on xbox and i think that game was a hidden gem
Yeah I'll add it to my to-do list. Breakdown is one of my favorites on the console, that game deserves a great review.
You really should do a video of RLH (Run Like Hell)
I'll add it to the to-do list!
I'd buy remasters for both Soldier of Fortune 1&2. I miss FPS games like this. Not even indie FPS games are like this.
Yeah I'd love to see them give these a cool modern upgrade.
Agreed
A remake of the game that would fix the game’s pacing and difficulty spike issues would be great.
Nice review! Love the game
Thanks for watching! I appreciate it.
I Had this confused with SWAT. Cool you can play online
Okay I will agree that the stealth and the missions where you accompany a crew are pretty fucking bad! But I found this game overall to be pretty good. I don't really care about graphics that much.
The game wasn't bad on the PC but I have bad memories of the Xbox port
Soldier of Fortune 1 was a better game, but 2 is still pretty solid. On PC, the game's defining flaw (aside from the fatally flawed "smart AI" system) was Weapon Spray: A system where when you keep firing, the gun's projectiles spread further. Sounds good on paper given the game's new focus on realistic combat (and Halo Reach proved that such a system COULD work in 2010), but FATAL in execution. Because of this, playing the game with custom difficulty is mandatory due to the option to turn it off. 1 doesn't have this problem and is more run-and-gun, and is also much better because of it and more traditional Quake II engine AI to be honest.
A similar game to Soldier of Fortune would be Kingpin: Life of Crime by Grey Matter and Interplay. The game sought to deliver one of the first true adult FPS experiences by casting you as a criminal in a Tarantino-inspired crime-ridden city with a combat system as gory as Soldier of Fortune's and lots of R-rated Swearing not unlike Tarantino's films. Needless to say, it didn't do so well and was a financial flop due to releasing in the wake of the Columbine Massacre... Which sucks, because beneath the uberviolence and profanity was an actually competent and fun semi-open FPS that suffered from terrible balancing. Interplay's first game in the 2020s was and is a rebalancing of Kingpin, but that version suffers from a botched launch.
I remember seeing this video game at blockbuster but never played, rent, buy it. The only game of the series have played is payback.
SoF2 mp on the PC is one of my most played multiplayer games of all time. Needless to say, I was extremely hyped for the Xbox port so I could play with all my friends on Xbox. It ended up being one of the worst PC to Xbox ports. If you go back and look at reviews they're much lower than the PC counterpart, and rightfully so. It was inferior in every single way, and a bit buggy.
One of my most disappointing ports ever.
Can this still be played online with xbox?
Would love to play it online again.
Yes if your console is softmodded and you set it up with Insignia.
Sounds interesting off rip Idk if it's just me but I love when games over explain I feel like it leaves more for my imagination
Damn, uploaded 10 minutes ago. That Algorithm working over time. Always would rather be recommended smaller creators
I'm glad you gave the video a watch. I hope you enjoyed!
Always curious about these games... Curiosity quelled, glad I never gave in. Dark is definitely a narrative.
Yeah its definitely not the most fun plot. I'm always happy to try new games to gain an opinion on them, but this one isn't going to be the strongest in my memory as time goes on.
You’re glad you never played this game because it’s…too dark?
@@campxbox Ever play Beyond Good and Evil? Much easier on the eyes and the map for Ubisoft future in open world games. I'd like to hear and see your thoughts.
@@JustDatBoi Playing on anything but a decent CRT would seemingly make these dark visuals of the console version nearly unplayable for me. I would have quit as I had my Xbox on an early LCD and black levels should have been called gray levels at the time.
@@brigurugi Yeah its one of my favorites! I definitely need to talk about that one soon. I love the story for that one.
A virus that destroys files, somehow making the creation of an anti-virus impossible?
Okay, I realize that shooters rarely have stories that are well thought out, but you have to try to come up with something that stupid.
This game has fun gore, but it was smoked visually a year before by console games like MGS2 and Halo, which is disappointing given it’s PC roots, and the gameplay is nothing special.
This game could have run at 60 on Xbox and maybe even GameCube/PS2. Jedi Outcast on the same engine runs at 60 on Xbox/GC.
Is this backwards compatible on the Xbox Series X ???
Unfortunately not.