This game is _fascinating_ It spends almost the entire game being a semi-realistic action movie call of duty, only to out of nowhere become _a fucking Metal Gear game_ in the final act
that and the final boss design is Gray Fox/Frank Jaeger (or just Cyborg Ninja) mixed with a Power Rangers villain like Lord Zedd, same with the personality albeit leaning much more into the ladder
Fun fact: the third game in this series, Soldier of Fortune: Payback, was created by the same studio as Chaser, meaning that if Civvie progresses far enough into the Soldier of Fortune series, he'll get some Slav jank as a reward.
@@randomfaca I'd love to see Civvie review that one. I remember way back in the earlier TH-cam days Armake21 came out with a review of that. I just remember this one part in the video where he walks into a combat area, and an enemy npc runs around in a circle and basically 360 noscopes him after. That sealed the deal for me.
@@ferdinand12390 I think it is hilarious, because that is how Demo Dick actually talked in real life. If it were fictional, it would be a writer's poor execution of the concept. Instead, it's just an accurate representation of the man, and that makes so much better because it doesn't feel out of place since, well, that's a human person.
@@cyborgparrot1996 You think MS is going to give the second best performing CoD team freedom to do other things? No, they are going to take that talent and have them make an 8k model for a gun with weed decals on it and sell it for $40.
For all the dialogue jank, there's something uniquely refreshing about the non-verbal communication at 28:23. Mullins just scowls in response to Dekker's question, and the conversation naturally flows right through that. You know Raven Software has their shit together when they swap out the voice actor for two seconds of facial art.
I wonder if Civvie would've gone into Commando 2 as well in his discussion? I actually like it more than the original. It's a really underappreciated sequel. One of the few sequels that actually did something different than it's original like Gremlins 2: The New Batch; And we're all better for it doing that.
suprised that you didnt mention the best feature of the SMG. When you shoot an enemy their body starts juggling from getting riddled with bullets. You can keep shooting and they stand there juggling until you stop or run out of ammo. amazing. every game needs that.
Can't believe Civvie didn't show the alternate fire for the microwave gun, which makes enemies cook from the inside and explode. I played this when it came out and that's one of the things that sticks with me. Also, the voice actor for Dekker is the psychologist from Terminator 1 and 2!
Not gonna lie, i actually played the shit outta SOF and never knew that because i absolutely hated that gun. It felt sooo out of place i couldnt use it. Like at least in games like f.e.a.r. or wolfenstein when they throw lightning guns at you it fits thematically. But it seemed so ridiculous i couldnt enjoy using it for one second. I think my reaction was "WTF is this shit!" Threw it down and never looked back
Duuude...i was about to say the same damn thing!! How did he miss that?! Thats like the most awesome weapon this game has and because of that Alt. Fire mode! I liked the video though..damn awesome!
Microwave gun? Forgot the flamethrower secondary too. Anyways, I almost don't care, but... ...WHERE'S THE SLUGTHROWER CIVVIE? lol (I know he used it for like 10 seconds in the last fight) All jokes aside, I'm just glad he made a video of one of my all-time favourite shooters. Now go play SoF2:DH and as a replacement for shock therapy play *hurk*.....play *gag*.....SoF:Payback...
In the original release, the Iraq levels actually caused unintentional controversy when the friend/foe indicator labelled civilians as foes due to a bug.
Raven: "so John, we're going to make a game based on your escapades as a mercenary." "Yeah that's cool but can you include a level where I fight ninjas on top of a skyscraper?"
@@Jakob_The_Stoic_Norseman hire a samurai~ (rich important people hired samurai, poor people who could not afford to hire samurai did not hire samurai)
command and conquer renegade not only kept track of how many enemies you'd killed by shooting in the dick, it even did the same amount of damage as a headshot
I only played the demo, but I love knowing that this serious and gory military shooter utterly goes off the rails and randomly gives you a campy GI Joe character as the main villain.
I had a few copies of SOF magazine from the late 70s/early 80s. It had a classifieds section that was pretty much what you would expect, but in amongst the various dudes selling military equipment of dubious origin, you'd get some cryptic message like "The Spider is now accepting new contracts".
Yeah, soldier of fortune unironically was used as a way for contract killers and mercenaries to advertise their services. And the people running the magazine definitely knew about it
in case you're wondering what kind of contracts spider might have been accepting, they were the subject of several major lawsuits in US courts because people used those classifieds to recruit for at least 3 straight up contract murders. and that was just the cases where people were dumb enough to get caught!
@wehraboohunterssvu316 oh jeeeeeez, I figured it was some kind of hired muscle or secret merc group lol. I suppose I also assumed it was a hit man too actually. That's insane
You can pretty consistently disarm enemies in this game when shooting their hands with the pistol. I love doing it, fits the 80s action movie vibe like a glove.
Spent a lot of time dedicated to SoF back in the early 2000s; even worked for GameSpy's Planet Soldier of Fortune for a while. Went to QuakeCon 2001 and interviewed Kenn Hoekstra about the soon-to-be-released Soldier of Fortune II for the site. Was on the closed beta for SoF 2, which was a neat experience. Created a couple of custom game modes for SoF2 MP, specifically Kill the Man with the Ball and another that was inspired by my experience in the beta, which would ultimately be called Gunrunner. If you care, the gist of Gunrunner was that one player had a gun (the titular Gunrunner) and everyone else had a grenade they could trigger, but not throw. If you could blow up the Gunrunner, you respawned as the next Gunrunner. Points were only awarded by shooting other grenade-toting players as the Gunrunner. I eventually modded in a radar system, so everyone would know approximately where the Gunrunner was. I envisioned the mode as a fun little diversion between rounds of other objective-based game modes.
Oh man, Gamespy??? Dude I loved playing the SoF 2 multiplayer demo on gamespy lol. I also played the demo for C&C Renegade on there I think. Thank you for working on gamespy 🤘🏾
I like to imagine john mullins was the one at raven going "please add cool ninjas and rocket lauchers and me running on trains and shit that would be cool" lol
The multiplayer community for this game and Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix was SICK. As a kid I remember obsessing over the fact that you could put code in your name to change the color of it on the scoreboard. All of a sudden it wasn't about your K/D it was about how sick your name looked and what clan tag you were reppin. So many hours spent on both of these games as a young kid and I hadn't really remembered it to now. Just unlocked a core memory for me, thank you Civvie.
Multiplayer was a great time, especially in SoF2 II! The people I played with back then (a gaming group that my dad was part of & I got to tag along once I was "old enough" to play gory games lol) went really wild with all of the customizable aspects like that. Nearly everyone had a set of bound chat commands utilizing dynamic tokens to, for example, taunt the last person you killed/threaten the last person to shoot you, talk shit about whoever was bottom fragging, make fun of someone for only doing X damage to you before you killed them, etc, & at the time the concept of being able to have that kind of info inserted automatically into chat without needing to look up any of it beforehand felt like one of the coolest bonus features I'd ever seen at the time. Not only did the game have the most insane damage modeling & most satisfying weapons to use in any FPS game, but the devs even let you personalize your trash talk in ways I'd never thought possible previously, it was amazing! Being reminded of all this & the way it felt back then is a real blast from the past.
Won't lie, though the singleplayer for that game sucked in terms of polish, at least the multiplayer made up for it... kinda reminds me of Call of Duty: Black Ops III and its Zombies Mode, in a way.
This game has a ton of attention to detail, but what struck me the most is that- okay, you hold the big pistol (the Desert Eagle) in your right hand, right? But if you lean around a corner to the *left*, he actually tosses it to his left hand and fires it that way. It's things like that, and how you can reload the LMG with five or fewer shots left and see the exact amount of bullets in the belt's model, that really drive home that they cared.
There's two keys in the controls menu to trigger this stuff, which if used on other weapons like the 9mm pistol: It changes the stance to a two handed one. Or the shotgun? He just fliptricks the shotgun, with two variations, and the SMG, Mullins centers the weapon. And lastly, if used on the knife, it triggers Mullins cleaning the blade. This game FUCKS.
@@zbynektrajer2735 It was a licensed Soldier of Fortune Magazine game; _of course_ it had to have over the top gun porn! As a subscriber of the magazine for years back in this era, I can confirm much of its content was this too.
If you play this game on higher difficulties, the noise your weapon makes becomes very important. Be too loud for too long, and the game will spawn additional enemies on you. It makes it so you can't just shotgun everything, but kind of falls off as a mechanic once you get the LMG.
Having Earl Boen voice the villain is just the cherry on top to make this game the G.I. Joe-ass, Saturday morning cartoon, power-fantasy that it is. Simply amazing.
@@ollymuirsHe voiced Sam Gladstone the founder of the Shop in the first and second game. Is the man with glasses and bandana that you meet in the magazines shop and informe you about the missions. In the second game you must rescue him while he is recovering in the hospital.
@@ronnickels5193He didn't even try to shot at the guys he just killed with the shotgun to see that he can cut all their limbs. He didn't even realized that he can empty a whole charger on a à enemy with the SMH and the guy will keep standing until he stops shooting. He missed a lot of fun stuff
In terms of FPS? Definitely. However back in '87, Gremlin Graphics actually did make a Death Wish 3 game adaptation. It's not too bad when you consider the age of the game and the fact it's on the Commodore 64. You play as Bronson, killing every crooked dirtbag on the streets, saving innocents, and just being Bronson. As far as I know based on my short experience playing it, the game only ends when you, Charles Bronson, get bored enough to turn the game off. There could be a game over if you die, I don't know. Not something to sink hours into mind you, but a fun waste of 20 minutes or so.
if it played like a charles bronson movie, you would just be standing there on a street corner, firing away, shooting unarmed purse snatchers in the back as they run away.
I feel like this was a detail that kind of got skimmed over because Civvie doesn't seem to be using it a lot in footage, that LMG's underbarrel grenade launcher is shooting white phosphorus. Absolutely brutal weapon that was made infamous in Vietnam, so of course this game recreates it surprisingly well for 2000.
If he told that we shoot White Phosphorus to enemies, a lot of Spec Ops: The Line vets would've had PTSD the moment the sentence was over. The mother still haunts me.
From memory: you are told that Sabre is Dekker's brother by Dekker himself. He is standing behind a bulletproof window in a missile silo or something as John Mullets delivers the line "you killed my friend" like he's asking for extra condiments at the McDonald's counter, causing Dekker to summon his best Jeremy Irons impression with "You. Killed. My. BROTHER", demonstrating that all the voiceover talent apportioned for the game was indeed all taken up by Sergei Dekker's VA.
ngl i actually prefer Sabre's voice of all the characters in the game. suits his design and he's not a clear bootleg of an MGS character slightly tweaked to become a villain. i mean, Dekker is just Gray Fox right down to the voice and color palette, only rewritten to be the genocidal maniac villain rather than a character who ends up sacrificing himself for you after fighting him
When you can only find a game through a shady store in a country where a mere mention of gore is frowned upon,finding this game and playing them in my old-ass PC back in early 2000s is magical,i can tell ya,that first headshot scene is forever burned into my memory as a kid. Thanks for making me feel old and nostalgic,Civvie.
@@Flesh_Wizard I was like 14 - 15 and back then i spent time cutting the corpses apart with the knife. Also tortured the enemies by throwing knifes on their limbs,
Omg this unlocked a core memory for me. I remember years and years ago watching a friend play a game where he was knifing people apart in some medieval setting and seeing this I realized as a kid I was misinterpreting the bunker as a castle and the low poly models as medieval armor. Holy shit, thank you for a huge nostalgia trip.
Hey Civvie, there is a documentary on TH-cam called "Shadow Company" that is about the rise of Private Military Companies in todays modern battlefields - John Mullins is one of the people they interviewed, and he talks about his consulting for this game. He kinda laughs it off, and says that the most unrealistic aspect of the game is that he's never been in a situation where, by himself, he'd have to kill 500 people. Worth a watch, its an interesting documentary
The way Mullins put it, makes it sound like the ninjas and the microwave gun and the rooftop helicopter fight were *marginally more realistic.* Think on that.
The spas 12 has both semi auto and pump action function. Not many games devs at the time knew that. But that didnt stop them from putting the spas 12 in every shooter game after 2000.
Yep, it was intended for police use iirc and some shells (beanbags etc) don't produce enough gas to cycle a semi-auto weapon, hence needing to be able to manually cycle it with the pump. Honestly they did a fairly decent job making recognisable weapons given they didn't have the near infinite reference we have now on the modern internet. You couldn't just find a TH-cam video back then and see a gun stripped down to parts
@@0lionheart user manual if you were lucky or a trip to the dreaded public library . if you knew a prop guy you had insider knowledge. but yeah we are spoilt by guntube.
@@0lionheartand it’s not even the best shotgun with that feature. Benelli makes a much more durable shotgun that has this feature, but it doesn’t look anywhere near as cool.
@@boomerkobold3943Cooler? Nuh uh, the SPAS 12 is ugly af man, just because it looks recognizable doesn't mean it's cool, I'll take my Benelli M3 over that any day of the week.
Should have been dropping a Benelli M4 instead. Is a reason that it is widely considered one of the best shotguns out there. But I guess since it's not a pointy blocky mess it didn't look cool enough (or was too hard to render polygonally) so they went with the SPAS instead.
Right at 13:58, when he says, "Forget the captured stealth bomber you're going after," he accidently dips into a New York accent. This was my younger brother's and my favorite thing when we used to play this and from release to this day, one of us will randomly say it, playing up the Russian to New York accent change. Still kills me every time.
@@oz_jones Good point! Could also be Albanian accent I guess. Isn't that the more commonly spoken of the two officials in Kosovo? I'm not super familiar with the region!
When I was an early teenager I watched my uncle play this game and was completely blown away that games could look like this. He let me play a few levels and its truly what got me into gaming. SoF is absolutely incredible and one of the most underrated "hidden gems" of FPS gaming. Great video
It confused me at first too, but you can see in the top left corner that Civvie has just thrown a grenade. The breaching squad did not nade themselves.
Ohhh man, I have a story with this game. Back in 2001 my parents gifted me Soldier of Fortune, the original game in the box + manual and all that stuff. I had to wait like 1 week because my PC was in the repair shop. I played the hell of it when I got my computer back. About Dekker, I realized instantly they were brothers because their models had the same shape, only different textures. And I didn't understand much because english is not my native language. Nice video as always Civvie, it's always nice to remember the good ol' days.
Fun fact: there exists a retail version of this game called "Tactical Low-Violence Version". While the regular retail version has low-gore as an option, this special tactical edition forces it. You might think it's ridiculous to even exist but it was surprisingly common at the time. Kingpin Life of Crime has a low-maturity install option that replaces half the dialogue with loud af beeps.
Yep. This was the era of Columbine, the media's moral panic about videogame violence, court cases, and that jackass activist lawyer Jack Thompson relentlessly stirring the pot and trying to sue every dev and publisher out of existence. It was just constant hysteria around game violence c1998 - 2004. I remember those days fondly as the Golden Era of PC gaming... But sadly the negative publicity around SOF and KP violence has meant ever-decreasing gore in games. Nowadays even the most realistic, gritty shooters will be lucky to show blood spatter _at all,_ let alone the locational damage modelling, blood jets and limb removal we got 20+ years ago. Honestly games have become insanely more realistic *overall*, but the realtime damage/gore modelling of SOF and KP have never been topped or even equaled that I can think of since then.
There's a few VR games that have equal or matching tbqh. Most gritty shooters at least have the blood spray nowadays. Not to say *most* are more realistic, they most certainly are not, but you're rose-tinting it a bit here. Games aren't afraid to be *violent*, it's just less "what if more gore" and more "what if civilian casualties" these days. Different forms of disturbing and whatnot. Being this realistic in the modern age would 100% get the average shooter an AO rating, which would make them basically unsellable. (Edited for that last bit that I forgot the first time.)
This game, that used the Quake 2 engine when the Quake 3 engine was already out, is AMAZING. It is a clear and EVER present reminder to DNF that you didn't need to do what you did. You could have just put out an amazing game and it would still be remembered fondly. Instead we waited all that time for crap that didn't do anything the games it aspired to be did. Soldier of Fortune aspired to be itself, a game that, in the sequel, tracked your dick shots.
"Did you guys know about DaiKatana?" Okay this is a big lore hint. We all need to autistically comb through his videos and figure out when exactly they swapped our civvie
@jinxmclastname9212 hey, how's it going, you must be new. 👋 I personally think it happened in the clown room. Civvie hasn't been the same since the clown room...
After a couple of decades of playing videogames and learning to appreciate their graphics and artistry, SoF's looks _better_ than it did in my childhood, holy shit
@@KaoticReach1999 I played it recently and it's simply not fun. The first one is really fun in terms of gameplay. The sequel has a really boring gameplay and you must enable violence if you want a bit of gore.
i enjoyed the sequel but not nearly as much as this. this game doesn't take itself too seriously and it works, the sequel does and it just doesn't work because the gameplay is still this semi arcade with weird handpicked realistic elements also FUCK THOSE JUNGLE LEVELS
@@randomfacaThe first level in the sequel is fun, then they hit you with exactly what a game like this needs: STEALTH LEVELS WITH INSTA-FAIL IF YOU ARE SEEN!, what a great decision. Then the jungle. My brother played further and was running round Hong Kong blowing away Triads with dual-wielded Micro-Uzis, If I can ever play it again I'm just cheating ahead.
I had this thing of trying the knife on the dead bodies to check the effects. You can bring out guts and detach limbs on everything. My girlfriend was watching and thought I was some sort of psycho. Good times, would scare the shit out of her again.
I loved doing that in the second game. Just dismembering bodies and throwing knives into backs. I would try to throw all 5 into someone just to see them stick 😂 I was amazed more modern titles didn't have these things, and the fact this game didn't revolutionize the games industry is appalling. It's like hearing some small company was able to make a cell phone in 1955 but not enough people took notice, and we didn't get cell phones again for 30+ years. It makes you wonder what could have been lol. Location based damage, dismemberment, great AI and level design. SOF2 had a "mission generator" that used random generation to create maps for different mission scenarios, and it worked out really fucking well considering the time period.
I must have had some kind of censored copy, I swear mine had like light/rainbow effects and very little blood when you slashed a corpse The headshots were intact though I think
@@alexanderrahl7034SOF 2 already had downgraded gore. There was an SOF 3 where enemies were like china dolls filled with blood that just shattered when shot. Gory, but also pretty silly.
Holy shit, how have I never played this? "Excuse me Mr. Hussein" is the first time I've laughed out loud at video game dialogue since the last Grand Theft Auto.
when my grandfather passed, he passed down his copies of soldier of fortune to me since he heard somewhere that i really liked this game, and he used to collect them. i didn't read them until a few years after his passing but i was amazed because everything that happened in the game really happened in real life near exact to how the game displays it. crazy stuff.
Yea there was an interview with John Mullins where he talked about how he gave rough details on locations and things he did but nothing specific for obvious reasons. He mentioned that he liked how the games turned out, but hated the crosshair and thought it would be better if you could aim down the sights of the weapons, similar to how you could with the sniper rifle. And look where games are now!
@@Hamun002 Because Iraq tried to eat their cake and have it too by dismantling their WMD programs *but* also making it seem to Iran that maybe they hadn't really.
@@tartrazine5 BRO I was there, THERE WAS NO WMD's. They didn't have the launchers or capacity at all. No structure from province to province. Edit Former army and marine infantry, deployed 2x to iraq. That place was a mess. There was worse stuff than "IED's" there.
I like the mention of Dekker being Saber's brother because it implies that they both played Metal Gear Solid and that's why Dekker dresses like a straight Psycho Mantis while Saber's running around shirtless everywhere like Liquid Snake
MAC-11 joke, Airplane! reference, returning favorite Betelgeuse joke with high production value editing. You get better every single video, Civvie. Thank you for the laughs.
@@mrbanditos3583 That one is more of an example of wasted potential, mechanically speaking the game gets a lot of things right, but the gore is underwhelming and the story and voice acting pretty much kill the experience
@@rosfell00 If you're referring to Double Helix, you're right. There's also the fact that your new partner Taylor isn't as interesting as the late Hawk, while the game does need a lot of polishing on the bugs and A.I. department.
You can keep shooting enemies and make them do the AK dance like in Goldeneye. But unlike in Goldeneye, their bodies slowly disintegrate while you do it.
Soldier of Fortune plays like a Chuck Norris movie and it's unapologetic about it which is part of the charm. At the time it came out, I remember mostly being fascinated by the detailed mayhem but now I instead appreciate how well it actually replicates early-to-mid 90's action movie aesthetics.
I first played a demo of this game on one of those old demo disks that came with magazines. It included the entire first two levels and I must've played it like a dozen times before I got the full game. Loved this game so much - the gore, the guns, everything was so satisfying. Got crazy nostalgia watching this video.
What's cool is there's a "Community Edition" of it on moddb that you can download for free, probably the best version of it. I played it a ton in between classes during college on my laptop several years ago, such a fun campaign. Glad you did a video on this, you should definitely make one for SoF2 and SoF Payback lmao.
Haha fucking Payback! I wanted an SOF 3 so bad and then despite all the red flags, such as "Activision VALUE" division making the game instead of raven, I bought it. And what a disappointment that was.
I've been describing this game to people as "a really gory 80's Cannon Pictures action movie in FPS form" for a few years now, it kicks so much ass dude even has the Charles Bronson mustache (edit: i wrote this near the start of the vid, I hadn't even seen the Death Wish 3 mention that says the same thing later in the video lmao)
Fun fact: soldier of fortune (the magazine) has been linked to several murders and also induced people to fight as a mercenary in the Rhodesian Bush war.
You missed out on the best part of the Microwave Pulse Gun. The alt-fire makes enemies act like a hotdog that you left in the microwave for too long. They literally inflate until they explode, it's great.
Soldier of Fortune was not the first game to be adapted from a Magazine, but it was the first game to be adapted from a gun magazine. Technically, the first game to be adapted from a magazine would be Car & Driver on MS-DOS, and maybe Road & Track Presents: The Need For Speed.
Ah Soldier of Fortune. Back when i played this as a wee lad my brother made sure to turn off all of the fun settings.. little did he know that i was a smart kid and turned it right back on when he wasn't looking.
I was hoping this would eventually come up since you're going hard on Raven games. SoF set a really high bar for video game weapons for me back in the day. I'm both shocked that Civvie had never played this before, and happy that his reaction to it seems to be pure euphoria. Kinda sad he didn't go over the slugthrower, that thing is hilarious.
I get the feeling when John was telling them his stories someone went "No one will believe thats true, it's unbelievable" and then they just made it the theme for the rest of the game.
I love the AI saying 'thunderclap' Civvie, damn your stuff is great! I couldn't defend Bobby Kotick if I wanted to. He's the personification of all of what's wrong with modern video games.
It's fun to make fun of Bobby Kotick because he looks like he walked off a Nazi propaganda poster, but please don't fall into the trap of scapegoating. All video game execs are cunts. Riccitiello is an even bigger piece of shit, and I don't think I've ever seen anyone make fun of him.
The multiplayer for this game was PHENOMENAL. My absolute favorite. Not only did it have great maps, like the Raven Software Offices, but it had a fantastic gameplay mode called Assassination. Basically, when you spawned in you'd be assigned a target. Players you were targetting would be marked in green, players who were targetting you were marked yellow, and others were marked red. The better you did, the more players would be told to target you. And it was awesome because minute to minute you'd go from targetting someone to teaming up with them. Great times, man.
Nice, I don't remember this game mode! I remember the one where you would start with a shitty weapon, and as you kill enemy players, the game would give you a better weapon.
I replayed this so much. My favorite custom difficulty is with insane enemy spawning, but having them be very stupid, it makes it so loud weapon noises spawn in extra enemies, turning the game into either a sniper stealth game or a shotgun gauntlet.
Loved SoF1 and SoF2. Ghoul with it's 13 gore zones was the stuff back in the day! Hope you feature the second one as Raven's Ghoul and Chimera systems were the at their peak in the sequel. SoF2 grounded the modern shooter theme with less sci-fi and better cinematic scenes, even if the jungle level was unforgiving. And the procedural multiplayer maps were something no one else was doing.
I freakin' loved this game as a kid. Absurd load times on console but always a good time. I still walk around saying "I'm looking for a back issue of Soldier Of Fortune Magazine. July 89" in my gruff soldier voice.
No you cant, i tried, first it is not always a 100% sure you can disarm a guy because you will have to be very accurate, and second there are levels like the last part of the sewers where you have to kill the 3 guys to trigger the cutscene where hawk appears through the crates. Sorry for english
One thing I remember finding out due to morbid curiosity is what would happen if you use the knife to swing at a dead body for long enough it will dismember parts or cut open the stomache eventually. Was satisfying in that gamer way for sure, kinda like kicking zombie heads around like soccer balls
![ข้ารอเวลานี้มานานแล้ว !!! [Blox Fruits]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/QGs9gNN_0Z4/mqdefault.jpg)
This game is _fascinating_
It spends almost the entire game being a semi-realistic action movie call of duty, only to out of nowhere become _a fucking Metal Gear game_ in the final act
that and the final boss design is Gray Fox/Frank Jaeger (or just Cyborg Ninja) mixed with a Power Rangers villain like Lord Zedd, same with the personality albeit leaning much more into the ladder
Agreed I mean that whiplash is so potent it could decapitate a man.
Perfect template - this is how you make a perfect 80's movie action game.
not gay enough to be metal gear but is on the rigth path lmao
Even the dialogue sounds like metal gear
Fun fact: the third game in this series, Soldier of Fortune: Payback, was created by the same studio as Chaser, meaning that if Civvie progresses far enough into the Soldier of Fortune series, he'll get some Slav jank as a reward.
was that the one that Jarek had a meltdown on stream with one of the boss fights bugging out massively? God what a horrendous game that was
@@randomfaca I'd love to see Civvie review that one. I remember way back in the earlier TH-cam days Armake21 came out with a review of that. I just remember this one part in the video where he walks into a combat area, and an enemy npc runs around in a circle and basically 360 noscopes him after. That sealed the deal for me.
As someone who played Payback first, that explains a lot, actually
Boy I sure hope he does.
It's like 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon except the bacon is that hideous potted meat they used to feed to Soviet soldiers.
This game is exactly what Rogue Warrior wanted to be.
Thought I read Rogue Trooper there.
Yes and no.
I don't think RW ever cared for making a good gameplay, more like "how funny we can make this mess?"
@@LazyBuddyBan was it even funny? it was cringe, i love swearing, but when a 4 word sentence has 3 curse words, it becomes tiresome quickly
@@ferdinand12390 I think it is hilarious, because that is how Demo Dick actually talked in real life. If it were fictional, it would be a writer's poor execution of the concept. Instead, it's just an accurate representation of the man, and that makes so much better because it doesn't feel out of place since, well, that's a human person.
@@PosthumanHeresy Demo Dick is the living embodiment of "swear like a sailor"
Loved this game! Poor Raven, condemned to the Call of Duty mines for eternity.
Hopefully they'll be free to make their own games again once Microsoft finally buys out Activision and Blizzard.
@@cyborgparrot1996 You think MS is going to give the second best performing CoD team freedom to do other things? No, they are going to take that talent and have them make an 8k model for a gun with weed decals on it and sell it for $40.
They could always all quit and form a new studio
He didn't shoot the poop in the Sudan toilet! John says all the money in the world isn't worth this smell.
@@lolmao500 unlikely and at this point they’re probably under a noncompete
Car and Driver was a magazine turned into a video game in 1992. The menus were even based on the magazines table of contents and article format!
I remember road and track had need for speed come out on the 3do then playstation later. similar kind of game i assume
I love the way Civvie says "Yakuza", it's got the same energy as an Italian saying "Gabagool"
Yaghootsa? Over 'eeere
American Italian from Staten Island?
Its a running gag from a previous game he played, in which they pronounced it that way
@@ChibiTheEdgehog shhhh don't tell him
@@ChibiTheEdgehog like I remember ever civvie video also reading the words gabagool and italian just kinda got me thinking about Vinny.
Each Raven game Civvie plays brings us one step closer to him playing Elite Force and pressing the self destruct button on Voyager.
in 5 years he will have no choice but to play the mainline call of duty franchise campaigns. it will be a cold day in hell.
blood for blood. Vengeance for tuvix
@@Davvg Yes, it is time to make them pay.
Dear god, Civvie playing Elite Force would be... interesting to say the least.
Just like self destruction on Enterprise in The Search of Spock.
For all the dialogue jank, there's something uniquely refreshing about the non-verbal communication at 28:23.
Mullins just scowls in response to Dekker's question, and the conversation naturally flows right through that.
You know Raven Software has their shit together when they swap out the voice actor for two seconds of facial art.
"I am glad that the gore and dismemberment effects don't extend to the dogs."
"Also Vivisector is pretty good guys"
Tigers, bears, gorillas and goatmen are not dogs.
Will only see if that's the truth if and when Vivisector gets out of abandonware hell for me.
@@lagg1e and hyenas
Except they do extend to the dogs.
pro-furry comment
"This whole thing aged like it drank from the wrong grail"
That line is so fucking good holy shit, I'm stealing that
I dont get it.
@@gulcits a reference to an indiana jones movie if i can remember correctly.
"He chose... poorly."
@@gulc You should watch all three Indiana Jones movies, they rule.
He chose poorly
I want you to know that I, and the rest of your audience, would absolutely watch a 2 hour Civvie lecture on Commando. That film is superb.
Bennett the pot bellied Freddie Mercury in Chainmail is the best villain in movie history.
let's upvote this comment to oblivion untils this happens
I wonder if Civvie would've gone into Commando 2 as well in his discussion? I actually like it more than the original. It's a really underappreciated sequel. One of the few sequels that actually did something different than it's original like Gremlins 2: The New Batch; And we're all better for it doing that.
IMO a fun high effort April Fool's video would be having Civvie do a serious lecture on a real historical military conflict from the 20th century.
Remember when Civvie did movie reviews on his channel? I kinda miss those.
suprised that you didnt mention the best feature of the SMG. When you shoot an enemy their body starts juggling from getting riddled with bullets. You can keep shooting and they stand there juggling until you stop or run out of ammo. amazing. every game needs that.
Literally, you can made them "dance" with bullets.
_Robocop Jibbs & Squibbs intensifies_
also no indepth study of the gore system. you could shoot the corpses on the ground limb by limb and see the detail in the gore system at work
So literally is an 80s action movie disguised as "serious" war movie
The “it’s not a clip, it’s actually a Mac-11” line is the most clever thing I’ve heard in a while!
This is not a ballista it's actually a Mac-10
Yeah that was out of nowhere lol Civvie fucking rules.
I'm just glad someone (Katie?) made a visual pun out of the "Magazine/clip" boondoggle.
I had a hearty giggle at it, for sure haha
@@labrat810 Katie isn't real dude. You need to let go. The accident wasn't your fault.
Can't believe Civvie didn't show the alternate fire for the microwave gun, which makes enemies cook from the inside and explode. I played this when it came out and that's one of the things that sticks with me. Also, the voice actor for Dekker is the psychologist from Terminator 1 and 2!
Not gonna lie, i actually played the shit outta SOF and never knew that because i absolutely hated that gun. It felt sooo out of place i couldnt use it. Like at least in games like f.e.a.r. or wolfenstein when they throw lightning guns at you it fits thematically. But it seemed so ridiculous i couldnt enjoy using it for one second. I think my reaction was "WTF is this shit!" Threw it down and never looked back
Duuude...i was about to say the same damn thing!! How did he miss that?! Thats like the most awesome weapon this game has and because of that Alt. Fire mode!
I liked the video though..damn awesome!
Literally about to autistically and furiously comment that too.
Also LeChuck from the Monkey Island series (Sans the most recent one, Return to Monkey Island).
Rest in peace, Earl Boen.
Microwave gun? Forgot the flamethrower secondary too. Anyways, I almost don't care, but...
...WHERE'S THE SLUGTHROWER CIVVIE? lol
(I know he used it for like 10 seconds in the last fight)
All jokes aside, I'm just glad he made a video of one of my all-time favourite shooters. Now go play SoF2:DH and as a replacement for shock therapy play *hurk*.....play *gag*.....SoF:Payback...
In the original release, the Iraq levels actually caused unintentional controversy when the friend/foe indicator labelled civilians as foes due to a bug.
A "bug"
lmao
Oh no.
Raven: "so John, we're going to make a game based on your escapades as a mercenary."
"Yeah that's cool but can you include a level where I fight ninjas on top of a skyscraper?"
I guess the only way to counteract against ninjas is to be or have mercenaries- 🤣
@@Jakob_The_Stoic_Norseman hire a samurai~ (rich important people hired samurai, poor people who could not afford to hire samurai did not hire samurai)
@@Mahrooby The poor people hired the ninjas
@@christopherwall2121no they were the ninjas
@@roaridanbuzerak8761 there are two poor people inside you, one got a job as a ninja and the other got a job as a samurai
I remember when this game came out, a remark was made "you can shoot enemies in the crotch, which is the earmark of a truly great game"
someone i knew would say how when he'd play the original COD's when shooting their helmets off was the best thing of the game.
Bulletstorm?
In earlier Fallouts you could do that too, and those games were great.
command and conquer renegade not only kept track of how many enemies you'd killed by shooting in the dick, it even did the same amount of damage as a headshot
I only played the demo, but I love knowing that this serious and gory military shooter utterly goes off the rails and randomly gives you a campy GI Joe character as the main villain.
i feel like every character is a GI Joe dude put into the world of classic Doom or Wolfenstein, specifically the more gory parts like killing bosses.
The moment Decker shows up this turns into a Metal Gear game
Metal Gear ???
Finally, Metal Gear Liquid
@@dext0rb Revolver Ocelot???
Psychomantis? You're that ninja
A cardboard box?!?
(That aside, really hope the Master Collection compilations are shockingly well ported, especially to the PC.)
I had a few copies of SOF magazine from the late 70s/early 80s. It had a classifieds section that was pretty much what you would expect, but in amongst the various dudes selling military equipment of dubious origin, you'd get some cryptic message like "The Spider is now accepting new contracts".
Yeah, soldier of fortune unironically was used as a way for contract killers and mercenaries to advertise their services. And the people running the magazine definitely knew about it
That's wild lol.
Really cool, but also wild 😂
@@alexanderrahl7034 less cool when you read about the victims
in case you're wondering what kind of contracts spider might have been accepting, they were the subject of several major lawsuits in US courts because people used those classifieds to recruit for at least 3 straight up contract murders. and that was just the cases where people were dumb enough to get caught!
@wehraboohunterssvu316 oh jeeeeeez, I figured it was some kind of hired muscle or secret merc group lol. I suppose I also assumed it was a hit man too actually. That's insane
Civvie's reaction to the pistol not being ass was priceless.
It's a Desert Eagle, it SHOULD feel like a Hans cannon
@@oz_jonesI dunno dude, I don't think you'll catch a German using it
@@CountDoucheula nono it's a cannon made to be used on hanz
26:00 The subtle presence of Cancer Mouse in that moment was very well done.
1:11 I love the part in that Good Housekeeping issue that talks about how nothing good ever comes from a house fire
"14 Tips to Help You Fight For Your Happiness!"
"Closet Labyrinths: The Ins and Outs"
You can pretty consistently disarm enemies in this game when shooting their hands with the pistol.
I love doing it, fits the 80s action movie vibe like a glove.
Something it sounds like the enemies need.
I have genuinely never seen an image/video of Bobby where he doesn't look like a literal demon wearing human skin
Try Kenneth Copeland, that guy makes Bobby look like a saint.
What was Bobby's crime?
@@DUSKTON6864Activision Blizzard CEO
@@DUSKTON6864threatened to have his assistant killed, CEO of Actiblizzard and their whole related crimes and scandals
I only knew his face as sseth's youtube pfp for the longest time before putting name to face, now I can't help but to think of sseth when I see him.
Spent a lot of time dedicated to SoF back in the early 2000s; even worked for GameSpy's Planet Soldier of Fortune for a while. Went to QuakeCon 2001 and interviewed Kenn Hoekstra about the soon-to-be-released Soldier of Fortune II for the site. Was on the closed beta for SoF 2, which was a neat experience. Created a couple of custom game modes for SoF2 MP, specifically Kill the Man with the Ball and another that was inspired by my experience in the beta, which would ultimately be called Gunrunner.
If you care, the gist of Gunrunner was that one player had a gun (the titular Gunrunner) and everyone else had a grenade they could trigger, but not throw. If you could blow up the Gunrunner, you respawned as the next Gunrunner. Points were only awarded by shooting other grenade-toting players as the Gunrunner. I eventually modded in a radar system, so everyone would know approximately where the Gunrunner was. I envisioned the mode as a fun little diversion between rounds of other objective-based game modes.
Oh man, Gamespy??? Dude I loved playing the SoF 2 multiplayer demo on gamespy lol. I also played the demo for C&C Renegade on there I think. Thank you for working on gamespy 🤘🏾
GameSpy? A Planet site dedicated to Soldier of Fortune? Man, I miss those days, where a Planet site was the go-to place for a game.
That gunrunner mod sounds like good fun.
Do you ever revisit Sof2 MP?
@@brendanhinderliter6627 Wow, I lived on that site. So many mods and maps!
I like to imagine john mullins was the one at raven going "please add cool ninjas and rocket lauchers and me running on trains and shit that would be cool" lol
The multiplayer community for this game and Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix was SICK. As a kid I remember obsessing over the fact that you could put code in your name to change the color of it on the scoreboard. All of a sudden it wasn't about your K/D it was about how sick your name looked and what clan tag you were reppin. So many hours spent on both of these games as a young kid and I hadn't really remembered it to now. Just unlocked a core memory for me, thank you Civvie.
You could put in so many shennanigans thanks to the Q2 engine, colored names, huge banner like pop ups and stuff it was great back then ❤
Multiplayer was a great time, especially in SoF2 II! The people I played with back then (a gaming group that my dad was part of & I got to tag along once I was "old enough" to play gory games lol) went really wild with all of the customizable aspects like that. Nearly everyone had a set of bound chat commands utilizing dynamic tokens to, for example, taunt the last person you killed/threaten the last person to shoot you, talk shit about whoever was bottom fragging, make fun of someone for only doing X damage to you before you killed them, etc, & at the time the concept of being able to have that kind of info inserted automatically into chat without needing to look up any of it beforehand felt like one of the coolest bonus features I'd ever seen at the time. Not only did the game have the most insane damage modeling & most satisfying weapons to use in any FPS game, but the devs even let you personalize your trash talk in ways I'd never thought possible previously, it was amazing! Being reminded of all this & the way it felt back then is a real blast from the past.
Won't lie, though the singleplayer for that game sucked in terms of polish, at least the multiplayer made up for it... kinda reminds me of Call of Duty: Black Ops III and its Zombies Mode, in a way.
I remember trying to bayonet people as often as possible and using incendiary nades. Only one that got flamed was me for being bad.
Mp5 with thermals was my jam in SoF2 online…
This game has a ton of attention to detail, but what struck me the most is that- okay, you hold the big pistol (the Desert Eagle) in your right hand, right? But if you lean around a corner to the *left*, he actually tosses it to his left hand and fires it that way. It's things like that, and how you can reload the LMG with five or fewer shots left and see the exact amount of bullets in the belt's model, that really drive home that they cared.
I'm convinced Raven was bought and send to the COD mines because they were good enough to threaten Activision lol
There's two keys in the controls menu to trigger this stuff, which if used on other weapons like the 9mm pistol: It changes the stance to a two handed one.
Or the shotgun? He just fliptricks the shotgun, with two variations, and the SMG, Mullins centers the weapon.
And lastly, if used on the knife, it triggers Mullins cleaning the blade.
This game FUCKS.
@@Lauty3590 this game got me pregnant
This game also had 2 key on a keyboard solely dedicated for gun twirling animations of every weapon and a button for hand swapping.
@@zbynektrajer2735 It was a licensed Soldier of Fortune Magazine game; _of course_ it had to have over the top gun porn! As a subscriber of the magazine for years back in this era, I can confirm much of its content was this too.
If you play this game on higher difficulties, the noise your weapon makes becomes very important. Be too loud for too long, and the game will spawn additional enemies on you. It makes it so you can't just shotgun everything, but kind of falls off as a mechanic once you get the LMG.
"Ah, my ammo delivery fairies have arrived"
@@MostlyPennyCatTime to plant some pansies.
Having Earl Boen voice the villain is just the cherry on top to make this game the G.I. Joe-ass, Saturday morning cartoon, power-fantasy that it is. Simply amazing.
I had no idea he voiced the villain that's awesome, I knew he played character in Sof2 though. (Can't remember which one.)
@@ollymuirsHe voiced Sam Gladstone the founder of the Shop in the first and second game.
Is the man with glasses and bandana that you meet in the magazines shop and informe you about the missions.
In the second game you must rescue him while he is recovering in the hospital.
Civvie sounding genuinely excited and happy about this game really brightens my day.
Like hell, he even tolerates the Sewer Level.
when the jaded man is excited the whole world smiles with him
He forgot the alt fire for the microwave gun. Pop goes the weasel
@@ronnickels5193He didn't even try to shot at the guys he just killed with the shotgun to see that he can cut all their limbs. He didn't even realized that he can empty a whole charger on a à enemy with the SMH and the guy will keep standing until he stops shooting. He missed a lot of fun stuff
This was such a sick game back in the day, the blood and dismemberment was so fun and satisfying, We need more games like this .
This is the closest we might ever come to playing a 1980s Charles Bronson action movie in a video game. Absolute classic.
In terms of FPS? Definitely. However back in '87, Gremlin Graphics actually did make a Death Wish 3 game adaptation. It's not too bad when you consider the age of the game and the fact it's on the Commodore 64. You play as Bronson, killing every crooked dirtbag on the streets, saving innocents, and just being Bronson. As far as I know based on my short experience playing it, the game only ends when you, Charles Bronson, get bored enough to turn the game off. There could be a game over if you die, I don't know. Not something to sink hours into mind you, but a fun waste of 20 minutes or so.
Idk if this will count, but there’s a doom mod called action doom, although that may not fit due to the contra and metal slug influence.
if it played like a charles bronson movie, you would just be standing there on a street corner, firing away, shooting unarmed purse snatchers in the back as they run away.
we almost got Escape from New York too, but they turned it into Dead to Right which nobody remembers now...
Haven't heard so much sustained joy in Civvie's voice for quite some time.
I don't think I've ever heard him actually cheer before. He cheers in this one, and uses the word 'glorious' more than once.
He's been pretty happy in the last few vids.
I wonder what happened?
Heh SUStained... (I am definitely going to the clown room)
@@zigfausthe got all the bad FPSs out of the way 😜
@@zigfaustPlayed too much Slav jank and it got him depressed. Hopefully the next gap between jank and classic shooter isn’t as long.
"Aged like it drank from the wrong grail" is absolutely getting worked into my collection of analogies.
I feel like this was a detail that kind of got skimmed over because Civvie doesn't seem to be using it a lot in footage, that LMG's underbarrel grenade launcher is shooting white phosphorus. Absolutely brutal weapon that was made infamous in Vietnam, so of course this game recreates it surprisingly well for 2000.
If he told that we shoot White Phosphorus to enemies, a lot of Spec Ops: The Line vets would've had PTSD the moment the sentence was over.
The mother still haunts me.
@@DPCP-h9uDo you feel like a hero, yet?
From memory: you are told that Sabre is Dekker's brother by Dekker himself. He is standing behind a bulletproof window in a missile silo or something as John Mullets delivers the line "you killed my friend" like he's asking for extra condiments at the McDonald's counter, causing Dekker to summon his best Jeremy Irons impression with "You. Killed. My. BROTHER", demonstrating that all the voiceover talent apportioned for the game was indeed all taken up by Sergei Dekker's VA.
th-cam.com/video/BAGlYKzs-yU/w-d-xo.html
ngl i actually prefer Sabre's voice of all the characters in the game. suits his design and he's not a clear bootleg of an MGS character slightly tweaked to become a villain. i mean, Dekker is just Gray Fox right down to the voice and color palette, only rewritten to be the genocidal maniac villain rather than a character who ends up sacrificing himself for you after fighting him
When you can only find a game through a shady store in a country where a mere mention of gore is frowned upon,finding this game and playing them in my old-ass PC back in early 2000s is magical,i can tell ya,that first headshot scene is forever burned into my memory as a kid.
Thanks for making me feel old and nostalgic,Civvie.
"hey kids, wanna see some gore?"
@@oz_jones more like 'oh,cover art looks interesting and has some shooty in it,must be fun'
Was not disappointed
@@HXIIIAEGISthat works too, i guess. I was just doing a "funny"
I remember playing this a lot in my early teen years. Severing limbs was wild.
Same, Dunno how many times I played it through. Great experience as young teen😁
How did you find the game though? :P
I used to gib the dead enemies with grenades lol. I really shouldn't have been playing that at 5😂
@@Flesh_Wizard I was like 14 - 15 and back then i spent time cutting the corpses apart with the knife. Also tortured the enemies by throwing knifes on their limbs,
Yeah, this and second episode are one of the best FPS games eva
Friendly reminder: War crimes are only recognized if you lose
something everyone instinctively knows but no one admits
Geneva Convention? More like Geneva Bucket List
@@Flesh_Wizard I thought they cancelled all the conventions because of Covid
they can also be forgiven if you get some useful data out of all those human vivisections
see: unit 731
Or if you lose, but you're not the US.
Don't think we don't remember what you did in Vietnam, Uncle Sam.
Omg this unlocked a core memory for me. I remember years and years ago watching a friend play a game where he was knifing people apart in some medieval setting and seeing this I realized as a kid I was misinterpreting the bunker as a castle and the low poly models as medieval armor. Holy shit, thank you for a huge nostalgia trip.
Hey Civvie, there is a documentary on TH-cam called "Shadow Company" that is about the rise of Private Military Companies in todays modern battlefields - John Mullins is one of the people they interviewed, and he talks about his consulting for this game. He kinda laughs it off, and says that the most unrealistic aspect of the game is that he's never been in a situation where, by himself, he'd have to kill 500 people. Worth a watch, its an interesting documentary
Hey, thanks a lot! I'll check it out!
The way Mullins put it, makes it sound like the ninjas and the microwave gun and the rooftop helicopter fight were *marginally more realistic.*
Think on that.
"Mullins reporting to base : EKIA 500. Over."
The spas 12 has both semi auto and pump action function. Not many games devs at the time knew that. But that didnt stop them from putting the spas 12 in every shooter game after 2000.
Yep, it was intended for police use iirc and some shells (beanbags etc) don't produce enough gas to cycle a semi-auto weapon, hence needing to be able to manually cycle it with the pump. Honestly they did a fairly decent job making recognisable weapons given they didn't have the near infinite reference we have now on the modern internet. You couldn't just find a TH-cam video back then and see a gun stripped down to parts
@@0lionheart user manual if you were lucky or a trip to the dreaded public library . if you knew a prop guy you had insider knowledge. but yeah we are spoilt by guntube.
@@0lionheartand it’s not even the best shotgun with that feature. Benelli makes a much more durable shotgun that has this feature, but it doesn’t look anywhere near as cool.
@@boomerkobold3943Cooler? Nuh uh, the SPAS 12 is ugly af man, just because it looks recognizable doesn't mean it's cool, I'll take my Benelli M3 over that any day of the week.
Should have been dropping a Benelli M4 instead. Is a reason that it is widely considered one of the best shotguns out there. But I guess since it's not a pointy blocky mess it didn't look cool enough (or was too hard to render polygonally) so they went with the SPAS instead.
Right at 13:58, when he says, "Forget the captured stealth bomber you're going after," he accidently dips into a New York accent. This was my younger brother's and my favorite thing when we used to play this and from release to this day, one of us will randomly say it, playing up the Russian to New York accent change. Still kills me every time.
Serbian
@@oz_jones Good point! Could also be Albanian accent I guess. Isn't that the more commonly spoken of the two officials in Kosovo? I'm not super familiar with the region!
Im looking forward to the day Civvie does Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force, my favourite Raven game, it has to happen.
This needs to happen!
Elite Force is so underrated! One of my favorite pc shooters from when I was a kid.
@@bucknasty69 its among my favourite Star Trek games
I was thinking more like Klingon Honor Guard lol!
@@dtbjason he should do that too
The game that showed a whole generation just how much fun gibbing people in video games can be. God Bless you Raven.
Unless you're German. Then you'll just have heard the stories how much fun it was for others. *colors the country on Civvies map for him*
@@MikeL13 *cough* blood and gore patch was a thing
@@eatpoopoo The good old times when we needed shit like that ...
@@MikeL13 Literally 1984
@@MikeL13 Blood Patch via Dirty little Helper site.
When I was an early teenager I watched my uncle play this game and was completely blown away that games could look like this. He let me play a few levels and its truly what got me into gaming. SoF is absolutely incredible and one of the most underrated "hidden gems" of FPS gaming. Great video
the fumbled breaching sequence at 19:19 is the most realistic part of this game
"This looks like a job for Ambassador Pineapple!"
Second only to the RPG gunner blowing himself up.
I thought you were exaggerating, but those AI enemies got absolutely SCREWED 😅
I don't understand what happened, nor how Civvie knew it would happen.
It confused me at first too, but you can see in the top left corner that Civvie has just thrown a grenade. The breaching squad did not nade themselves.
7:46 That's certainly a technical achievement, given the Quake 2 engine still lacked skeleton rigging.
Shit I didn't even think of that.
Ohhh man, I have a story with this game. Back in 2001 my parents gifted me Soldier of Fortune, the original game in the box + manual and all that stuff. I had to wait like 1 week because my PC was in the repair shop. I played the hell of it when I got my computer back.
About Dekker, I realized instantly they were brothers because their models had the same shape, only different textures. And I didn't understand much because english is not my native language.
Nice video as always Civvie, it's always nice to remember the good ol' days.
I like the blood, it's festive.
They used similar effects in Rogue Trooper as an unlockable reward.
Fun fact: there exists a retail version of this game called "Tactical Low-Violence Version". While the regular retail version has low-gore as an option, this special tactical edition forces it.
You might think it's ridiculous to even exist but it was surprisingly common at the time. Kingpin Life of Crime has a low-maturity install option that replaces half the dialogue with loud af beeps.
Yep. This was the era of Columbine, the media's moral panic about videogame violence, court cases, and that jackass activist lawyer Jack Thompson relentlessly stirring the pot and trying to sue every dev and publisher out of existence. It was just constant hysteria around game violence c1998 - 2004. I remember those days fondly as the Golden Era of PC gaming... But sadly the negative publicity around SOF and KP violence has meant ever-decreasing gore in games. Nowadays even the most realistic, gritty shooters will be lucky to show blood spatter _at all,_ let alone the locational damage modelling, blood jets and limb removal we got 20+ years ago.
Honestly games have become insanely more realistic *overall*, but the realtime damage/gore modelling of SOF and KP have never been topped or even equaled that I can think of since then.
There's a few VR games that have equal or matching tbqh. Most gritty shooters at least have the blood spray nowadays.
Not to say *most* are more realistic, they most certainly are not, but you're rose-tinting it a bit here. Games aren't afraid to be *violent*, it's just less "what if more gore" and more "what if civilian casualties" these days. Different forms of disturbing and whatnot.
Being this realistic in the modern age would 100% get the average shooter an AO rating, which would make them basically unsellable.
(Edited for that last bit that I forgot the first time.)
Hey, ya got a dollah?
@@guiterrorist Here's your fuckin' dollah
This game, that used the Quake 2 engine when the Quake 3 engine was already out, is AMAZING. It is a clear and EVER present reminder to DNF that you didn't need to do what you did. You could have just put out an amazing game and it would still be remembered fondly. Instead we waited all that time for crap that didn't do anything the games it aspired to be did. Soldier of Fortune aspired to be itself, a game that, in the sequel, tracked your dick shots.
"Did you guys know about DaiKatana?"
Okay this is a big lore hint. We all need to autistically comb through his videos and figure out when exactly they swapped our civvie
Must've been somewhere in the demon arc. It was definitely in this timeline :V
There's lore?? Oh no
@jinxmclastname9212 hey, how's it going, you must be new. 👋
I personally think it happened in the clown room. Civvie hasn't been the same since the clown room...
Maybe he's still stuck in the clown room and this one is a replacement clone.
-Teo
was it when he bloomed?
After a couple of decades of playing videogames and learning to appreciate their graphics and artistry, SoF's looks _better_ than it did in my childhood, holy shit
Such is the true skill on video game graphics and gameplay fidelity.
For real, I remember pirating this shit off IRC as a kid and being blown away by the graphics and can't believe it holds up so well.
@@chucklebutt4470 IRC? *slaps chucklebutt with a large trout*
The sequel was just as amazing, probably even more than the first. I remember the online multiplayer being so fun
The sequel wasn't as well-received and I can't remember why, but always heard the multiplayer was great
@@KaoticReach1999 I played it recently and it's simply not fun. The first one is really fun in terms of gameplay. The sequel has a really boring gameplay and you must enable violence if you want a bit of gore.
@@mattonthemoon225 To each their own
i enjoyed the sequel but not nearly as much as this. this game doesn't take itself too seriously and it works, the sequel does and it just doesn't work because the gameplay is still this semi arcade with weird handpicked realistic elements
also FUCK THOSE JUNGLE LEVELS
@@randomfacaThe first level in the sequel is fun, then they hit you with exactly what a game like this needs: STEALTH LEVELS WITH INSTA-FAIL IF YOU ARE SEEN!, what a great decision.
Then the jungle.
My brother played further and was running round Hong Kong blowing away Triads with dual-wielded Micro-Uzis, If I can ever play it again I'm just cheating ahead.
It is impressive how Civvie managed to either miss or intentionally leave out the ability to shoot the poop in the Sudan levels' infamous outhouse. 😁
He's shot the shit before, and got shocked for it.
I thought I was the only one who remembered that bit, thanks for opening my eyes
I had this thing of trying the knife on the dead bodies to check the effects. You can bring out guts and detach limbs on everything. My girlfriend was watching and thought I was some sort of psycho. Good times, would scare the shit out of her again.
I loved doing that in the second game. Just dismembering bodies and throwing knives into backs. I would try to throw all 5 into someone just to see them stick 😂
I was amazed more modern titles didn't have these things, and the fact this game didn't revolutionize the games industry is appalling.
It's like hearing some small company was able to make a cell phone in 1955 but not enough people took notice, and we didn't get cell phones again for 30+ years. It makes you wonder what could have been lol.
Location based damage, dismemberment, great AI and level design. SOF2 had a "mission generator" that used random generation to create maps for different mission scenarios, and it worked out really fucking well considering the time period.
I must have had some kind of censored copy, I swear mine had like light/rainbow effects and very little blood when you slashed a corpse
The headshots were intact though I think
@@alexanderrahl7034SOF 2 already had downgraded gore. There was an SOF 3 where enemies were like china dolls filled with blood that just shattered when shot. Gory, but also pretty silly.
Holy shit, how have I never played this?
"Excuse me Mr. Hussein" is the first time I've laughed out loud at video game dialogue since the last Grand Theft Auto.
when my grandfather passed, he passed down his copies of soldier of fortune to me since he heard somewhere that i really liked this game, and he used to collect them. i didn't read them until a few years after his passing but i was amazed because everything that happened in the game really happened in real life near exact to how the game displays it. crazy stuff.
Yea there was an interview with John Mullins where he talked about how he gave rough details on locations and things he did but nothing specific for obvious reasons.
He mentioned that he liked how the games turned out, but hated the crosshair and thought it would be better if you could aim down the sights of the weapons, similar to how you could with the sniper rifle. And look where games are now!
I really like how this constantly switches from "This action shlock is awesome!" to "My God, why did we do all that to Iraq"
Wish he didn't skip the segment/level all-together.
we know why
@@Hamun002 Because Iraq tried to eat their cake and have it too by dismantling their WMD programs *but* also making it seem to Iran that maybe they hadn't really.
@@tartrazine5 BRO I was there, THERE WAS NO WMD's.
They didn't have the launchers or capacity at all. No structure from province to province.
Edit
Former army and marine infantry, deployed 2x to iraq. That place was a mess. There was worse stuff than "IED's" there.
i'm iraqi and i had fun playing this game back in 2011
most iraqi gamers don't get offended by games where it take place in iraq
I love the eccentric reloads. I'd think a long time veteran/mercenary would do stuff like that
I like the mention of Dekker being Saber's brother because it implies that they both played Metal Gear Solid and that's why Dekker dresses like a straight Psycho Mantis while Saber's running around shirtless everywhere like Liquid Snake
BRÖTHER!
Dekker looks like Jason X the most for me
"Dresses like a straight Psycho Mantis" has me absolutely rolling lmfao
Saber reminds me more of Vulcan Raven
Dekker looks more like Grey Fox to me, tbh.
I seriously can't believe Civvie NEVER played this game. I remember this so well. So great!
Yeah the sequel wasn't quite as good.
@@Iymarra SOF2 was incredible! GHOUL 2 ljksdafhsdakfljhksdalf
Now, Payback was the shitty one but Raven didn't do that.
@@wullahblack6452 Oh aye - SOF2 was the one with the 'nam levels wasnt it, and the grease gun?
@Iymarra grease gun yes. Nam levels, I admit I don't specifically recall. But I do remember a jungle.
@@wullahblack6452 Oh yeah, it was colombia.
The sound of that machine gun hits every nostalgic dopamine receptor in my brain, 11/10 best belt fed video game machine gun ever
MAC-11 joke, Airplane! reference, returning favorite Betelgeuse joke with high production value editing. You get better every single video, Civvie. Thank you for the laughs.
I'm wondering what Civvie's audience looks like age-wise because that Airplane! nod needs more love!
Just wait till he finds there is Double Helix.
*Not likely Payback, we rather not mention Payback*
@@mrbanditos3583 That one is more of an example of wasted potential, mechanically speaking the game gets a lot of things right, but the gore is underwhelming and the story and voice acting pretty much kill the experience
@@rosfell00 If you're referring to Double Helix, you're right. There's also the fact that your new partner Taylor isn't as interesting as the late Hawk, while the game does need a lot of polishing on the bugs and A.I. department.
You can keep shooting enemies and make them do the AK dance like in Goldeneye. But unlike in Goldeneye, their bodies slowly disintegrate while you do it.
What a game this was! Just remember the dismemberment mechanicals and pretty much every gun sounding like artillery.
I am about 95% sure the particles from that shotgun are the same from Jedi Knight Outcast 2, which is why they glow
But SOF came out 2 years before
Maybe it was the other way around, because JK: Outcast 2 came out two years after SOF (2000)
JO2 was also Quake 3
pfp checks out lol
Soldier of Fortune plays like a Chuck Norris movie and it's unapologetic about it which is part of the charm.
At the time it came out, I remember mostly being fascinated by the detailed mayhem but now I instead appreciate how well it actually replicates early-to-mid 90's action movie aesthetics.
I first played a demo of this game on one of those old demo disks that came with magazines. It included the entire first two levels and I must've played it like a dozen times before I got the full game. Loved this game so much - the gore, the guns, everything was so satisfying. Got crazy nostalgia watching this video.
What's cool is there's a "Community Edition" of it on moddb that you can download for free, probably the best version of it. I played it a ton in between classes during college on my laptop several years ago, such a fun campaign. Glad you did a video on this, you should definitely make one for SoF2 and SoF Payback lmao.
Haha fucking Payback! I wanted an SOF 3 so bad and then despite all the red flags, such as "Activision VALUE" division making the game instead of raven, I bought it. And what a disappointment that was.
I've been describing this game to people as "a really gory 80's Cannon Pictures action movie in FPS form" for a few years now, it kicks so much ass
dude even has the Charles Bronson mustache
(edit: i wrote this near the start of the vid, I hadn't even seen the Death Wish 3 mention that says the same thing later in the video lmao)
Now do a hentai mod for it
Fun fact: soldier of fortune (the magazine) has been linked to several murders and also induced people to fight as a mercenary in the Rhodesian Bush war.
You missed out on the best part of the Microwave Pulse Gun. The alt-fire makes enemies act like a hotdog that you left in the microwave for too long. They literally inflate until they explode, it's great.
Too brutal for youtube maybe?
Ah yes, the rule 34 gun
@@nexviper too brutal? it's already the age crap. :(
Soldier of Fortune was not the first game to be adapted from a Magazine, but it was the first game to be adapted from a gun magazine.
Technically, the first game to be adapted from a magazine would be Car & Driver on MS-DOS, and maybe Road & Track Presents: The Need For Speed.
This is marvellous! I love how much you enjoyed this game Civvie. Watching this video has been an absolute joy.
Requesting to swap every thunder sound effect in this show to SoF's shotgun sound because it is just that great.
Nice editing for the cold open, Katie. The rainbows were a nice touch.
it reminds me of that one episode of aqua teen hunger force, particularly the thumbnail with the rainbow spouting out of a decapitated guy's neck
Ah Soldier of Fortune. Back when i played this as a wee lad my brother made sure to turn off all of the fun settings.. little did he know that i was a smart kid and turned it right back on when he wasn't looking.
I am really glad that you covered this game! It really is one of the best shooters from that era.
god this takes me back, the gore in this game blew my friends and my fragile little minds back in the day
I was hoping this would eventually come up since you're going hard on Raven games. SoF set a really high bar for video game weapons for me back in the day. I'm both shocked that Civvie had never played this before, and happy that his reaction to it seems to be pure euphoria. Kinda sad he didn't go over the slugthrower, that thing is hilarious.
I get the feeling when John was telling them his stories someone went "No one will believe thats true, it's unbelievable" and then they just made it the theme for the rest of the game.
I was so happy when I replayed this a few months ago. It's so rare when a game is actually as good as you remember.
Finally we get a Solider of Fortune video from Civvie.
I hope he covers the 2nd game.
What better way to cap off my Birthday than watching a new Civvie 11 video 🎉.
HBD 🎂🎊
Happy berfday
Happy birthday!
The fact Cancer Mouse was present when Civvie had to specify that the Supremacist is different from a nazi. Chef's Kiss
I love the AI saying 'thunderclap' Civvie, damn your stuff is great!
I couldn't defend Bobby Kotick if I wanted to. He's the personification of all of what's wrong with modern video games.
It's fun to make fun of Bobby Kotick because he looks like he walked off a Nazi propaganda poster, but please don't fall into the trap of scapegoating. All video game execs are cunts. Riccitiello is an even bigger piece of shit, and I don't think I've ever seen anyone make fun of him.
Modern video games and indeed the modern world.
I love how you can fidget and play around with the guns in this game, and how fast you can reload them. Just looks so badass
The multiplayer for this game was PHENOMENAL. My absolute favorite. Not only did it have great maps, like the Raven Software Offices, but it had a fantastic gameplay mode called Assassination. Basically, when you spawned in you'd be assigned a target. Players you were targetting would be marked in green, players who were targetting you were marked yellow, and others were marked red. The better you did, the more players would be told to target you. And it was awesome because minute to minute you'd go from targetting someone to teaming up with them. Great times, man.
Nice, I don't remember this game mode!
I remember the one where you would start with a shitty weapon, and as you kill enemy players, the game would give you a better weapon.
I remember calling it the Thunder shotgun for that mighty sound it makes when it separates limbs and heads
I replayed this so much. My favorite custom difficulty is with insane enemy spawning, but having them be very stupid, it makes it so loud weapon noises spawn in extra enemies, turning the game into either a sniper stealth game or a shotgun gauntlet.
Loved SoF1 and SoF2. Ghoul with it's 13 gore zones was the stuff back in the day! Hope you feature the second one as Raven's Ghoul and Chimera systems were the at their peak in the sequel.
SoF2 grounded the modern shooter theme with less sci-fi and better cinematic scenes, even if the jungle level was unforgiving. And the procedural multiplayer maps were something no one else was doing.
I freakin' loved this game as a kid. Absurd load times on console but always a good time. I still walk around saying "I'm looking for a back issue of Soldier Of Fortune Magazine. July 89" in my gruff soldier voice.
I loved the weird energy gun. The alternate fire would give you a unique kill animation on enemies. They would inflate and blow up in gibs.
I remember this so well, even 23 years after playing. Also the weird reflection effect on shiny surfaces took me right back.
Its amazing !
A few interesting facts:
you can shoot the gun out of the enemies hands
sometimes with the smg, the enemies "dance" as long as you are shooting them
Does that imply you can do a pacifist run of the game?
@@PutkisenSetä well, in theory, I guess? 😄
No you cant, i tried, first it is not always a 100% sure you can disarm a guy because you will have to be very accurate, and second there are levels like the last part of the sewers where you have to kill the 3 guys to trigger the cutscene where hawk appears through the crates. Sorry for english
One thing I remember finding out due to morbid curiosity is what would happen if you use the knife to swing at a dead body for long enough it will dismember parts or cut open the stomache eventually. Was satisfying in that gamer way for sure, kinda like kicking zombie heads around like soccer balls
This was my first FPS game i ever played as a kid. One hell of a way to get introduced to the genre