Soldier of Fortune: Payback (Activision)

2007 has been a banner year for console gamers. As I type this, there are a lot of triple-A titles sitting on store shelves. The bar has been set incredibly high and mediocre titles look that much worse in comparison.

This is definitely the case with Soldier of Fortune: Payback. Had the title been released during a slow year, it may have caught a brief moment in the spotlight, but as it stands, the game doesn't do anything interesting or memorable aside from treating your eyes to some mindless violence.

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One probable reason Payback is so poor might lay in the fact that Raven Software, which handled the previous versions, wasn't involved. The game definitely lacks the usual polish that gamers have come to expect from the veteran development house; Payback is riddled with awful textures that seem to appear out of nowhere. While the graphics are decent, the framerate chokes along at points, which kills most of the fun.

The game will please gore-addicts, as you can perform some brutal amputations and cause great bodily harm to your foes but it gets boring after a while and bodies always evaporate into thin air upon death, which cuts down on the realism.

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There really is nothing compelling about Payback. The single-player campaign, which can be completed in a handful of hours, is nothing memorable and the story abounds with cliches; if you've played Call of Duty 4 or Bioshock, you'll find yourself unimpressed by what Payback has to offer. There is hope for the game's multiplayer, where the hyper-gruesome battles might translate into an interesting experience but overall, the game is rather mediocre.