CONTENT WARNING: Blood, gore and violence.
Longtime readers of this site know that I am a trash connoisseur. I will watch terrible shows and bad movies, and of course I’ll play bad video games. I chalk it up to just absorbing a lot of critically panned media in my youth, but I also look at it as a learning experience: Just why did they make it like this? Engaging with media known for its negative reception is important to critiquing media, in my opinion. Gives you a better understanding of what’s actually good or bad.
I’ve written about several bargain bin games over the years. Often made by small teams on shoestring budgets and quick development time frames, these are fascinating to play for me. Many times they’re not very good, and I can finish them in just a couple hours. Though, sometimes you can see what they wanted to do, but couldn’t for whatever reason. In some rare cases, a budget label will decide to release a new installment in a long-dormant franchise in an attempt to get a few extra sales from longtime fans. Much like today’s entry.
Soldier of Fortune: Payback is the oft-maligned third and final installment of the Soldier of Fortune franchise, loosely based on the magazine of the same name. Released in 2007, a mere two weeks after the massively popular Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, this game came and went to negative reviews, and is mostly forgotten outside of ragebait Youtubers or trash connoisseurs like me.
Payback was not developed by Raven Software, makers of the previous Soldier of Fortune games. Instead, it was developed by Slovakian development studio Cauldron, who was one of a few studios Activision Value relied on for developing their bargain bin games. According to The Cutting Room Floor, the game was tentatively titled “Mercenaries Wanted,” and likely got the Soldier of Fortune branding due to similarities between it and the previous games.
While it may seem weird for Activision to publish this game right after the biggest video game to probably come out in 2007, it actually isn’t. You see, for a while, there were two Activisions.
From 2000 to 2016, Activision Value was a publishing arm of Activision based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. This was created from a merger of several budget publishers, including Expert Software – known for publishing a good chunk of Sega’s PC output, like Sonic & Knuckles Collection, which I’ve written about – and Head Games, makers of such infamous games like Extreme Boards & Blades and Juggernaut: The New Story for Quake II, which I’ve also written about. If you’re familiar with the oodles of video games based on the Cabela’s brand of sporting good stores, that’s almost entirely Activision Value.
Unless you looked closely, there wasn’t much of a noticeable difference between the Activision based out of California that was putting out Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Guitar Hero and Call of Duty; and the Activision based out of Minnesota that was putting out stuff like Secret Service or the oodles of History Channel video games. They both had the Activision logo on the box, after all. I find this late 2000s era of Activision fascinating for that reason. They not only wanted be the big AAA publisher, but they also wanted to put out average schlock for $40 a pop. Guess they wanted to eat their cake and have it too.
In Soldier of Fortune: Payback, you don’t play as the bushy mustachioed protagonist John Mullins from the previous games, but instead a generic faceless soldier by the name of Thomas Mason. (No relation to Alex Mason, I assume.) Mason gets double-crossed by another Shop mercenary named Miller, and with the help from Casandra “Casey” Decker back at The Shop, Mason goes through middle eastern towns, South American jungles and Ukranian hotels to figure out who is bribing mercenaries to defect. It’s a fairly basic story pretty much meant to move the player along various locales while shooting bad guys in generic environments.
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