It offended my parents and it didn't quite fit in normal genre brackets: all good things. This was a game that satisfied my tastes for something just off the norm. The ugly old Quake II engine wasn't exactly delivering Bioshock, but it was nevertheless offbeat and esoteric – a fantasy that was neither real world nor science fiction. There was rap music by Cypress Hill, modern graffiti, and an almost steampunk presentation.
There were visual references to classic Noir culture and gloomy Americana – such as a building that seemed to be based on an Edward Hopper painting, Nighthawks – but it wasn't the real world. It seemed to be set in a 1920s America, but it was filled with contemporary urban weirdness. What was most compelling, however, was the overall construction of the world. In the aftermath of a fight your henchmen (who were some of the first NPCs to follow a player character around in a game while still being useful in combat) would be covered in great gaping red wounds. The characters were all made of bulbous, gelatinous chunks of flesh, and the game portrayed their viscerality in the most repulsive fashion. Kingpin's disappointing single player campaign had a swarthy charisma to it. And whatever that thing was, it meant that I stayed a while. Whatever it was, something plugged me straight into its ugly wavelength. Then again, perhaps it was a hunger for something in the FPS world that did things differently. Then again, maybe it was PC Gamer's (overzealous) review, or perhaps it was the fantasy-gangster chic, with its 1920s Bladerunner horrors.
Presumably it was this surface gore that drew me in: the promised thrill of transgressive videogame violence.
Severed heads, gashed bodies, screamed obscenities: only the absolute dismemberment of Soldier of Fortune managed to outrank it in bloodiness.
It was a genuinely vicious game, with some of the most violent scenes from any shooter I can recall. This article is a revised version of a retrospective written last year for PC Gamer UK.
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