Soldier Of Fortune (Dreamcast)

Now, it's pretty common knowledge that the Dreamcast is little more than a medium spec PC (from 2001) shoehorned into a case no bigger than, well, a shoebox. For this reason alone, it's no surprise that it plays host to a number of PC to console conversions (even less taking into account the Windows CE operating system).

Soldier of Fortune is one such conversion, and 'sloppy' just isn't the word. There are a number of PC to Dreamcast conversions floating about the bargain bins and Cash Generators of our Kingdom - Quake 3 Arena and Unreal Tournament are just two that spring to mind - but where those two games were optimised for the hardware pumping away inside Sega's hardware swansong (which is still pretty good, even by today's 2005/06 standards); Soldier Of Fortune has got to rank as one of the worst.

It's described on eBay as 'rare,' but that's probably because everyone who's played this incarnation has done so for about 5 minutes and then chucked it in the bin.

It's a 1st person shooter in the vein of...well every mission-based first person shooter since time began, but Soldier of Fortune features an 18 Certificate because you can blow the arms, legs and heads off enemies. After the 'wow' factor of that dies away (after the aforementioned 5 minutes), it slowly becomes apparent that SOF is a truly lacklustre title. The sound is terrible - really low quality and muffled, especially the gun SFX (probably recorded in a shed); and the graphics and environs are painfully early nineties in design - i.e. deserted, angular streets, subways and mountain bases full of the most low-res, blurry textures you could be forgiven for thinking the game was set in Tony Hart's under five's gallery.

The cannon fodder is equally angular and totally AI free: the baddies just pop out from behind boxes and just stand there waiting to be shot.

The story is laughable guff, probably tacked on at the end just to fill disc space, and probably explains why SOF features some of the most ridiculous loading times since the Amstrad 464 Plus.

SOF is a PC game that should have been lost in time and never found. Quake 3 is the perfect example of a PC to console port - excellent graphics, perfect control and crystal clear sound. These are all things that Soldier Of Fortune unfortunately lacks.