Graphics: Payback is a budget title, so gamers shouldn’t expect to find the visual wonders of Crysis or Call of Duty 4. But what it does, it does fairly well. Level design is a definite strong suit, with some of them being surprisingly complex and detailed; a personal favorite from early in the single-player campaign has Mason crisscrossing a canyon on a series of rickety rope bridges. But background elements such as foliage occasionally flicker, characters disappear in bloodstains on the walls behind them, enemies can sometimes shoot you through solid objects and some of the enemy death animations are uncomfortably broad, with Monty Python-style blood spewing from severed limbs. Concerned parents should use the gore toggle in the setup screen to protect their kids; Payback certainly earns its M rating.

Interface: Menus are straightforward and easy to navigate, but it’s their content that’s troubling. The weapon selection screen allows you to choose weapons from various categories, but the menu gives you no information about the firearms until you equip one, forcing you to try again if your selection doesn’t carry enough firepower for your liking. And there’s no explanation of the functions of any of the weapon accessories; you might have to look some of them up in a dictionary to discover what they do.

Gameplay: Fans of the rail shooter will find nirvana in Payback. Each level allows you only one path to your objectives. Should you stray off course, invisible barriers abound to push you back, and a helpful arrow indicates the location of your next destination and your distance from it. Also, the levels all play out about the same way: fight off brigades of baddies, most of who can be one-shot kills, then face an end-level boss who can absorb almost all of your ammunition before he dies. In addition, there are far too few save checkpoints. Several times during boss battles, I managed to wipe out the villain’s seemingly endless supply of henchmen only to be capped by the boss, forcing me to replay the entire battle over again. And there’s no music cue when a checkpoint is reached, so if you’re not looking at the lower left portion of the screen at the right time, you’ll miss being notified that a checkpoint has been passed.

Even basic concepts such as using ladders and picking up weapons are dumbed down; you can’t do either until a prompt appears on the screen. And don’t expect to find much variety in dropped weapons; the AK-47 seems to be the universal firearm of choice for terrorists, and since ammunition for your fancy modern guns is rarely found, you’re practically forced to pick up an AK to survive.

Multiplayer: Of the six available online modes, the old warhorses deathmatch, team deathmatch and Capture the Flag seem to dominate with Payback players. During my playtesting, there were no servers available offering elimination or demolition matches. Joining an online match can be frustrating, since the server browser doesn’t differentiate private servers from the public ones. Once you do manage to join a game, instead of being taken directly to the character setup screen, you have wait until the program puts you in the game, then hit the escape key to equip and skin your character. Worse, in the team-based modes, the program doesn’t tell you which team you’re on; you have to wander around and wait to see who shoots at you, which means you’re guaranteed to be fragged almost immediately. Add a graphics glitch in which characters travel without moving their legs, as if they’re cardboard cutouts in a tabletop game, and you have a tedious, uninspired online experience.

Sound FX: Weapon sounds are fairly good. You can actually tell the difference between silenced and unsilenced firearms, shotguns deliver a satisfying thump when fired and a good attempt at positional audio is included for those using multi-channel speaker setups. But ambient sounds are disappointing; you can hear your own footsteps through sand and foliage, but you make no sound at all when walking through water. Also, enemy dialog is sadly lacking, with the same two or three sentences being repeated over and over again; you want to kill them all just to shut them up.

Music: Payback‘s score is minimal. Inconsequential background music plays under the menu screens and each level seems to have its own main theme that plays again and again, with no obvious connection to the action on the screen.

Intelligence: The AI in Payback is a throwback to the old days of shooter games, when villains would run out into the open and wait for you to plug them. Some of them are uncanny shots who can waste you with one slug from a great distance, while others will empty an entire clip at you from 10 meters and never hit you. In one level midway through the game, dozens of enemies ran right past me as if I was invisible, not firing at me even after I fired at them. And at many times in the campaign, terrorists rush from the same places to replace fallen comrades; all you have to do is train your sniper scope on that spot and wait for the shooting gallery to start. Modern shooter fans expect sophisticated enemy behavior; they won’t find it here.

Difficulty: Three levels of difficulty are included with Payback: Easy, Normal and Hard. I tested the game at Normal, and I found it to be comfortable at times, challenging at others. But the console-centric checkpoint save system adds a level of frustration that only serves to artificially extend the completion time of the game.

Overall: I remember playing the original Soldier of Fortune several years ago. Its over-the-top violence levels caused quite a stir, but at least it had a story you could follow, a reason to want to play the next level. But Payback‘s story seems to be an afterthought, included to connect 14 levels of ultraviolence for its own sake. A sense of humor at the very least would have helped, but what we’re left with is a 10-hour Rambo movie without the steroids.