The acclaimed PC shooter has finally arrived on Xbox and it's completely shattered my illusions of PC gamers having higher standards when it comes to graphics and depth of gameplay. I'm sure this isn't demonstrative of the quality of your average PC first person shooter, but Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix is one of the biggest disappointments of my year so far.

I'd heard many glowing reports about the original Soldier of Fortune and so was expecting the Xbox version of the sequel to be something pretty special. With full support for playing on Xbox Live as well, I was convinced I was in for a real treat. Although the online play aspect of the game, which frankly is the most important, is highly enjoyable, the presentation and single player are so abominable that it's hard to justify giving this even a half-decent overall score.

A note to developers: this is the Xbox you're developing for! We've seen Halo, Project Gotham Racing, Panzer Dragoon Orta and the dozens of other classic games that combine stunning graphics with immersing, deep gameplay. We're not going to be satisfied with unimaginative conversions of PC games that are using severely dated graphics engines, sound effects that are put to shame by mid-nineties games and gameplay shallower than a dried-up puddle. Enough already! Xbox is a quality console; we want quality games and will accept nothing less!

Right, I've had my rant and now I'm going to tell you just why SOF II doesn't really belong on Xbox. We begin with a boring and unhelpful tutorial, which I will admit is nothing unusual for games of this nature, as even classy games like Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon are saddled with tedious training levels. However, in this case it's particularly dull and the tutorial asks you to perform various actions without telling you what buttons to use, meaning you have to press randomly until you get it right or look in the manual, entirely defeating the purpose of said tutorial. Nor does it tell you that grenades have a timed fuse and that holding them in your hand for a few seconds prevents enemies picking them up and throwing them back at you. Nor does it explain how to vary the distance of your grenade throw. So you might as well skip the tutorial and get on with the game.

The first touch of class can be spotted by the movie style opening sequence, which would be quite impressive if the graphics weren't so utterly atrocious. I'm not kidding when I say that the graphics on Red Faction, an early PS2 shooter, put this to shame. For starters, your enemies and allies look awful, obviously built with polygons and lacking realistic detail and textures. The animation is even worse, with both walking and running looking stilted and quite stupid. The scenery is also very dull, regardless of the various changes of location. The industrial levels are sparse and grey whilst the outdoor levels are sparse and green. There is a lack of sophistication and detail in the scenery and often textures get really blocky and bitmappy when you look at them closely. Even the explosions are pretty lame and the physics of objects blowing up, such as crates or buildings, is pitiful, with unrealistic animation completing destroying any sense of reality. The graphics are functional at best and a severe disappointment.

However, the sound is so atrocious that it makes the graphics look sophisticated in comparison. Although your weapons fire sounds pretty meaty, everything else is pathetic. There is not only no attempt at genuine surround sound but sounds are missing altogether. In one level where you are making your way through a swamp, you can hear the (unconvincing) sound of your steps through the water but the four allied troops accompanying you make no sound at all, even when they're running right past you. The death gurgle of enemies you shoot is at the same volume regardless of how far away they are when they die, often confusing you into thinking there must be enemies nearby. And at the end of the swamp level, a helicopter lands to pick you up and it is completely silent!! That's right, no sound of the engine as it passes over you and lands near by, no sound of rotors whirling. It's just so poor that it defies belief that this could be a recent PC release.

As if this wasn't bad enough, there are numerous graphical glitches in the game. Scenery flickers in and out of sight in the distance at times whilst here and there panels of nearby walls do the same. The enemy intelligence is poor; they either charge at you or hang around in the distance, running back and forth like panicked chickens. Seriously, if there was some clucking that would really finish off the effect perfectly. Also, your firing isn't very accurate due to the recoil of your gun and so whilst you don't die that often, it takes a while to get used to the bizarre recoil effect and so you waste a lot of ammo in the early missions. One of the poorest things is that when anyone talks their lips do not move at all, even if you can clearly see their faces, another thing that ruins any sense of immersion or realism. There is a mediocre story and script, which is voice acted fairly well but is really not a patch on other shooters in this respect. Also, the fact that the cut scenes are rendered in the appalling graphics engine reduces any impact they might have had to almost nothing.

The final nail in the already quite tightly shut lid of SOF II's coffin is the bad level designs. Not only are they dull and unimaginative but they're also unclear, meaning you will very likely get lost and have to wander around until you chance across the way you're supposed to go and this happens on more than one occasion. In fact, I got stuck for about twenty minutes on the first level, wandering around a bunch of crates that I thought I'd have to get on top of to reach my destination. In the end I realised I was supposed to ignore the crates, head over one wall and then trek around the side of the hotel until I found a handy fire escape ladder. Now I'm an FPS veteran having played all manner of games from this wonderful genre since I the granddaddy of them all, Wolfenstein. If I end up getting lost then there is no question that the level design is not clear.

The range of weapons you have is taken from real-life and they are as bog standard as you can get. They're not particularly satisfying to use and it seems to make little strategic difference as to your choice of weapon from one situation to the next. The grenades are cumbersome and it's very hard to judge the range of your shot and the same is true for the grenade launcher built into one of your guns. The blood and gore is over the top but also unrealistic. Sure, the enemies will react differently depending on where you shoot them, limping around after being shot in the leg or holding a wounded arm that you've just shot, but the blood effects are so lame. You can also repeatedly shoot fallen enemies until their heads are completely shot to bits and their limbs destroyed but even this is animated badly with polygon shaped bits and no consistent deterioration in the body state. There's just nothing good to say about the single player mode in this game and the more I write about it the more I grow to dislike it. However, as with the recently released Midtown Madness 3, where this game really shines is in its Xbox Live multiplayer mode. And now I'm going to hand over my wife to tell you why SOF II is so much fun online, as she's been on Xbox Live every night religiously for the last few weeks blasting away with the best of them!

Well for starters, there's a great range of game modes available, with regulars such as Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch and Capture the Flag alongside some excellent team based modes. Elimination is like a Last Man Standing game but in teams, then Infiltration pits two teams against each other where one attacks a position that the other must hold if they are to win. Then in Demolition one team member is given a bomb and must plant it in one of two possible sites. With the bomber's team backing him or her up, the other team must the bomb being planted. These modes are a little bit different and the team based gaming in Soldier of Fortune II is very satisfying.

There is an excellent range of weapons to choose from, either opting for a weapon of choice or starting the game on an equal footing so everyone has the same one. You can also explore your psychotic side by becoming expert with the knife - there's something very satisfying about slicing someone to death when they're armed with a dangerous weapon yet unable to stop you!

As with all online games, there are a few problems and omissions. For starters the lack of any female skins is a disgrace! Seriously though, Unreal Championship and Ghost Recon have them so why not in this? The Quickmatch option doesn't work either, never picking up any sessions, although that's not so bad as most people use Optimatch anyway. However, the lag is sometimes so bad that it is enough to bring on a seizure and to avoid these problems make sure the connection speed is good before you join a game. Big games are fine on the Xservers but otherwise it's best to keep it down to a handful of players. The loading times are a bit long sometimes as well, although Unreal Championship is no quick loader either.

Regardless of the lag issues, I have had the most awesome gaming experiences playing Team Deathmatch with some decent players - we worked together and employed tactics, watching each others' backs, hunting down opponents that slayed a team mate and mounting assaults on the enemy. It really is a great laugh to play with like-minded, friendly people of various ages and nationalities and for the first time I really felt like a true Xbox Live gamer!

So there you have it. Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix is a no-frills conversion of a mediocre PC game with a graphics engine that's so outdated it's almost obsolete. The tedious story, poor graphics, terrible sound, mediocre AI and bad level designs make the single player mode such a chore that you shouldn't even think about buying this game if you're not on Xbox Live. If you are connected, however, this is an excellent shooter with a strong following that will pass the time nicely until Halo 2 explodes into our lives.

Reviewed by Geoff Holland for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).