Grand Theft Auto 2

The Good
The GTA series has always aimed to offer total freedom, and GTA 2 continues this perfectly. You can wonder around anywhere in the city, killing civilians, hijacking cars... The guns and cars are some of the best points of this game. There may not be many more than twenty weapons to use, but they are all a good laugh to use. The cars are equally as good, and it is good to experiment with different types of car since some handle better than others. The music which you listen to when you enter the car - presumably to simulate a radio - is good. The controls are simple to use (if positioned in odd places such as Select to get in/out of cars) and the cities you play in are gigantic. It's not just killing which is fun, either. Just simply nabbing a car and seeing how well I can drive it is enough to keep me enthralled.

The Bad
The view of the game is slightly irritating. It's top-down, meaning that you can only see your head and everbody else's head. Driving - while on the whole good - can be slightly difficult to control at times. The AI is alright; when you fire a gun people will run away from you and the driving of the AI is alright, but the rest of the time it is just stupid. The coppers will try and catch you by walking up to you, but they just walk into anything in between you and them. The same applies for cops trying to get to you in their cars and people trying to shoot you. Also, there is no save function, and I cannot work out the password system. Therefore, I have not been able to advance any further than the first city.

The Bottom Line
Despite its many major flaws, GTA 2 is still a great laugh to play. These flaws might be profoundly irritating, but at least the core principal of the game - the freedom - remains unscathed.

The Good
Well, the gameplay is exactly the same as the first GTA, which in this case is good, the radio stations are better in my opinion, plus you can change the radio station when in a car, that's a good thing, plus you can take pedestrians in a taxi for extra money, which is a extra. and fun to do, there are added weapons, and a people flying in the air physic, plus there are car theif's, and pick pocket guys, but that's where the good ends.

The Bad
That seems like a lot of added features, but the game missions and secretes are the same, and the respect thing is just annoying, also the game get's too hard in the mission structure.

The Bottom Line
bottom line... rent, only rent.

The Good
Everything. I actually liked everything about this game. Brilliant music, brilliant graphics, brilliant gameplay, great sound effects, and to top it all, well designed levels (not as much of those nasty dead ends they had in GTA). This is one of those action games that I always enjoy playing because there's nothing wrong with it (others include Krakout, Carmageddon, and... well, there really aren't that many perfect games). Even if you don't feel like completing the missions, just squishing and gunning down pedestrians and cops and generally raising hell is a great way of getting rid of stress. Now you can even save your game at any time (although at a cost), which is a great improvement from GTA (although I've only played the PS version of that, so I don't know if you could do that in the PC version).

The Bad
You can't play the soundtrack on a CD-player. That's about it.

The Bottom Line
Now this is your basic top-down car-jacking, cop-killing, tank-driving, elvis-squishing action game containing three playing fields (city districts) with different missions, rival criminal gangs, hidden weapons and vehicles, and all the usual stuff. For those of you who haven't played a game of this type (which would include GTA and GTA2 and not much else) you basically walk or drive (you can hi-jack cars) around a 3D city with rival criminal gangs, causing general mayhem or doing jobs for the gangs. There's no linear plot and no rules, but loads and loads of fun for the criminally inclined gamer.