Grand Theft Auto 2

aka: GTA 2
Moby ID: 1097
PlayStation Specs
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Description official descriptions

Lie, cheat, and steal your way through three districts of a huge city in the follow-up to Grand Theft Auto. Earn the respect of 7 different gangs as you demolish the town in your attempt to make lots of cash.

The game takes place at an undisclosed time in the near future. Unlike the first game which featured three different cities, Grand Theft Auto 2 only features a single town, but it's divided in three districts which are unlocked one at a time: downtown, residential and industrial. Like in the original the player goes around answering phones to initiate various missions. The game uses an overhead camera in a 3D landscape and allows the player to freely explore the city and steal any vehicle the player sets his or her eyes on. To unlock new districts the player must reach a certain score which is done by committing crimes and finishing missions.

Because the game now features multiple criminal gangs, the player must choose allegiances. Performing missions for one gang, will decrease the player's reputation for another. When the player commits crimes he also becomes wanted by the local police, but as more crimes are committed without shaking the police, they will give way for first SWAT Teams, then Special Agents and finally the army.

New features include the ability to save at the church, when donating enough money, and various side missions, such as becoming a taxi driver to ear money. There are also many new cars with weapons attached such as a firetruck with a flamethrower and a car with machine guns.

On the PC version the player can change the time of day from noon to dusk to allow for more moody lighting. On the PlayStation the game can only be played at noon, and on the Dreamcast only at dusk.

Spellings

  • GTA 2 Беспредел - Russian spelling
  • 侠盗车手2 - Simplified Chinese spelling
  • 俠盜獵車手 2 - Traditional Chinese spelling

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Screenshots

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Credits (PlayStation version)

173 People (158 developers, 15 thanks) · View all

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 76% (based on 54 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.5 out of 5 (based on 194 ratings with 7 reviews)

If Only The New Ones Could Have Been This Good

The Good
The Entire Feel of the game is cool, violent, and mature (well, somewhat). The Music is simply awesome with perfect timing. The weapons are fun and different from a normal game. The controls are generally solid. The cities are huge with really nice looking buildings and streets. The Cops have good AI, There not to tough nor are they easy.

The Bad
The View you could say is outdated (epically since its on a 6th gen console). I'm fine with the "tank" movement, but a full 3D behind the back view would have been nice. The lack of a map makes it pretty difficult to find the phone, so your gonna do a lot of walking.

The Bottom Line
Overall, this is one of the coolest games you'll ever find. Despite its view, its still a cool looking game that doesn't seem to disappoint.

Dreamcast · by Devin Walters (2) · 2010

Original gameplay with great presentation (and a bad-ass attitude)

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.

Windows · by Late (77) · 2001

The Black Sheep of the GTA Series is a pretty good one.

The Good
The Graphics arent exactly groundbreaking for 1999 but a lot of games from the early days of 3d havent aged all that well so i can say GTA2 has aged alright in terms of graphics, it will never get old seeing myself shooting a rocket launcher at someone and watching them fly into the air and then crash back down! The soundtrack is a bigger highlight though, full of eclectic oddball choices like a fuzz box drenched 50's rock&roll type song, an actual licensed hardcore punk song about taxi drivers, some Nu Metal/Industrial Hip Hop song thats repetitive but catchy "lemme show you how its done" and even an electronic worship dance song about jesus. Thats just some of my favorite tracks but there is a lot of variety in this game that fits the retro-futurist Y2K vibe of this game perfectly. And i really enjoyed the "Respect" system [ Basically if you gain favor with 1 gang you lose respect from their rivals gang ] it lets you choose your own path if you truly want to and i think its an interesting system, i also enjoyed the driving controls a fair bit, very buttery smooth which oddly is nothing like the game boy color port of this game but yeah if you played that one the windows and home console versions are the opposite of that, also i liked how the maps were designed and the atmosphere, i'd love to see an actual remaster of this game really.

The Bad
The difficulty might be seen as bad to some, and spoilers to not get "nice try" at the end of the game you must 100% all districts which could take some time and honestly the missions in this game can get SUPER BRUTAL and to save the game you need 50,000$ and head to the spawn church building which means you might wanna conserve your saves which could be too much for some people, hell even as a kid i never got to the second district til i was about 15. And as much as i liked the driving controls and even my personal taste on the on foot controls [They're okay] i do think it should have used the mouse for aiming instead of doing some kind of tank controls to turn/aim on foot, its like playing a topdown version of the original doom games, without strafing, and honestly mild one when you look at the future games, the story isnt really much of anything its just "do this" and "do that" until you do every mission and then you SPOILERS kill the 3 bosses in the district til you make it to the end of the game, but this might not matter seeing as this game is way more arcade-like than future installments but for those looking for a story, you might not find much here

The Bottom Line
this game is great, but at the same time it's pretty flawed. For those that love havoc and a challenge this might be for you. But if you're looking for a crime sim with a good story and dont wanna rip your teeth out at some missions, steer clear!

Windows · by Maztr_0n (39) · 2023

[ View all 7 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Doesn't work with a Audio CD Player. Wormspinal (619) Jul 9, 2009

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Grand Theft Auto 2 appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

Freeware release

In December 2004, Rockstar put a full, free version of Grand Theft Auto 2, compatible with Windows XP, on their Rockstar Classics page. Check the related sites section for the link.

German version

In the German version killed enemies don't leave blood behind.

References

In the Residential Sector, two of the city's areas are named Largo and Stromberg, presumably named after James Bond villains Emilio Largo and Karl Stromberg.

Awards

  • PC Player (Germany)
    • Issue 01/2000 - Best Action Game in 1999

Information also contributed by Maw and Sciere.

Analytics

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by JubalHarshaw.

Game Boy Color added by Kartanym. PlayStation, Dreamcast added by Grant McLellan.

Additional contributors: Trixter, Unicorn Lynx, Jony Shahar, Apogee IV, tarmo888, DarkDante, Stratege, Patrick Bregger, Victor Vance, FatherJack, 一旁冷笑.

Game added March 20, 2000. Last modified March 12, 2024.