Grand Theft Auto 2 - PlayStation

Game Detail

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Grand Theft Auto is back–and the popular mission-based driving game is nastier than ever! Grand Theft Auto 2 plays much like its predecessor, and that is not necessarily a good thing.
The graphics in the original were terrible, and GTA 2 does little to amend this deficiency. The game camera looks straight down on the action, making it difficult to judge relative heights. The grainy game objects don’t help matters much, either. Plus, the game’s missions mainly consist of fetching things for crime lords, with a few assassination missions thrown in every so often.
Still, Grand Theft Auto 2 is a terrific game to boot up for 30 minutes if you want to blow off some steam. You don’t necessarily have to take on any missions. Instead, you can brainlessly roam around the enormous city environments performing random acts of violence. (However, we don’t recommend that you try this at home!). Few games of any type offer this sort of reckless, open-ended mayhem.
Police chases are wilder than ever thanks to new units with improved interception techniques. New weapons also add some much-needed variety to the carnage that players are bound to create. If you never played the original, skip it and pick up this version. You might also consider getting some therapy, if time permits. –T. Byrl Baker
Pros:
Artificial intelligence is somewhat improved Controls are a little better than the original Cons:
Few gameplay improvements from the original Less than impressive graphics Gameplay suffers from slowdown

Product Description

Hit the streets as the criminal genius out to help take over the city! / Rated T: Teen

Review

Everyone’s favorite jack-move simulator is back for another round. Grand Theft Auto 2 is, for the most part, a collection of enhancements to the original game. The graphics have been redone, the music is different, there is a slew of new weapons, the mission structure is a bit more complex, and the city feels a bit more alive. But at its core, GTA2 is the same old game.
There are three levels in GTA2. Each level is divided up into three areas of turf, controlled by a different gang. The gangs range from the ever-unpopular megacorporation, Zaibatsu, to the dirt-road mobile-home-owning Rednecks. But regardless of personal philosophies, the gangs’ methods are roughly the same. You, as a budding young criminal always on the lookout for the next big score, need to earn some respect from the gangs in the city. Since the gangs are constantly at war with each other, the only real way to earn the respect of one gang is to roll over to their rival gang’s turf and start smoking as many gang members as you can find. Once you’ve earned a little positive respect from a gang (an onscreen meter lets you know where you stand with all three gangs), you can start answering that gang’s pay phones and going on missions. The missions are similar to those in the original GTA. They force you to blow up buildings, shoot informants, deliver narcotics, and all other types of ill deals. The better you do in one gang, the more that gang’s rivals will hate you. The more they hate you, the angrier they will get when you roll into their area. Angry gangs will simply open fire on you the minute they see you. Luckily, you’ve got a health meter this time around, so you can withstand a few shots before going down.
The police are also a constant factor in GTA2. In the original GTA, “the man” was content to simply set up roadblocks and hope you’d wreck your car. This time around, the 5-0 can get downright devious. They’ll swerve in front of you and cut you off. They’ll send a van full of armored SWAT guys your way. In later levels, the feds will pick up your trail, and, if you’re really a miscreant, those cop-car roadblocks might just get replaced with tanks.
Even though the gameplay is largely the same as in the previous GTA, it’s still a lot of fun. The game gives you plenty of freedom to pick which gang you ally yourself with, though if you want to actually finish a level, you’re eventually going to have to side with each of the level’s three gangs. Once you get tired of running errands for the gangs, it’s still fun to just drive around, running people over, blowing up cars at random, mowing down innocent bystanders with your machine gun, and waiting for the cops to arrive on the scene. This gives the game a “pick up and play” style to it, so you can sit down, turn on the game, cause a ruckus for ten or 15 minutes, and go back to whatever it was you were doing before. Excelling at GTA2 takes work, since you need a ton of points to proceed from level to level. This forces you to get really good at the missions, since completing missions is the only way to get your score multiplier up. Without having all your points doubled and tripled, you could be stuck on one level for days – and you can only save the game when you complete a level. To help you score those points (and to help keep you alive), you can get a lot more weapons this time