Grand Theft Auto 2 (PC)
Product Type: Take 2 PC games
Newest Review: ... fun to fans of the original. It's fair to say that GTA2 copies the successful formula of the first game for all its worth; there isn't mu... more
Destroy the taxi
Grand Theft Auto 2 (PC)
Member Name: Silent Bob
Product:
Grand Theft Auto 2 (PC)
Date: 14/12/00, updated on 14/12/00 (365 review reads)
Rating:
Advantages: Non-linear gameplay
Disadvantages: Same as GTA
I have too say that back when Grand Theft Auto was first in production and we saw all the previews and the hype I got quite caught up in it. I couldn’t wait for the game to be released and on the day it came out rushed out and bought a copy for the Playstation. Much to say I enjoyed it for around a week then got bored. So I wasn’t dying to play GTA2 but when my youngest brother lent it off a friend (for exchange of one of my games) I thought I would give it a try.
The style of the game is pretty much the same as the first, you still need to have a certain amount of points to finish a level, you still need to carry out tasks to gain these points, only here you can choose to certain jobs for certain gangs. So you are a criminal who wants to make a quick buck, you can go about this in a lot of different ways, not help any gang and just steal and sell cars or kill people, you can even steal a taxi and pick up clients, but these methods will take too long. You need to help the gangs in each area to earn the big money. Each area has three gangs and by carrying out a job for one gang, you will annoy another gang. You can just help one gang and get your respect for that gang very high, but the other two gangs will be after your blood, or you can try and balance out the gangs and do jobs for each, keeping them all sweet.
In the game there are seven different gangs, but only three at a time appear in each area. The biggest gang that appear in very area are the Zaibatsu, they drive around in very distinctive cars with a big Z on the roof. Others gangs are the Yakuza, The Rednecks, The Russians, The Hare Krishna’s, The SRS and the Loonies. Each gang have different agendas and go about their takes in different ways, The Yakuza are very high tech with the latest cars and weapons. The Rednecks live in caravans and love to use bomb-rigged vans to blow things up, The Russians steal American cars and weapons and ship them back home. The Hare Krishn
a’s are against the violence and steal the weapons to crush them, The SRS are a team of scientists that are in to genetic modification and the Loonies are just mad and unorganized. Of course your not the only msall time crook trying to make it big in this city, other people will mug you or even steal the stoeln car you are driving off you by grabbing you and throwing you out, they may even decide to run you over as well.
As I mentioned before the Zaibatsu are all over the city, in the downtown area are also the Yakuza and the Loonies, while in the residential area are the SRS and the Rednecks while finally in the industrial estates are the Hare Krishna’s and the Russians. Each gang 'owns' part of the town and has bases, entering a rival gang's base on a job for another gang is a bad idea. One of the bad things about GTA is you had to finish a stage before you could save and stages can take anything from a hour upwards, in GTA2 if you have enough money you can save in the game, you just need to find a 'Jesus Saves' billboard and use the phone below it. Once you have finished a level, you can start a new game on what ever level you have made it to.
As in the first game you receive jobs by answering a phone, different gangs use different phones, which are placed around their bases, jobs in this game are very varied starting with simply drug runs to stealing a flamethrower from an armoured car. Some jobs such as saving kidnapped gang members have time limits while others don’t, in some jobs you need to kill a certain amount of people. Getting killed loses you a life, but you keep your bonus multiplier (meaning cash earned is multiplied by the amount you have in your bonus multiplier), get caught by the police alive and you keep your life but your bonus multiplier is reset.
The controls are often awkward and after playing the game on the PC I have to say the PC as better control system. On the Playstationleft and right turn
your car left and right, you must press the X button to move forward (in both a vehicle and walking) and you press Triangle to go backwards. The brake is R1, while you press Square to get in or out of a vehicle. The Circle makes you burp or fart when walking or blows your horn in a car. L1 and L2 skip through your weapons while R2 is shoot. You can get various weapons throughout the game ranging from pistols and machine guns to bazookas and bombs. The cities you drive around are massive and you can easily get lost, it is very hard to find the save points, but they are usually located around the center of the city. The roads and layouts are well designed with secrets hidden around and cool back roads. There are also a lot of vehicles you can pick or steal in the game even a tank with a working turret
Breaking the law enough will get the cops on your tail, following on more, by committing more illegal events, will make them more aggressive towards you, annoy them enough and the FBI and army come in with tanks to blow you away. I have found you can be doing well not getting in trouble and then crash into a police car by mistake and they are instantly on your back that gets annoying, One better thing then the first is that if you steal a car with no police around, nothing happens, do this a couple more times and the police will hear about you, In GTA2 if you break the law while a police car is present they are straight after you. Police also often mow down innocent people on the sidewalk while chasing you. Police annoyance (wanted level) is displayed at the top of the screen by police heads, the more heads the more they want your blood. One thing I notice about the police is that when they are chasing you it is easy to get away from them but simply stopping the vechicle you are in and waiting for the police to get out of their cars then you just accelerate away.
There are items in the game such as the Kill Frenzy’s these arespinning skulls, by p
icking these up you receive a task that you need to complete in a certain time. Like killing 20 people with the flame thrower in 30 seconds, or blowing up 60 cars with the bazooka in a minute, by doing these you get the police on your back, however if you complete the task your police annoyance is wiped out and you receive an extra life, if you fail the police keep on chasing you for it. Kill Frenzys can also be found in parked cars, where you have ot kill a certian amount of people using the car. There are also GTA logos hidden around the city but I dont know what they are for.
The graphics in the game aren’t the best Ive seen but must be kept to a minimum to increase the speed of play. Textures on the side of buildings are wonky and lots of vehicles and people are very blocky. The camera angle starts zoomed in with minimum surroundings displayed, but if you are flying down the road in a car the camera zooms out so you can see more of where you are going. The sound is good with people in the street talking and shouting at you. You can hear police and fire engines flying around the city attending other events else where, cars stop at traffic lights to let people cross. When in a vehicle you listen to the radio and you can change it by pressing up on the pad. The game is full of swear words and morally empty people, the missions you get can sometimes be sick, like bombing a bus full of another gangs kids or selling drugs out a school. Other missions are just fun like stealing a taxi and picking up four rival gang members before driving them to a car crusher and watching the crane pick them up, finishing that is just so rewarding.
The area of the town you are in is displayed at the top of the screen when you enter, as is the type of vehicle you get in. On screen are three coloured arrows, these represent the different gangs by colours, by following theses arrows, smaller arrows will appear, these smaller arrows point to the phones available for
that gang. The smaller arrows that are displayed when you are in a gang's area are also split up into three colours, green, yellow and red. Green means the mission will be easy, yellow is meduim and of course red is difficult. When you receive a job a big arrow appears which is the general direction of the task you need to carry out is. The game also suffers from horrible slow down when too many cars are on the screen and as you are driving round a large city this happens a lot, you can also get your car stuck down small alleys and driving down these only to find a dead end happens a lot. The game is quite non-linear by making it possible to finish a stage by many different ways.
The game is good to play for around a day but then becomes repetitive and boring, it is still too similar to the first and it still takes too long to finish an area. The most fun you have in the game is flying around the street or running over pedestrians Death Race 2000 style. I however liked earning great respect form one gang, hence annoying another, then going in and blowing all that gang members away, annoying them and gaining respect from the previously annoyed gang. The game isn’t fresh or new, it’s just an update of the first but at full price cost. The new gangs element adds to the game, but its still really just completing missions like in the first and eventually the missions become too similar to one another. Overall GTA2 isn’t an average game, it’s a very average game with an 18 certificate.
The style of the game is pretty much the same as the first, you still need to have a certain amount of points to finish a level, you still need to carry out tasks to gain these points, only here you can choose to certain jobs for certain gangs. So you are a criminal who wants to make a quick buck, you can go about this in a lot of different ways, not help any gang and just steal and sell cars or kill people, you can even steal a taxi and pick up clients, but these methods will take too long. You need to help the gangs in each area to earn the big money. Each area has three gangs and by carrying out a job for one gang, you will annoy another gang. You can just help one gang and get your respect for that gang very high, but the other two gangs will be after your blood, or you can try and balance out the gangs and do jobs for each, keeping them all sweet.
In the game there are seven different gangs, but only three at a time appear in each area. The biggest gang that appear in very area are the Zaibatsu, they drive around in very distinctive cars with a big Z on the roof. Others gangs are the Yakuza, The Rednecks, The Russians, The Hare Krishna’s, The SRS and the Loonies. Each gang have different agendas and go about their takes in different ways, The Yakuza are very high tech with the latest cars and weapons. The Rednecks live in caravans and love to use bomb-rigged vans to blow things up, The Russians steal American cars and weapons and ship them back home. The Hare Krishn
a’s are against the violence and steal the weapons to crush them, The SRS are a team of scientists that are in to genetic modification and the Loonies are just mad and unorganized. Of course your not the only msall time crook trying to make it big in this city, other people will mug you or even steal the stoeln car you are driving off you by grabbing you and throwing you out, they may even decide to run you over as well.
As I mentioned before the Zaibatsu are all over the city, in the downtown area are also the Yakuza and the Loonies, while in the residential area are the SRS and the Rednecks while finally in the industrial estates are the Hare Krishna’s and the Russians. Each gang 'owns' part of the town and has bases, entering a rival gang's base on a job for another gang is a bad idea. One of the bad things about GTA is you had to finish a stage before you could save and stages can take anything from a hour upwards, in GTA2 if you have enough money you can save in the game, you just need to find a 'Jesus Saves' billboard and use the phone below it. Once you have finished a level, you can start a new game on what ever level you have made it to.
As in the first game you receive jobs by answering a phone, different gangs use different phones, which are placed around their bases, jobs in this game are very varied starting with simply drug runs to stealing a flamethrower from an armoured car. Some jobs such as saving kidnapped gang members have time limits while others don’t, in some jobs you need to kill a certain amount of people. Getting killed loses you a life, but you keep your bonus multiplier (meaning cash earned is multiplied by the amount you have in your bonus multiplier), get caught by the police alive and you keep your life but your bonus multiplier is reset.
The controls are often awkward and after playing the game on the PC I have to say the PC as better control system. On the Playstationleft and right turn
your car left and right, you must press the X button to move forward (in both a vehicle and walking) and you press Triangle to go backwards. The brake is R1, while you press Square to get in or out of a vehicle. The Circle makes you burp or fart when walking or blows your horn in a car. L1 and L2 skip through your weapons while R2 is shoot. You can get various weapons throughout the game ranging from pistols and machine guns to bazookas and bombs. The cities you drive around are massive and you can easily get lost, it is very hard to find the save points, but they are usually located around the center of the city. The roads and layouts are well designed with secrets hidden around and cool back roads. There are also a lot of vehicles you can pick or steal in the game even a tank with a working turret
Breaking the law enough will get the cops on your tail, following on more, by committing more illegal events, will make them more aggressive towards you, annoy them enough and the FBI and army come in with tanks to blow you away. I have found you can be doing well not getting in trouble and then crash into a police car by mistake and they are instantly on your back that gets annoying, One better thing then the first is that if you steal a car with no police around, nothing happens, do this a couple more times and the police will hear about you, In GTA2 if you break the law while a police car is present they are straight after you. Police also often mow down innocent people on the sidewalk while chasing you. Police annoyance (wanted level) is displayed at the top of the screen by police heads, the more heads the more they want your blood. One thing I notice about the police is that when they are chasing you it is easy to get away from them but simply stopping the vechicle you are in and waiting for the police to get out of their cars then you just accelerate away.
There are items in the game such as the Kill Frenzy’s these arespinning skulls, by p
icking these up you receive a task that you need to complete in a certain time. Like killing 20 people with the flame thrower in 30 seconds, or blowing up 60 cars with the bazooka in a minute, by doing these you get the police on your back, however if you complete the task your police annoyance is wiped out and you receive an extra life, if you fail the police keep on chasing you for it. Kill Frenzys can also be found in parked cars, where you have ot kill a certian amount of people using the car. There are also GTA logos hidden around the city but I dont know what they are for.
The graphics in the game aren’t the best Ive seen but must be kept to a minimum to increase the speed of play. Textures on the side of buildings are wonky and lots of vehicles and people are very blocky. The camera angle starts zoomed in with minimum surroundings displayed, but if you are flying down the road in a car the camera zooms out so you can see more of where you are going. The sound is good with people in the street talking and shouting at you. You can hear police and fire engines flying around the city attending other events else where, cars stop at traffic lights to let people cross. When in a vehicle you listen to the radio and you can change it by pressing up on the pad. The game is full of swear words and morally empty people, the missions you get can sometimes be sick, like bombing a bus full of another gangs kids or selling drugs out a school. Other missions are just fun like stealing a taxi and picking up four rival gang members before driving them to a car crusher and watching the crane pick them up, finishing that is just so rewarding.
The area of the town you are in is displayed at the top of the screen when you enter, as is the type of vehicle you get in. On screen are three coloured arrows, these represent the different gangs by colours, by following theses arrows, smaller arrows will appear, these smaller arrows point to the phones available for
that gang. The smaller arrows that are displayed when you are in a gang's area are also split up into three colours, green, yellow and red. Green means the mission will be easy, yellow is meduim and of course red is difficult. When you receive a job a big arrow appears which is the general direction of the task you need to carry out is. The game also suffers from horrible slow down when too many cars are on the screen and as you are driving round a large city this happens a lot, you can also get your car stuck down small alleys and driving down these only to find a dead end happens a lot. The game is quite non-linear by making it possible to finish a stage by many different ways.
The game is good to play for around a day but then becomes repetitive and boring, it is still too similar to the first and it still takes too long to finish an area. The most fun you have in the game is flying around the street or running over pedestrians Death Race 2000 style. I however liked earning great respect form one gang, hence annoying another, then going in and blowing all that gang members away, annoying them and gaining respect from the previously annoyed gang. The game isn’t fresh or new, it’s just an update of the first but at full price cost. The new gangs element adds to the game, but its still really just completing missions like in the first and eventually the missions become too similar to one another. Overall GTA2 isn’t an average game, it’s a very average game with an 18 certificate.
Summary:
