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By Contributing Writer Rob Pecknold Rating: Crappy There comes a time in almost every game's development cycle when the developers either say, "Wow, our game is really fun!" or "Man, our game sucks. We should cancel it before it gets any worse." The developers at DMA Design should have chosen the second option and cancelled Grand Theft Auto 2. In GTA 2, you're a street thug who does jobs for various gangs. Doing certain operations for certain gangs will get you respect from the particular gang, and killing off members of rival gangs could help, too. Sounds good, right? Wrong. While it was nice touch to let you listen to the radio in the various cars you steal, there's not much else to like about the game. It really doesn't matter who you do operations for, because the game is very repetitive no matter what. Most missions involve picking someone or something up, killing someone, or doing a little bit of both. I can only kill so many people or pick up so many criminals before I realize that I'm doing the same thing over and over again. The graphics in GTA 2 are some of the ugliest, blockiest graphics I've ever seen. The main character's animation makes him look like a robot on crack, and the enemies look just as bad. The bullets move so slow that they would lose a race to a tortoise even if they didn't stop for a nap at a country cottage during the race. The vehicles look like crap, with bland textures and ugly, ugly designs. These graphics would have been bad on the Super Nintendo, but on the PlayStation they're just pathetic. GTA 2's control is vomit-inducingly horrible. Believe it or not, there are "accelerate" and "reverse" buttons when you're on foot, not just when you're in a vehicle. While on foot, you actually have to press X to move forward, the d-pad to change directions, and square to go in reverse. On top of that, I can never seem to find the out-of-place fire button in the heat of battle, and it's nearly impossible for me to line up correctly for a shot when three slow-as-molasses bullets always manage to hit me no matter where I am. What disappoints me most about Grand Theft Auto 2 is the fact that it features no real innovation whatsoever. There's nothing you can do in GTA 2 that's any more exciting than anything you can do in GTA 1 or even Driver. The freedom to do whatever you want in a virtual world is a nice concept, but it would be a lot more fun if there were a decent game to back it up. Send your thoughts on this review to rob@mastergamer.com
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