Grand Theft Auto 2

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!