Hidden & Dangerous 2: Courage Under Fire

There aren't that many tactical squad - single player fps in the world. This is one of the best! Also, "Hidden and Dangerous 2 - the Sabre Squadron" addon even has real co-op as well. I can only hope that if you enjoy tactical shooters, and you have a second PC standing around nearby, and you can find a second player to join you, you will try this. Because it's just amazingly fun to play. The campaign missions are among the best I've played across all WW2 games. They're not easy, but fair. Managing your squads inventory can be a little complicated just sometimes, but the micromanagement is well worth it. Your AI controlled squad mates are capable, will warn you about enemy sightings, and engage, if you set them up to do that. The ARMA AI could learn something here. Sneaking and being all Ninja in this game is a valid option, and many times the slow and steady approach is the road to go down, but there is plenty of action, and every time you have a shoot out, it feels authentic. Enemy soldiers WILL try to sneak up on you as well. Not just outflank you, they will walk crouched at a snails pace behind cover, out of sight, just like you! When one of them creeps into the room you're hiding in, that's something I have NEVER seen in any other game like that. Typically they just come running in other games, or announce themselves in some way. Here, they don't. They actually are stealthy, and surprising them is so much fun! All the campaign missions are lengthy and typically take at least an hour to complete. There are story bits mixed in, and it may sometimes be tricky to figure out what you have to do, or where you need to be. That still doesn't stop me from giving this a perfect score. Oh right, the score. The music! It's fully orchestrated, movie like, and it's so good that you want to listen to some of it after you've finished playing. Desters in Italy, submarine bases, battleships, european towns, bavaria, every location just oozes atmosphere and authenticity. The game aged well, but sadly does not support 16:9 resolutions as far as I know.

Hidden and Dangerous 2 was a breakthrough - it took everything H&D1 had to offer and improved it significantly - stealth, weapon selection, vehicles. The game is plain superb. But what is H&D2 if you didn't play the first one? It's a squad-based action game similar to the likes of older Rainbow Six titles, but here the pressure is more on improvisation and in-promptu plans rather than carefully crafted plans and execution by the number like Rainbow Six. The game offers great balance between different playstyles - be it action-based, stealth-base or relying on pure planning. The game really shines in being cinematic without putting too much into boring old cutscenes - it feels like you're in one of those old war movies - be it Kelly's Heroes, Guns of Navaronnne or Dirty Dozen. The biggest criticism of the game are few scenes where you have to shoot at incoming planes and you have little control otherwise, but all of the other missions are plain perfection. This is a must have for any WW2 fan.

Game details on GOG say "Features: single-player", but do not let that miselead you, it can still be played on multiplayer. It only means the original multilayer internet powered by Gamespy no longer exits. My review focuses on the MULTIPLAYER GAME - LAN and CO-OPERATIVE game mode that can be played locally or via internet with the services like Tunngle (which has own game room for this game). The maximum player number in co-operative is 6. Re-spawn can be disabled and in VERY HARD difficulty the is as realistic as it gets allowing missions to complete only with careful tactics and skill. The items in the game can be picked up and dropped adding value to realism. Also many vehicles can be used. The statistics can be monitored real time with S-key also the map shown with tge M-key is realtime showing the player positions and orientation. Dedicated server is available also and the same computer can be used to run the decicated server and play it. The statistics will disappear is player exits early. So playing with people you know is the best, since statistics are important part of the planning and tactics to identify how close to the end a mission is. There are 30 soldiers to choose from with individial skills and physical differences. There are 9 co-operative missions. To complete very hard missions it takes about 20-80 minutes. There are 2-8 objetives in each mission. Objectives can be completed in any order in all missions! The game promotes player realtime after 9 kills, but this is only cosmetic. Is some missions enemies will spawn behind you, but there are also missions where no spawn will occur. Each mission has enemies between the total number of 38 and 113. Basically the most crucial skill for the character is shooting. I also want to review the game manual often not reviewed in the game. The game manual is very nice looking and informative but not perfect since there are some important things you should know that are not mentioned in the manual: Ammo clips dropped and rolling downhill for too long will disappear. Explosion will destroy the weapons that you have dropped. The anti-tank mines are visible when set. The anti-personnel mines are invisible when set. It is safe to walk over the anti-personnel mines, if you have set them yourself. It is deadly to walk over anti-personnel mines, if somebody else has set them. Tanks are never driveable, but you can use their weapons. Halftrucks are never driveable. PaK 40 cannons are always usable. In Libya3 the AA-truck can sometimes be used to block a guardhouse door or route of enemy halftrucks In Sicily1 some enemies spawn to disarm dynamites you have set earlier. So you have to do those objectives twice. In Sicily2 it is possible to climb over roofs of some buildings For single player game mode the gameplay is very similar except there are more missions and the possibility to save depending on the chosen difficulty. It is nice that the game runs also on Win10 64-bit without any tweaking. I have 2560x1440 screen but the maximum I could see and use in the game was 1920x1440. So the widescreen is not available without some REGEDIT which corrupts menus, so basically do not consider this as widescreen game. It is also amazing how fast this game launches when skipping start animations with ESC-key. It takes a second or two to get to the main menu. Game runs smoothly on modern hardware like it should. Tested with GTX 980 Ti. All in all this if one of my favorites. It has unique atmosphere which is hard to explain, it has to be experienced. One of the best cooperative games and one of the best single player WW2 games. If you like Tom Clancy's series games, you probably like this too.

H&D 2 was and still is a quite unique first person shooter. Vheicle combat. Combination of traditional FPS run-and-gun and vheicle combat. Varied and interesting missions. The weapons in this game gives a very life-like feeling. More so than in most other shooters. Possibly because of the realistic way they climb. You can go in alone, or you can bring with you on missions a small crew that you can give orders too. You can give short (but still effective) general orders to your crew, like "take cover", "move over there" or "hold your fire", forexample. Or you can open up a screen that lets you set waypoints for each soldier so you can get him to exactly go and do precisely what you want him to. I am so glad this game was released again, playable on modern systems. It is SO nice to play an old favourite again. Highly recommended.