This game is as awful, unfair and mind-numbingly stupid as the first one. I can't understand why people like it.
Frustrating. Infuriating. Just plain bad. Some of this game's more egregious failures include: a checkpoint system instead of free saves, meaning those difficult battles have to be fought over and over and over; an AI with not only the usual ESP of a poorly-designed shooter, but also an inexplicable tendency to forget where you are even if the enemy is looking right at you; monsters who combine a flea-like ability to jump over half the map combined with an attack that can kill you with one or two hits, and pretty much always attack from an unfair ambush, meaning you get to start over again; rockets that travel almost as fast as you can walk; a huge arsenal of weapons that all do pretty much the same thing--badly; human enemies who take an entire clip to the body at close range and keep coming (you can't do this even with full armor); vehicles that are nearly impossible to control, since you can only travel at full throttle or not at all; a character who moves so slowly you can feel him age; a nonsensical reload requirement that is terribly slow and inconvenient, and totally pointless since you can just scroll the mouse wheel and instantly be holding a new weapon. Poor design, unfair enemies, boring plot line and only so-so graphics. Don't waste your money or your time.
This game reminds me a lot of Quake in the way it looks and feels, but Quake owns it in one important category: giving you effective weapons. There are not a lot of enemies on any given level, and that's a good thing because no matter what weapon you use, they all take a hundred shots to kill. Seriously, no weapon is more effective than any other. You can hit the Brutes with either two dozen pistol shots or two dozen rockets, it doesn't matter. Speaking of rockets, why is it they travel so slowly that the enemies can evade them simply by walking? Almost all the weapons have a monstrous delay between you shooting and the projectile reaching the target. The damnable Skaarj even roll out of the way the instant you hit the fire button, making every weapon except the pistol totally ineffective against them at range. To kill them, you must close and get the shit kicked out of you. The designers must want you to use only the pistol, because it's the only weapon you can consistently find ammo for. The 8-ball rocket launcher is pretty plentiful in the middle levels, but that doesn't matter much since, as I said, it's not much more effective than the pistol. Overall I give this game a solid "meh". I might have been all right if I only paid the 5.99, but since this was a 9.99 game, I don't feel ti was worth it.
