Game: Spy Hunter 2 (Playstation 2)

by Crom & D4V

Crom: I remember riding my bike down to the Southland Leisure center for the sole purpose of shoveling quarters into the Spy Hunter arcade machine. The music and action were mesmerizing. I couldn’t wait to smash the weapons van button and get some smoke or missile action. It was that pleasant childhood memory that caused mouth watering anticipation for the New Spy Hunter that came out for PS2 this month. I sat down to that game with the intent to gorge myself on high-action gaming till blood came out my eyes. That’s when I realized the game was shit.

D4V: Oh man, I remember the first time I got my dirty fingers on Spy Hunter. My world would be forever changed. Future driving games would always need be compared to the legend that was Spy Hunter. I always wanted the ability to drive into a semi-truck while doing 80 and pickup some rockets. I think I also had the itch to play the new 3D version just as much as my partner in crime here. Too bad the gameplay just didn’t follow anything that the old school version had.

Crom: The tragedy I think was centered mostly around the total disassociation from the original game. Granted it had the weapons van, but at that point it pretty much stopped. It got way too complicated, at any given moment you had to be doing at least 3 things, generally likes this:

  1. Be firing mad rockets at overhead helicopters
  2. Turbo your ass off in order to jump over some obstacle keeping you from a secret base/power up/road
  3. Slick/Smoke the asshole behind you who’s shoving rockets up your ass.

D4V: I have to agree there. The fact that there was maybe 20 some odd missions with about 5 key objectives to complete per mission, it was just plain ol’ annoying. I wanted pure gaming madness; driving 100miles per hour and shooting everything in sight for at least 20 minute intervals. I certainly didn’t want to re-do the same mission 10 times in order to kill 1 objective that I missed the last 9 times in order to proceed to the next mission. Oh and the boat.. Don’t even get me started on that.

Crom: The boat/water portion of the game was so weak it will not be mentioned anymore in this brief. True though, each mission had so many objectives it was tough to even enjoy shooting things for the heck of it, because you knew that once you were done blasting stuff, you’d have to play again in order to advance stages. I recall in the original you could have made it without shooting anything (why you would do something so foolish I don’t know but it was possible) and you would pass regardless. My judgment is as follows : Fail

D4V: On a final note, the fact that as you progressed thru the game you’d continue to win new weapons (sweet). However, eventually you ended up having to use every single button on the PS2 game pad (not cool), and thus just being a straight up gong show to put it all together. As I recall Crom and I got to the second last mission and decided that the game was just not fun anymore. If only this new version (which does have kick ass graphics and gameplay btw) was more plot driven like the original. Boo.

  • Game: Spy Hunter 2 (Playstation 2)
  • by Crom & D4V
  • Published on November 1st, 2001
Game:
Spy Hunter 2
Publisher:
Midway
When:
September 2001

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