Grand Theft Auto 2's design - in its purist form - is relatively simple. There are an assortment of different gangs scattered throughout a city, and each of them are offering jobs that, if completed, will reward the player with cash. To complete the jobs, the person at the controller will have to evade the police, steal cars from total strangers and perform a variety of heinous crimes. As soon as enough cash is collected, the player can move onto the next city, which features a new set of cars (though there are still some from the previous city, but some are new), jobs, etc. A new gameplay element that has been implemented into Grand Theft Auto 2 is the respect meter. Located in the upper left-hand corner of the screen, the respect meter will fluctuate depending on the actions that the player takes. If the player favors a certain gang, the slider on that gang's meter will move up, but if a particular job involves doing something against a rival gang, then the rival gang's meter will move down, and the player might not be able to obtain jobs from them. If the meter moves down low enough on a gang, that gang will even go as far as to attempt to kill the player when they see him.

Comparing the two versions of Grand Theft Auto 2 that have already been released, there is really only one main difference between them: graphics. The PC version benefits from having more memory, a faster processor and, if the player has it, a 3D accelerator that can drastically upgrade the visual quality. The PlayStation, though, is forced to run at a lower resolution, and has no special filters that can aid in ridding annoyances like pixelation. When it comes to the Dreamcast version, the easiest way to describe it is an upgraded PC version. The entire game runs at a crisp 640x480 resolution, and texture filters to eliminate the PS's problems - pixelation and such - are in place. One of the coolest looking touches, though, is the lighting effects. All of the headlights from the game's vehicles will reflect upon the road and environment, and even the stoplight's illumination will bounce around on the ground. It does not add much to the game in terms of gameplay, but it does look extremely pretty.

The only detraction I could find with the Dreamcast version is that the frame rate is not as speedy as it could be. When the camera panned far back to show as much as the city as possible at once, the frame rate showed a noticeable amount of slowdown, but it still continued to clip along at a rather nice pace. Either way, complaints concerning the frame rate in Grand Theft Auto 2 is starting to get a little nit picky.

I've always had a bit of a problem with the way that the control scheme for Grand Theft Auto has been set up. Instead of letting pressing forward dictate where the character on-screen will go, moving the analog pad to the left or right will rotate the direction that the character is facing, and then A has to be pressed down upon to get him to start running. I have yet to understand why it is necessary to have to hold down A, and even though the game is still incredibly fun despite the control problem, it's definitely something I hope is fixed when the inevitable Grand Theft Auto 3 is released.

There are plenty of games that can just be picked up and played for a couple of minutes and it's just as fun as playing for a couple of hours, but Grand Theft Auto 2 is easily the best example of it. Sometimes I only have an hour of free time on my hands, and want to play a game, but don't have the time to invest into starting or continuing an RPG. Many times I have found that I'm reaching for the Grand Theft Auto 2 case; it's made for being played in short spurts, and not in long, marathon sessions (since it can make the game become repetitive quicker than it has to). And not only that, but the game allows whoever is playing to simply mess around, instead of actually following the actual goals. Why follow some silly rules when you can grab an Uzi off the streets and start randomly killing people at your discretion? Grand Theft Auto 2 gives quite a bit of freedom in that area.

A problem that I had with the original Grand Theft Auto that is still present in the sequel is the difficulty in moving onto the next city. In order to head to the next city a certain money total has to be obtained, and most of the time the money requirement is so high that it can be become repetitive and frustrating to reach it. Things are not helped by the fact that finding the save point is near impossible unless you have a map out that details where all the major locations in the game are found; there's no arrow that points to a seemingly key location such as that. Most of the time I found myself - and others - simply messing around in the game for a while, and not attempting to earn the money goal because it seems to impossibly high.

When it comes down to it, this is basically the same game that was released over a year ago with a few improvements. If you didn't find enjoyment in the original Grand Theft Auto, there isn't likely to be anything in the sequel that will sway your decision. Fans of the original, however, will find quite a bit to keep themselves occupied with. Hopefully DMA Design will decide to advance the series a few steps when Grand Theft Auto 3 makes the rounds. Hopefully it does not fall into the same pit that Eidos Interactive's Tomb Raider series has fallen into (the same old thing each year with a few changes).