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Hidden and Dangerous 2: Sabre Squadron is an expansion pack to a sequel to a game I had never heard of until I was asked to write this review. There is thankfully a reason for my ignorance. It's not very good, not very good at all. It burns more because the concept behind the game is a good one. So often, designers have clarity of vision and lack the means to see their ideas come to life. Hidden and Dangerous 2 is one such example. The game is one that, implemented correctly, could be all things to all people. Much like The Chronicles of Riddick, H&D2 is many games in one. You can play it as a first person shooter. You can play it as a third person shooter. You can play squad based missions that require you to command your team members and coordinate them to a common objective. You can give team members quick key commands like in Full Spectrum Warrior or you can zoom out to an interactive map-like view that lets you control them in real-time like Warcraft 3. In certain missions, like in Splinter Cell, you have to be stealthy so you don't attract the attention of the guards. Much like The Chronicles of Riddick, Hidden and Dangerous 2 fails to be an excellent game because of the sheer monumental task it is to seamlessly combine so many different game types into one game. The end result is unfortunately hard to cope with unless you have a penchant for sadomasochism.
The first and most frustrating aspect of this game was just getting the damn thing to work. Prior to the release of Doom 3, I personally invested in a high-powered gaming PC for the specific goal of being able to play 3D games at the highest possible resolutions; sick resolutions with full screen anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering. Surround sound and the whole nine yards. Having seen my computer run Doom3 with the settings maxed out (everything but screen resolution, that stayed at 1024x768) at around 30 fps, you can guess the first thing I did when I started up H&D2. A hardware setup screen popped up with default settings. So I maxed 'em all out. Started up the game. Nothing. The screen flickered for a second like it was trying to initialize and the program minimized and took me back to the desktop. WTF?! After 20 minutes of turning different features on and off from the setup screen, I finally found a combination that worked. The screen resolutions offered in the hardware setup dialog for my video card ranged from 640x480 to 2048x1536. Only the one resolution of 1024x768 would actually allow the game to start. I guess they thought that was a good resolution. Who am I to argue? After getting the game to work, plan on spending a solid two to three hours familiarizing your self with the complexities in the controls and game play. If you are a true FPS gamer and are used to the W, A, S, D controls, you'll want to configure it using the second standard key configuration. Don't even bother trying to customize the controls because every key on the keyboard is allocated to a specific function and the game will not let you proceed until all functions are properly remapped. Just learn what the keys do and leave it at that. Once you have some semblance of an understanding of the keyboard layout and how to sneak around you can start taking on the missions. Forget about actually performing quickly coordinated maneuvers like in Full Spectrum Warrior. Unless you constantly pause and un-pause the game while you're managing each individual member of your team they will quickly get annihilated. The Lone Wolf version of the game is infinitely more playable because you don't have to fight the AI or try to control four soldiers simultaneously in real time. The only draw back to the Lone Wolf version of the game is the ability of the enemies to get head shots immediately after noticing your presence. This and the limit of three saves per mission make it very difficult to succeed with only one soldier. The successful formula to completing the missions is to outfit each soldier identically and play like Lone Wolf with them one at a time, leaving the others back at the beginning of the map. When one guy gets whacked, you just switch to the next one and continue where you left off. Cheesy, but then again so is the enemy AI. The game does have a multiplayer mode, but no one on the Internet is playing it. When you refresh the server list, you get nothing. Since I refuse to be relegated to playing with myself, I left the multiplayer at that. So there you have it. Hidden and Dangerous 2 is a game whose implementation fails to keep up with the dreams of its designers. You can see the potential in the design. First person, third person, tactical squad based stealth/shooter. It's a tall order that if ever is filled will be a truly interactive gaming experience. Unfortunately for all of us Hidden and Dangerous 2 falls short.
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