Anyone who pays any bit of attention to the video or computer game industry has at least heard of Grand Theft Auto, but if for some reason your mind is a bit foggy at the moment, here’s a brief explanation. You play a driver looking to get some cash by completing numerous jobs for the different gangs that inhabit the cities across the nation. Telephones scattered through the city will bring job options that, if completed as the person assigning asks, will bring in cash that can help to fund your cause. And, as you would probably guess, most jobs require for you to get on the street and steal some of the cars that are roaming around. Going on foot wouldn’t exactly be the most efficient way to get things done.

With the first game, there was no advantage or disadvantage to what jobs you took and what people you killed on the street (except for getting the police to start chasing you down), but Grand Theft Auto 2 adds a new twist to the story that gives it more depth. In the upper left hand corner are three meters that represent the three gangs in that particular city and the respect that they have for you. If you were to kill one gang’s members their respect for you would go down, but that gang’s rival’s respect would go up. How this affects the game is that the higher respect you have with a given gang, the better jobs that will be available, but the lower your respect is the higher chance is that that gang will end up shooting at you in the street and refuse to give you work. So, depending on how you act in the game will reflect what kinds of options you have to make money. While this does not make this a whole new game, it adds a new layer that was not there before, and helps to make you think of what you are doing in the game before actually going through with it.

Compared to its special effects pushing brother on the PC, Grand Theft Auto 2 on the PlayStation looks rather tame. The low resolution gives the game a pixelated look, and most of the neat lighting effects on the PC are not found here. In a nutshell, it simply comes down to that it gives a clear look at how the PlayStation is starting to lose the technological edge, or rather, maybe how poorly the conversion was handled by DMA Design. Perhaps they could have scaled the game down to suit the advantages that the PlayStation holds. Either way, do not look toward Grand Theft Auto 2 if you are looking for a game to impress your friends, at least visually. In spite of this slight downfall, this doesn’t change that addictive formula for gameplay that the game holds close to.

The basic concept of the game is stealing or carjacking cars. Stealing one is easy enough, since all that one has to do is walk in front of one and press a single button and your character will open the car’s door, pull out the driver and then the car is yours to do what you please with it. Each of the stages has a different set of cars (although some of them are common throughout, like taxis), and they have varying characteristics such as how much they can sustain before exploding in a ball of fire, or how fast they are able to zoom around. Certain cars will work better in certain situations, but there will be those times when it won’t matter what car you have, you just need something.

Although the actual point of the game is to complete the jobs and reach a specific score total, Grand Theft Auto 2 is one of those cool games that just lets you go loose and do whatever you want whenever you want. Don’t feel like completing that job? Go run over a couple pedestrians, get some cops on your tail and maybe blow up a few cars while you are at it. There are many things that can be done other than the main idea of the game, and that is what helps keep the game fresh and enjoyable even when things start to get a little frustrating. Taking out your anger on a couple of hapless folks who are peacefully strolling down the street has never been more enjoyable. Especially since it is all fake and you can’t actually get arrested! Cause enough trouble, and things will get so severe that a SWAT team will be sent after you to take you out.

There seem to be a few problems with the difficulty in Grand Theft Auto 2, however. The first level is not much of a daunting task, since you only need to collect around a million points in order to advance, but the second stage needs three million and it gets successively harder as times goes on. Grand Theft Auto 2 may be an entertaining game, but the difficulty ramps up far too quickly and then it soon became no fun to try and beat the actual levels and instead just have some fun and screw around. Other than that, I found that after a few games I found myself becoming bored with the game and not having as much fun with it. It would seem that this is the type of game that should be taken in small doses, not large gulps.