Hidden And Dangerous 2 Review

[Herbert1405241469 0]

A few months ago, I stopped by a local Gamestop and found a game that was marked as 49 cents. It was made around the same time that Battlefront 2 was out and was a WWII shooter, so I figured it would be something comparable. The game was Hidden and Dangerous 2, and it sat on my shelf for a good 2 months before I decided to try it after purchasing several other games that completely disappointed me in terms of holding my interest (Tom Clancy's Endwar being one of them!)

 

It came with 3 install CDs, which I had forgotten all about, seeing as I haven't bought a game that stored content on CDs since the original FarCry was released

 

The installation went smoothly, and I found a patch online for multiplayer and put that on as well...

 

I started off Single player, and the game instantly felt a bit like the game "Death to Spies" (I could almost swear they used the same training boot camp) but anyway, I quickly found this game was something more. Death to Spies plays more like a Hitman game, where Hidden and Dangerous 2 is more like Call of Duty, and is teammate based, where you control up to 3 other guys in your missions. You could go Lone Wolf, but it would probably be a lot harder.

 

First off, the graphics are actually pretty good for an older game. The textures for the characters are realistic, and overall the world seems very realistic (though some areas, you can tell they had to deal with the low polygon rate, so the ground is essentially "flat" with grass, snow, or sand textures, rather than having 3D grass or things we're used to now from Crysis and STALKER). This does not take away from them trying though. They add little touches, such as if you're walking in snow, you leave footprints.

 

Sounds are very well done, and you feel like you're in any other WWII simulator. Nothing wrong with this at all, and the voice acting is superb not only in acting, but they actually have the Germans speaking German, and the Italians speaking Italian, and the Brits, well, English, but it's as it should be. The ambient music captures the mood, and you can tell when an enemy spots you when the music ramps up into a faster pace.

 

Gameplay, ahhh, gameplay. This game does something that I wish more games would do... Inventory management in the sense that it's not a typical FPS where you can carry 4 machine guns, a bazooka, and 50 hand grenades. It carefully takes different attributes of each character (there are 30 you can use) and based on strength, you can carry more or less gear. Also, you can pack up a backpack for more storage space, but you have to take into how much your character can carry total. Also, if you kill an enemy and he has stuff, it can be yours. Guns, clothes, grenades... And guns don't "disappear" when you pick them up and ammo automatically added to your ammo level... You find a gun, then you can either pick it up as a secondary, or you have to figure out what you want to keep or not.

 

You can steal an enemy uniform if you can manage to get them to surrender. If you just shoot them, then you cannot use their uniform because there will be blood on it and suspicious. If you steal an enemy uniform, you have to equip only gear that the enemy would use, or it won't work. So you can't be dressed as a German soldier while carrying an Allied machine gun. Well... you can but you won't get a stealth meter, and be instantly recognized. The stealth meter is on the bottom by your health and goes up if no one can see you. It means you are disguised an it will stay full as long as you stay away from nearby enemies...The meter goes down rather quickly based on how good the enemy can see you. This is useful for running into an area full of enemies getting through them right away and they don't pay a lot of attention to you, versus not being stealthy and having to kill everyone. If the meter runs out, you're discovered and have to kill anyone that can see you. Then after awhile, it starts to fill again.

 

Team management is very intuitive. You can either have your team be quick or stealthy, and you can select individual team members to do actions or move certain places... if you are impatient, you can actually become a team member (using the 1-4 keys on the top of your keyboard) and do whatever it is you want them to do. This was very useful in helping me destroy a tank that had us cornered. I would distract the tank with one of my guys by shooting at it, and run out of the way, while I had my other guy come around from the rear and shoot its exhaust ports on the back with a tank buster rocket launcher (which I conveniently stole from the German armory )

 

There are a ton of weapons in this game, both Allied and Axis. All have different uses, which you can diversify with your teammates.

 

Your team also has different skills. So it might be better to have someone with high First Aid skill heal you, because you'll get more health per healthpack, versus trying to do it yourself if you suck at it. It makes it vital to keep your Doc alive. As you play through the campaign, your skills increase as well as the team members you take with you. I just recently had a team member get killed when forcing my way through the African desert, and I honestly felt bad just because I'd spent the past hours working with him in my team... And it was at a point in the game where you get stuck at a choke point where you're definitely going to have someone get killed, if they don't kill your team first. I hated that part.

 

You get 1 (one) save spot. If you do something stupid and then hit Save, and you didn't want to, then you either restart the mission, or make with the best with it. You can save anywhere, which is great because levels are long and take awhile to beat. Man I wish games nowadays were like that... Like the original Thief games where it took you a full hour to get through 1 level, where now it's likely you'll beat the game in 5 hours.. *sigh*

 

There is multiplayer, and amazingly there are still people playing online, but the problem I have is the fact that I CAN'T TELL WHO IS A FRIENDLY AND WHO IS AN ENEMY! The uniforms are very similar, and if you're a sniper, then you don't get little crosshairs that turn colors when you've moused over a friendly (which turns your cursor blue). I don't like multiplayer very much. But I will keep at it and try reading FAQs, maybe I'm missing something. There are several types of multiplayer, capture the flag, deathmatch, etc, but there is a mission based one that is original so far as I can tell for the time. You start out against the other team, and you have to destroy or kill stuff, and if you complete your objectives, you win. If you die, you have to wait until the round is over to play again.

 

Overall the game is definitely worth the money. The only time I've gotten this many gaming hours per dollar was getting Battlefield 2 for $9.99 and getting over 150 hours of gameplay out of it. Go to a gamestop and find this game if it isn't gone already

[surfermac 0]

Thats a good post a lot of info about fpshooter games

[BCD 1]

Nice review, as always.I played this game years ago. I did finish the single player missions. Once we get the hang of the game, the rest of the game is just about tactics and appropriate placement of the fellow mates on the map. Its more like single player mission, becuase most of the time I would be controlling only one soldier, in a map. The AI is pretty bad, so I had to manually transport the soldiers across the map, especially when deep inside the territory.By the way, we can control 4 soldiers and not 3, in a map. On a particular campaign, we can have upto 16 soldiers (not sure). Yes, there are many weapons in the game. Unlike in Hitman where we get to have only one main weapon, we can have lots of weapons in this game. I liked the different attributes like strength, vitality, reaction etc for the soldiers.The game is rather difficult, the poor AI of the team mates triples the difficultyActually I didn't buy this game, it was given free with a technology magazine DVD. It also had a map editor for making custom maps. That is, we can create our own maps in 3d graphic programs like 3ds Max. Overall a nice game for a different gaming experience.