GTA II Coasts on the Success of Predecessor
In the original, you take phone calls from various gangs that control different boroughs of each city. The calls assign the player a task of delivering a bomb, killing a particular individual, or some other criminal act. Successfully completing an assignment earns the player points towards graduating to the next city, as well as increasing your favor with the respective gang.
The appeal of the Grand Theft Auto series is its lack of structure. Certainly the player can take on a mission from the gangs, but it is not required. The player can just as easily ignore the phones and rampage through the city, stealing and selling cars, murdering at will, and engaging in wanton destruction of property.
Doing so, however, will bring down the sudden and efficient wrath of the police. The law is significantly more difficult to avoid in this sequel, bringing in federal enforcement and even tanks when it becomes necessary to shut down the player.
Of course, the player's arsenal has also been upgraded. In addition to the pistol, machine gun, and rocket launcher or its predecessor, the avatar now has license to kill with silenced weapons as well as a particularly satisfying flamethrower.
Everything is still viewed from a top-down perspective, and the camera zooms in or out depending on the player's movement speed, affording a more grandiose view of the city when rocketing through the streets in a Lamborghini. The graphics have been improved, with better lighting and textures, but the same cartooned top-down characters that are so simplistic as to be worthy of an 8-bit gaming platform. The audio is a different story, with plenty of ambient effects to highlight GTA II's mastery of its 3D Audio support.
While a game sequel does not need to reinvent the wheel, one might expect GTA II to have had a little something more than what is here. A few extra weapons, a lighting effect or two, and the same types of missions make for a repetitive game play experience for veterans of Grand Theft Auto. However, players looking for a quick visceral thrill will certainly find one here, and for all intents and purposes it would be foolish to play the first game over the second with both available.