This game is such a huge downgroade. Where the first game was a simple, but fun shooter, this sequel is worse in almost every regard. It feels less fluid, enemies are more tanky, you can't freely climb any surface anymore, levels feel more linear and often rely on infinitely respawning enemy hordes and the entire mood of the game is different.
Letr's talk about the last one first, because that's a bigger pet peeve of mine. The Tlalokii in the first game were acting more like cultish militia. Sure they had some power and some special forces units, but most of their members were armed civilians. Now in the sequel, they have turned into a full blown army, complete with a fully functioning air force and navy, including an aircraft carrier.
And all of their members have turned into soldiers, there are no civilian forces anymore. Not to mention that a lot of them now have Eastern European accents and all their vehicles are Russian, although they are supposedly an American cult, which makes you feel like you are playing Call of Duty instead of Zero Caliber. The game also pulls some virus threat out of its ass that never gets mentioned even once in the first game and doesn't get elaborate on in this game either.
And the gameplay, it feels worse than the previous game. And I think I know why. First, without attachments, weapons now are inaccurate as hell. Sure in the first game weapons performed a lot better when you put a sight or laser on them, but they were accurate enough without any attachments to feel good. In ZC2, it feels like you need a sight, otherwise the weapon sprays like hell with the default iron sights.
And secondly, the enemies are much more tanky. Even the most basic infantry unit takes like a quarter of a magazine to kill while also packing quite a punch. Which in and of itself wouldn't be so bad, but as mentioned, the game loves to throw these guys at you, which forces you to take potshots at the enemy.
They enemies also love to spam grenades. Grenades that have a huge splash radius, are completely silent (realistic, I know) and take you from full health to almost dead. And while there is an auto heal, it takes a lot longer to kick in than in the first game, especially when you are in the almost dead state.
And your teammates suck. Yes, they were already bad in the first game, but ZC2 really topped that. These guys drop like flies and during the missions all your allied vehicles also get constantly shot down and destroyed. It's so bad, that the supposed proffessional military you are a part of has no attack helicopters and later on you need to STEAL a HIND for your team. Imagine this. The ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ almighty US Army needs to steal a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ HIND, because they seemingly have run out of Apaches and use Chinooks instead! And not even the attack variant, no, the basic ♥♥♥♥♥ transport variant with human mounted turrets!
The whole setup makes you feel like YOU are the Tlalokii cult fighting the US military, instead of the other way around.
And the scene transitions, oh man, they are so bad. Like, in the third level, you start on board of a truck that has to escape from a crashing airplane. Eventually the truck hits some debris and topples over. But instead of showing the crash, the game fades to black and suddenly the truck is crashed. And every transition is like this. You have to climb a rope ladder to enter a helicotper? No, transition to black. A pathway gets blocked? Transition to black. Your HUMVEE crashes? Transition to black. And so on and so on. Every flatscreen game does this better.
Oh, instead of immersively taking your weapons off a gun rack to determine your loadout, you do it via a menu now. The gun racks still exist, but they are only for the shooting range and don't save for the mission. You also don't carry over weapons from the missions anymore. Your loadout resets after each level.
And as mentioned, the game cog a huge surge of CoDitis. Especially in the regard that at certain sections it has an infinite amount of respawning enemies until you cross an invisible line. Either that or the enemies respawn so much that there is close to no difference.
Now, there are a few aspects that the game does better, but I'm not sure if those had been in the first game already and I've just missed them. First, dual wielding pistols became a lot easier. Instead of having to manually reload them one by one, you can move them to your ammo belt to reload them.
Throwing grenades also got a lot easier, just move the grenade to your mouth to pull the pin. And you have more freedom where to move your ammo belt and weapon holsters. Not total freedom, but more freedom than in the first game. Also guns are cheaper than in the first game, so you unlock them quicker.
The game also tries to be way more cinematic, buy stuff constantly flying in from the outside and exploding and having more spectacle. Which would be fine, if it weren't for everything else dragging the whole experience down.
But that's basically where the positives end for me. So what would I say? Basically, play the first game and skip this one. It feels a lot less fluid and less polished.
