The Sniper 2

All of this just works. ― Todd Howard

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The Sniper 2
It's so bad, that even its official description on the PlayStation Network points out how horrible it is.
Genre(s): First-person shooter Platform(s): PlayStation 2 Release: JP: November 28, 2002 EU: March 5, 2004 Developer(s): Best Media Publisher(s): JP: D3 Publisher EU: Midas Interactive Entertainment Country: Japan Series: The Sniper Simple 2000 Series Predecessor: Simple 1500 Series Vol.056: The Sniper

The Sniper 2 is a 2002 video game released for the PlayStation 2. Developed by Best Media and published by D3 Publisher in Japan and Midas Interactive Entertainment in Europe. The game is a sequel to the Japan-only PlayStation game Simple 1500 Series Vol.056: The Sniper. The game is quite often considered one of the worst, if not the worst Playstation 2 game and even one of the worst games of all time.

Gameplay

The gameplay is quite simple, the player's task is to hit a certain person, if the ammo runs out or he hits the wrong person, the player has to start the mission again. The game consists of 16 missions where once the player has to shoot down one of the people and once a cannon.

Why It Sucks

1. For some reason, the game was also released outside of Japan despite the fact that the first part was released only in Japan, which actually doesn't make sense, because after all, who waited for the continuation without knowing the first installment of the series?
2. Abhorrent graphics for a PS2 game that looks more like a early PS1 game, with everything consisting of blocky models and low-quality textures, it looks awful for 2002 standards. No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, Red Faction 2, Star Wars: Jedi Knight: Jedi Outcast, Battlefield 1942, Medal of Honor: Allied Assault and Frontline, Timesplitters 2 and Serious Sam: The Second Encounter all came out the same year and they look miles better.
3. The story is incredibly strange, inconsistent and has a lot of plot holes:
   • The entire story revolves around one of the most stupid plot twists in video game history, which had received no foreshadowing in the first game and is never explained, let alone solved.
     • The opening cutscene heavily implies that the point of the whole story is to find an explanation to this twist, but it's quickly shelved and never explored.
   • Localized by a team who were obviously unaware (or just didn't care) that the original game never came out in the West. For this reason, the story is very hard to follow, as the player is expected to have prior knowledge of the first game.
   • It cannot be emphasized enough how the entire plot basically occurs because the protagonist, Harry, decided to give a ride to a random hitchhiker on the road, who then accompanied him to a food kiosk that just so happened to be run by a CIA agent under cover where the main villain was expecting them.
     • Said hitchhiker tags along for most of the game, and yet he has no backstory, nor does he have a motive to fight the main villain.
   • The main villain barely does anything in the story (he appears a total of thrice before the final mission, and meets the protagonist only once), doesn't have a reason to do what he does, and gets reduced to the protagonist's sidekick near the end of the game. When this happens, there is no one to step up to the plate.
4. The gameplay is very Dull and monotonous for a PS2 game and looks like a NES game because you just trying to shot someone. This game barely qualifies as a game.
5. Awful cutscenes with little-to-no animation, wooden voice acting, text in the middle of the screen, and laughably bad dialogue, and also the text's font is in Comic Sans, the worst font ever known.
6. The dialogue is horrible, most of it being either generic special agent speech or lines that attempt really hard to be dark and serious, only to end up as unintentionally funny when viewed alongside the game's horrible cutscenes or put in the context of the game's horrible story.
7. The physics is really terrible because you can barely shot a enemy and sometimes the game is even almost impossible to beat.
8. The characters are one dimensional and stereotypical.
9. The pacing of the game is horrible.
   • Every single time you lose, you need to sit through a loading screen (which takes forever to sit through), the game over screen, another loading screen, the opening cutscene (for some reason), yet another loading screen, and finally you're back to the mission selection screen. From there, after yet another loading screen, you can finally get to actually play the game.
   • The same thing happens if you actually beat the mission, meaning that you spend more time waiting for the game to begin than actually playing the game. The only difference is that this time, you need to sit through the credits, too, for some reason.
10. The game has little room for error, in light of its horrible mechanics:
    • The timing of the bullet feels completely off compared to the actual bullet shown on the screen, meaning that you only have a very narrow window of time to fire the shot, and hope that it hits the target.
    • When the bullet hits the ground, it doesn't leave any visual effects. For this reason, there is nothing to cue you in on whether the bullet actually hit the intended target or not.
    • The game gives you a picture of your target at the beginning of the mission, but in most pictures there are several people, and the game doesn't tell you who the target is. The horrible character models don't make things any easier, either.
    • There is a day-night cycle, which on paper would have been very good for the time. However, several targets only appear at specific times of day, and the game never tells you that. If you start the mission at the wrong time, the only possible course of action is to fail on purpose and restart the mission only to change the time of day, hoping that the target actually shows up.
    • The game is built around trial-and-error, but this clashes with the fact that most missions give you only one bullet to work with, meaning that you have very little room for experimentation.
11. The "final boss" is just an old man who, apart from not having any weapons, tries to flee out in the open, making the final level extremely easy, bland and forgettable.
12. Really bad controls. The Square button brings up the scope, the X button is used to zoom, the Circle button removes the zoom, and R2 shoots. Also, the controls are ripped straight from the first game without any modifications.
13. Only 16 Missions, which makes the game incredibly short.

Redeeming Qualities

1. The intro is fairly bearable by PlayStation 2 standards, although more detail could be added.
2. Cutscenes can be so bad they're good thanks to terrible voice acting.

Reception

The game received an overwhelmingly negative reception and was considered by many to be the worst Playstaion 2 game and even one of the worst games of all time due to long cutscenes, terrible controls and graphics.

Thunderbolt gave the game a 1/10, calling it the worst game he ever played. NRGeek also ranked the game as the worst he's ever played, worse than Limbo of the Lost.

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