I had played Small Brawl, Black, and Head-On as a kid, but only got to play 2 once when a friend brought it over. I've played challenge mode casually a few times here and there, but I finally sat down and played it through. I found both positives and negatives throughout, but was surprised at some of the negatives, I think it's a tad overrated, and is by no means the best game in the series, but it is a good game. Since it probably matters, I completed the game playing as Shadow on medium difficulty.
The Positives:
1. The goddamned soundtrack is fucking godly. Period.
2. The variety of characters and specials was wonderful and fun, nothing felt reused or filler, especially Mr.Slam, but I like him and his move better in TMHO and TMSB. Shadow's special was loads of fun, having the spook sneak under them, and then blowing 'em sky-high, literally.
3. The levels were fun takes on the world, with nice destructible stuff here and there, but the taxis in hong kong made me wish Yellow Jacket was in this game.
4. I liked the weapons, like how well the ricochet pushed the opponent off of the edge in New York, and like I said before, most of the specials.
5. By far, the coolest damn thing in the game was when you killed the enemies while they were frozen, the broken pieces are covered in ice as well. Nothing, and I mean nothing, in the whole damn series tops freezing a large character, like Mr.Slam, firing Shadow's special, and detonating it under him, sending Slam's broken vehicle flying into several pieces still encased in ice. Reminded me of the mortal kombat movie, when Sub-Zero froze that dude and broke him into pieces. (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MjHv7y5oIA)
6. With the "tight turn" as the manual calls it, you can maneuver and turn really quickly, and that's really useful and adds a strange sense speed to the gameplay.
7. The AI is fucking superb, they know where to aim, when to shoot, but most importantly, how to hit, namely Slam, he freezes you, then drives up and uses his special. It was cool to see the AI use a simple tactic to get the special to work, rather than have slam run around like a dumbass slamming nothing.
8. The game has some damn-cool secret tracks, especially cyburbia, I liked that in TM1, and the Suicide Swamp level from Jet Moto.
9. The game is forgiving near the edge, 3 times today I sped toward a ledge, only to tight turn around and boost the opposite direction
milliseconds before it would've been too late for me to stop. In TM4, you will hang by the two wheels, and gravity pulls down, hard. In TM2, however, you are mostly locked upright, like there's invisible balloons at the top of the cars. Nothing makes the adrenaline run like boosting back to a platform with just the front two wheels keeping you from falling to your doom, a doom that looks much alike the Jet Moto 1 track Nightmare's "ground" texture. The hidden cheat code is cool, but finding it isn't so cool.
The Negatives:
1. If you stop, for
any reason, and for
any length at all you get instantly frozen, and then fucked in the ass by a 10 missiles, hammerhead, slam, and axel's power about 6 times. This would be a positive, because it keeps you moving, but negative number 3, which I'll get to, makes this a pain. You can also end up sliding and bouncing around like a pinball if you get stuck in a small area with more than one or two people.
2. Thumper's special can drain your life like hearing
AXEL POWERRR!!! 7 times in a row drains my sanity. You can also happen to spawn directly in front of him. Lovely.
3. Invisible. Fucking. Walls. So many god damn times I run into a "wall" running up a ramp, or driving over a slight incline. Even if that "wall" only exists for a millisecond, it stops me dead in my tracks, and axel can smell that shit from a mile away. I swear I'm gonna get salty as all hell if I'm in the middle of running for my life, only to hit something that isn't there, and be instantly brought to a stop, and then to get freezefucked.
4. Later on, especially the last few maps, you will get freezefucked constantly. If you get frozen, you might as well try boosting away while hitting ^^> when it wears off and hope for the best, because once you are frozen you will probably lose about half of your health, from damage you can't avoid, unless you avoid getting frozen altogether with the shield, which, as I'll get to, was an issue for me. If it's Thumper that freezes you though, then I hope you've got extra lives.
5. Why is Sweet Tooth a secret character? Why not add a different cool character, and make them secret? He's in tournament mode, often too, and he's not rediculously op or anything, so what gives? Maybe they didn't decide on him being the series' mascot yet, or something. Even then, where they hid the code was cool.
6.The game almost felt "floaty" or "slippery" at times, like, my car, at one point, tilted like a balloon with a weight on it, and boost came out, but didn't push me because I didn't have any traction. That and you can reach certain platforms by just boosting, you clip up onto the platform if you ride into the edge. Not a huge deal, it's rare that it's a problem, and I kind of like the floatyness, but it might present a problem at some point.
7.Shadow's special is hard to tell exactly how close it is to the enemy the farther it gets away, making it difficult to deal as much damage as possible. Especially since you can't blow it up anywhere near you or it'll deal damage to you. It usually takes down a large chunk of you opponent's health(or yours), like a quarter of the bar, but I could've sworn it took half of axel's life bar down one time. One can only dream...
8. Twister's special is pure shit, it barely does anything, just throws them away from you almost immediately. I read in a guide that you had to be standing still, and you couldn't do it in a drive by. Even if that is true, sitting still like that is basically the equivalent of spreading your ass-cheeks for axel and saying "come get some".
Possible Negatives:
What I mean by possible, is that I've been playing this on ePSXe, an emulator, because it's much easier than plugging in the ps1, the extension cord, the t.v., then connecting the av cables, the controller, putting the actual game in, etc. etc., whereas now, all I have to do is plug in my controller, double click, click, click, and then I can play. This opens me up to possible issues do to emulation, so take these with a grain of salt, and please let me know If you, during emulation, or on the actual console, do, or do not have these issues.
1.The "secret" moves (ice missile,shield,jump to be exact) are delayed from when you press the last button. When I hit ^^>, as soon as I hit >, the shield should activate, but it doesn't. It can take up to a full second for it to activate. That may not sound like a big deal, but when axel and hammerhead are comin at ya, and an ice missile is also on the way, you better type that code extra fast, to make up for the time you have to wait, or you're fucked.
2: This is what completely fucked the gameplay for me. Sometimes the "secret moves" would not work at all, as in, the input wouldn't even register. So not only would I have to wait around a full second for it to work, it might not work at all! There were times I was being chased, and my inputs were like ^^>^^>^^>^^>^^>^^> and you know what happened? Oh, I got a shield alright, a nice, chilly, cold, protective sheet of ice, that's what I fuckin got! It's not my controller, the codes for the rest of the games, TM1,TM4,TMSB all work fine. Needless to say, I got a little salty here n' there, due to the last two things, but I chilled out n' tried again, and I eventually beat the game.
Well, that's my review on TM2, took a few hours, 40% of the time I got distracted lookin at my miku and paul mccartney shimejis lol. I'm gonna play as soon as I'm done publishing this. If those potential things did/didn't happen to you, lemme know, and lemme know what ya thought, if you read it, that is, hehe.
Here is what my screen looked like by the time this was done, in case anyone's interested in what the shimejis look like, lol.
https://i.imgur.com/p8kQ9y5.png