Dark Silhouette: Silent Scope 2

""Calm Down!""

Silent Scope managed to catch me by surprise when I first played it at the arcade, but another game caught me off-guard simply because it featured some pretty cool ideas linked into the same format. Silent Scope 2 manages to take the original format and put a pretty interesting twist on it by giving you the ability to play through as one of two different snipers, each with their own path of doing things, giving you some slight difference to the game play!

Set after the first game, you take control of either the cool headed sniper from the first, or a rogue agent who is out looking for his sister. What you’ll find is that the original sniper is actually a former love of the sister that the second sniper is looking for. While not the most original story line, it does have a bit of action genre movie lines in it that make it a little more interesting to play through. Much like the first game, you peer through the sniper scope and knock off enemies on several different stages while trying to keep your cool and your accuracy up!

The Game Play

The modes of game play that you find here are just what you would expect from the arcade follow-up. You have a Story mode, a Time Attack Mode, and the Shooting Range with three different levels that allow you to practice your skills with the rifle and really get into the accuracy part of the game! What you'll find is an intricate scoring system that rates you on your ability to hit key points on whatever target that you might find through the different stages. As always, a headshot is worth more points than anything else, and you can easily take out a boss with a well placed headshot to complete the level.

With most of the game, you merely have to locate a target using the big screen and then zero in on what you’re shooting at with the scope. This makes for some pretty interesting gaming because you have to hit a target in different spots in order to get the maximum score. Unlike the home versions, there really is no reason to worry about score, other than you want to keep your accuracy up and have the ability to progress through the ranks for when you finish the game.

The control isn't much of a problem either, with most of it revolving around your ability to focus in and fire off a round at whatever your target may be. Timing and plenty of steady hands is what you'll need to effectively scope in on your intended target and fire off a round, but don't take too long to learn the control, because you're on a time basis. The longer you wait, the sooner you'll be spending a continue! In later stages, learning to control your scope is key and bosses will truly test your accuracy skill.

The Visuals

Visually, Silent Scope 2 looks great, with extremely extensive detailing in each of the stages, including a city, a giant bridge and even a mission from the side of a moving helicopter! You'll find that the enemies are well designed, but they do tend to repeat themselves, only having some differences in advanced stages, you'll find that you're shooting the same enemy over and over, just in ranging positions. The lighting effects are well done, with explosions, flashes and shadowing effects being very apparent on the darker stages. Some of the key points of the visuals is the x-ray scope that lets you see through walls, and the skeletal design that you see is outright amazing to look at!

The Audio

What music I did hear, was very low key and really didn't do much for adding pace to the game. The sound effects are what really come through, with your partner yelling at you to not shoot him, or to calm down when you're pressing the firing button too fast! Different sound effects include bullets whizzing by you and the rattling of automatic machine gun fire bursting all around you. That is probably the biggest killer, because the game just doesn’t have all that much going for it in the audio department other than some event music to keep you moving.

Why you might not like this game:

It plays so much like the first game, that there really isn’t much to it. Firing off on the enemies is a matter of knowing where they are when they pop up and if you’re played through the game once, this really should be no problem. Another small problem is that the time limit with some of the boss fights is set so low that you literally have to hit them with a hit shot in order to complete the stage and not be forced into spending more money on a continue!

The Verdict

A worthy follow-up of the first Silent Scope, this one has more user-friendly enemies to blast than the first one did. This isn’t to say that SS 2 doesn’t have points where the game is so hard that you can’t pass it, but there are enough areas to clear with very little difficulty that it really is a matter of paying attention to where everything is. With the amount of stages and the option of going through with a different sniper, there are game play avenues that you can work with here to give it some more play time before other gun games start calling your attention.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/13/02, Updated 05/13/02