Lethal Enforcers II: Gun Fighters

"The good, the bad, and one of the ugliest shooters I have ever seen."

Lethal Enforcers. When I first played this game. I thought it was the best FPS to grace the Genesis. But then another game came out. A few years later, Konami came out with the sequel that is Lethal Enforcers 2: Gunfighters. The game started with an honestly good idea: The great shooter, gone old western. If you have a lightgun you can go ahead and use it, but it won't enhance the experience any further. Although the game COULD have been great, it came out as a rather repetitive and bland attempt at a good shooter.

Gameplay: 4/10
The gameplay is one of worst parts of the actual game. In the first Lethal Enforcers, there was a practice mode that was actually very entertaining and could get downright intense at times. This game says ''NOPE! Can't have them rootin' tootin' practice modes out here in this here old western country!'' In other words, the practice mode it gone for no truely good reason. The arcade mode in Lethal Enforcers one was great. The boss fights were awesome, the guns were great, and the levels were perfectly well put. Pretty much all that greatness is gone. The first level is pretty good. A simple bank robbery. A bank robbery consisting of 80 men who will gladly jump out and shout ''EAT LEAD'' twenty times over. At first, the yelling as they pop out was pretty good and gave the game a cool element added. But once you got to the fifth level, you tend to get annoyed at people yelling ''DON'T SHOOT OR I'LL BLOW 'EM AWAY!'' when you and him are the only people in the room. Although this could be ignored, and a fairly good game could come out, there had to be more. To start, the levels seem to be all the same. I can barely tell the difference between a saloon and a bank. The difficulty flows badly, as I found the second level much easier than the first, creating a fairly bumpy atmosphere that the first Lethal Enforcers avoided, allowing you to focus on the good part of the game. Shootin' bad guys. Sadly,they fudged that too. I decided once, to sit back and let the guys shoot me. Their six shooters ended up being 19 shooters and also automatic. As for the bosses, the fights prove to be frustrating and pointless. I decided to count how many bullets a boss could take. Now, Lethal Enforcers 1 had this problem to some minor extent, but number 2 takes it to a completely new extreme. Shooting a small and blurry target who is lighting three cannons with unlimited ammo 60 times and taking off about 90% of his health is not the funnest or most interactive thing you can do in a game. Also, if you have played Lethal Enforcers 1, you would remember the good ol' powerup weapons. These have also been messed up. In the first game, you would have unlimited ammo for all powerup weapons, as long as you reloaded them. In this game, a large percent of the weapons can not be reloaded. So if you were hoping to shoot down hordes of bad guys with a gattling gun, sorry. Chances are you will only take down no more than four with your 20 bullets. Want to grab your handheld cannon (aka excuse for a powerful shotgun)? Sorry. You get to kill 6 people tops with your unusually flexible cannon balls. Only a few weapons were good in the game, but they hardly made up for it, considering how rare they were. These few weapons were the dual pistols and the rifle. These are fairly rare weapons, leaving you to do a majority of the game with your puny little six shooter. The gameplay in other words, is not worth playing.

Graphics: 3/10
The graphics while seemingly good, were messed up about as much as you can send a game downhill. The backgrounds are nothing short of OK, but the shading was completely destroyed and overdone, leaving horses and a lot of the backgrounds with an algae green color coating them. Now I am all for green horses, but when you add bad guys who look like water with a little bit of coloring put in, and who seem to blend in with the entire backgrounds (who again, are not that great) can result in squinting, and perhaps a bit of pixel searching once you encounter the long range enemies. The graphics ended up as a complete disaster, and really were underdone, or overused.

Sound: 4/10
While the sound in itself is top notch, the placement of it in the game is simply bad. Imagine this: A bad guy pops out at you yelling ''EAT LEAD'', shoots you about half a second after you notice him, due to the graphics. Now, four seconds later, another baddie comes out and yells ''EAT LEAD''. After you shoot him, another one comes out and yells ''EAT LEAD''. Just then, a hostage comes out and says ''Save me!''. This would not be so bad, but what if ''EAT LEAD, SAVE ME, and GET BACK'' were the only things anyone said at all for a good 30-45 minutes. The sound is nothing but a repetitive ear-ache, that was overused, but not underdone.

Overall: 4/10
Lethal Enforcers 2 is as they say: ''A cop gone bad''. The idea was great, and if they had pulled it off correctly would have resulted in a great sequel. Sadly, the mix of lack of gameplay, bad graphics, and horrible sound placement ended up in a repetitive and bland joyride that will leave you wondering just where Konami went wrong. Don't bother buying this game, but if you are a hardcore (and I mean HARDCORE) fan of the Lethal Enforcers series, I would advise renting the game.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 03/23/04