"An excellent improvement upon Virtua Cop!"

Virtua Cop 2 improved on the first iteration in countless ways. It’s easily the best light gun game on Saturn, with it’s improved graphics and extra paths. If you own a Saturn and a light gun, there’s no reason for you to not own VC2. If you remotely liked Virtua Cop, you’ll love Virtua Cop 2.

Story: 2/10
Unfortunately, this is an area in which VC2 does not improve upon VC. The story is a bunch of mindless nonsense about some bank’s money being transferred to the EVL Corporation, and only the cops can stop it! Uh, yeah… Surely Sega can think of something better? This is just awful.

Gameplay: 9.8/10
The gameplay in VC2 in the meat and potatoes; it’s absolutely excellent. It’s the same shooting-on-rails gameplay shown in VC, with more twists. There is still the “timer”, a circle with two lines that go from the top to the bottom, indicating how much time one has to shoot an enemy until you are shot yourself. There are two different modes to choose from: VC or VC2 mode. In VC mode, you can fill a point multiplier at the top and get “Bulls-eye” shots. In VC2 mode, all of the new additions show up. Instead of Bulls-eye shots, there are Justice Shots and Three-Point Shots (unfortunately, there’s no multiplier). A Justice Shot is achieved by shooting an enemy’s gun arm, and effectively disarming them. A Three-Point Shot is pulled off by shooting an enemy three times, in three different spots; this gives you three times the points as the name suggests.

The environments are of VC2 are a heck of a lot better than VC’s. Instead of a bland warehouse, mountain, and office, you get a car chase in downtown, a cruise ship and dock, and a subway. The car chase in particular is one of my favorites. It’s quite fun to shoot out the enemies’ tires and watch their cars go flipping over and explode! It’s slightly perverse fun, but that’s okay. In the cruise ship, you get to go through passengers’ rooms, shooting up their personal items! Again, it’s perverse fun, but fun nonetheless. Finally, in the subway, you get to ride a subway car. This sounds a lot better than it actually is, unfortunately. The car is really shaky, so that enemies are extremely hard to get a bead on, and you’ll lose tons of life. It borders on being unfair, since the bad guys don’t get a decrease in accuracy. I’m sure that, no matter how good of marksman one is, you’d have a slight reduction of precision while the car you’re riding is shuddering and shaking? Anyway, the environments of VC2 just absolutely excellent, with that one exception.

Another huge improvement, and a first for light gun games, is the path selection. About midway through the level, you can choose which way you want to go. For instance in the downtown chase, you can pick if you want to go through downtown to chase enemies, or on the highway. This adds a lot of replay value, since all three levels have path selection. So, there’s a total of eight different ways to go through the game. Unfortunately, you always end up in the same place at the end of a level. It’s too bad Sega hadn’t implemented something that would have changed the end level bosses depending on the path you took. Still, it’s a great addition.

Virtua Cop 2 is the ultimate stress reliever. When I get home from school, pissed off, I just play a game of VC2 and get rid of all anger. Some may say it makes people shoot others, but I won’t get into that right now; let’s just say that Virtua Cop 2 lets me get all of my mad feelings out on the game, not people. It’s definitely helped me; you’ll have to decide for yourself if it’ll help you.

Control: 3/10 or 10/10
Like Virtua Cop, don’t bother playing if you don’t have a light gun. It’s possible to play with the regular Saturn controller, but you’ll only get frustrated. With the light gun, though, VC2 is like having an arcade at home! It’s absolutely awful with the controller, and absolutely awesome with a light gun.

Difficulty: Easy
Again, like Virtua Cop, VC2 suffers from an easy difficulty level. With all of the continues and lives at your disposal, it’s a simple task to get through the game in one sitting (and short sitting at that). The enemies are never in different places, so once you’ve gone through the game a few times, you’ll know everything. And once you know everything, it’s just point and shoot.

Graphics: 7/10
The graphics of Virtua Cop 2 are greatly improved upon those of VC1. The characters don’t suffer as much from the inherent blockiness of VC1, fortunately, but the cops’ faces, when you see them, are still just a jumbled mess of sprites. C’mon, Sega, you can do better! The environments are also greatly improved, and each sport a unique look, instead of VC’s total blandness.

Audio/Sound: 6/10
The music is nice, but nothing to write home about. It’s just your regular action game music! The sound, like in VC, is grinding on the nerves. How many times do we have do hear the same gunshots over and over?!? Apparently, over 600 times per game. Why?!? Seriously, Sega should have toned down the gunshots…

Value: 4/10
For some reason, Sega decided to take out the training and ranking modes of VC! Those were the only thing that saved VC, and they took them out?!? Granted, you’re automatically ranked in VC2, but it’s still an awful omission. On top of that, all that you get once you get through the super-short game is mirror mode. After you play 56 total games, you get Big Head mode. These add just a teensy bit of replay on, but not much.

For those of you with a light gun, it would be silly not to buy VC2. If you don’t have one, and don’t plan on buy it, don’t bother. It’s an exercise in futility. Of you do have a light gun, though, buy it. Arcade gameplay at home is worth it, in my mind…

Pros:
+ Justice and Three-Point Shots
+ Excellent environments
+ Great as a stress reliever
Cons:
- Awful replay value
- Terrible story
- Easy difficulty

Overall Score: 7.6/10
Rounded up to GameFAQs Standards: 8/10