"An average light gun game!!!"

It is evident why gamers get excited about new AM2 games for the arcade. It's the same reason why Saturn owners get excited when these arcade games from AM2 get ported to their system. The 1995 Virtua Cop, Sega Rally, and Virtua Fighter 2 singlehandedly save Saturn from being totally written off as a second class console. And now, the sequel to Sega's Virtua lightgun games have finally arrived.

Virtua Cop 2 takes place after the original Virtua Fighter has ended. Rage and Smarty destroyed the entire EVL criminal empire. A newly recruited police, Janet found out about a secret database, which revealed about the huge transfers between EVL and Virtua City Bank. Strangly, where has this money gone to?

Virtua Cop 2 runs on Sega's high-end model 2 hardware, which is far more vastly powerful than the Saturn. Though not a perfect porting from the arcade, it managed to be ported over to the Saturn with a lower frame rate and less crisp graphics than the arcade.

Virtua Cop 2 is definitely not an enormous jump beyond the original in terms of conceptually speaking. The basic gameplay formula still retains. You have to protect the hostages while shooting the baddies. The sequel does give you a little more freedom than the original such as giving you the choice to choose which way you want to go, but such options are pretty little!

Virtua Cop 2 faithfully upholds the polygon-based, light-gun shooter standards set in Virtua Cop while upping the ante in a few key areas. Probably, the most important improvement over the original is the sheer number of increase of characters onscreen and the added intensity of scenes like car chase.

Since the game was initially designed for the arcade, there are only a total of 3 different modes for the home console, which is pretty short.

The soundtrack is pretty quite good, and it fits the atmosphere. As for the sound, i personally think there is not much difference between the original.

Overall, Virtua Cop 2 is just an average update of the original. The sheer number of increase characters onscreen and a few spicy scenes like chasing after a car, can't grab my attention unless there's something new in terms of conceptually. Futhermore, the game is way too short! And, honestly speaking, i prefer Time Crisis's hide and shoot concept more as the gameplay is something quite new and fresh to me, don't you think so?

Story : 6.0/10.0
Graphics : 8.5/10.0
Concept : 4.0/10.0
Control : 8.5/10.0
Music : 7.5/10.0
Sound : 7.5/10.0
Gameplay : 7.5/10.0
Replay : 6.0/10.0
Challenge : 8.5/10.0
Presentation : 7.0/10.0
Overall : 7.0/10.0

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/28/00, Updated 12/16/02