Virtua Cop 1 was a decent enough light gun game, and 13 months after it’s release we got Virtua Cop 2.

So, in those 13 months had much changed?

What’s new

Virtua Cop 2 is Die Hard 2. It is alright in itself, and it does almost the same thing as the first one, but with more baddies to shoot at.

Virtua Cop 2 is much (die) harder too. Maybe it is because I played VC1 more, but I can clear that on 6/7 lives. On VC2 I needed the extra continues, I think I lost close to 20 lives on my normal playthrough, and in one man two gun mode I burned through 9 credits. So while there is an element of my own suckatude going on, I have to say VC2 is a much harder game.

The bosses are also a little harder, they aren’t *THAT* hard, and can still be beaten, you simply have to pay more attention this time round. Bosses projectiles don’t move at a snails pace, and they move about more.

You get branching paths. On each File (still File A/B/C) you get to choose the 2nd level on each of these Files. It means there is some extra reason to reply other than highscores, and means there is some more interest and variation in the game.

You get a “File D/Final Boss”, if/when you complete the first 3 files, you will then get a final boss level. It is probably the easiest boss in the game, but it was a nice addition. I always felt VC1 missed out by not having a boss.

Story

After the defeat of E.V.L inc (Wikipedia is wrong in calling it E.V.I.L inc [Link to manual]) in VC1, one remaining leader (Joe Fang) is still up to shenanigans. Set a year after the previous game the two returning heroes Michael Hardy and James Cools, are joined by Janet Marshall. Virtua City bank has been linked to money laundering, the boss of the bank has been murdered, and a shit tonne of money has gone missing.

Enter you for some shootyness.

Graphics

VC2 looks almost identical to VC1, the only real difference is the reticle around the enemies has been changed. Though there is an option in the menu to switch it to VC1 mode.

Gameplay

It is a light gun on-rails shooter, so you point your gun at the screen and make pew pew noises.

Like in VC1 you can choose the order you do each file, and with an extra boss level and branching pathways, there is a little more going on here.

The powerups are all the same, so they haven’t attempted to innovate that much, but it works.

And the game is now 35 minutes long instead of the 30 minutes of VC1

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Overall

There isn’t a whole lot to say to be honest. It is a fairly solid shooter, the graphics were good for the time and still hold up well enough.

I feel the game probably isn’t as good as VC1, the things they add don’t really change anything, and where they do, they are marginally worse. I gave VC1 72%. VC2 is marginally worse but still better than contemporaries such as Time Crisis.

Pros: Fun enough game, branching pathways add a *little* replayability

Cons: New interface is marginally worse, didn’t innovate much at all

70%