[LEGACY] Receiver 2

I first went into Receiver 2 thinking that this was a first-person shooter game like any other, I was wrong. I’d read the blurb on how it teaches you vaguely how a vast array of guns work, in the most “This Does Not Qualify As Actual Gun Training” way as possible, but still thinking it was a progressive game.

I was also wrong.

You start off by getting this pistol, which it tells you how to fire and such in a tutorial area that’s in the construction site of a city. You’re facing off against robot turrets that have a line of sight you can see via the light it shines to see you. The light is blue when it can’t see you and promptly changes you yellow and starts firing at you when it can. Simple.
After the tutorial area, you’re then further up in a series of buildings full of machine gun turrets, learning how to use the next gun, killing more machine gun turrets, and finding cassette tapes.

From here on, the game is samey, samey, samey. You get to the end of the level, you restart in a different area with a different gun. You get to the end of the level again, restart again with another different gun, more robotic turrets, blah, blah blah.
There is nothing more to this game than restarting in the same building with a different gun each time, I got through about 5 guns until I’d had enough. I’ve actually got to in a point in this review where I’m uncertain if I’ve said the same thing over and over because that’s all there is. Nothing actually… happens…

Pros:

• The game works, not graphical issues or game breaking bugs.
• The game feels soooo sleek and smooth, everything about the game feels fluid and responsive, and is precisely what I’d love from a first person Hitman game.
• The setting (while the same one every single time) is 100% spot on. Everything is believable in an abandoned office building, a work in progress. It’s not a forced scene and sets a really great atmosphere.
• The actual implementation of learning how to use different guns and them all being finicky and different was appealing. Especially when I reset once and didn’t realise that I was using a different gun, as it looked vaguely the same until I had to reload it, and it was missing one chamber.
• It gives a sense of infinite possibility to how you can approach how to finish the “level”. Walk down any corridor, up any stairs, and shoot the turrets from any angle.

Cons:

• While the game works sleekly, and smoothly, it does have a few weird controls for a keyboard. More akin to a console controller. Like for sprinting, you need to ferociously tap the “W” key to start sprinting, and you need to keep it up to keep sprinting. Each action for the gun, firing, reloading, emptying the chamber, opening the chamber, have all separate keys on the keyboard, which makes for a “I need to look at my fingers” moment nearly every time. Not only that, but having to forget all of that for the next gun you use on the next level.
• The setting is the same at every level, and not in a Groundhog Day way. You get to the top of the level each time and then suddenly appear back downstairs again with a different gun. The story I uncovered within does nothing to really explain why I’m here, but I know who I am. Despite being a well polished and believable building, seeing it for the 5th time was enough to know I would rather not see it again.
• While I loved the intricacy of using different guns, the learning of it felt clunky and somewhat forced. It lacked the situational learning that you have in most other FPS games where when the player picks up new guns it slowly lets them learn everything. In this, you’re just handed the gun and multiple controls that you’re given to remember and gives you no repetitive learning time. But at the same time, the whole game is learning time, and you don’t feel as if it’s an actual game.
• As much as I love the whole “telling the story through the tapes and notes” feature, it becomes semi-irrelevant if you can just miss them. This was something I thought about Amnesia as well until I realised that despite seeming like an open game, it wasn’t. This game, however, is very much open, and it’s easy to miss some notes and tapes. I didn’t feel as though I were getting the full story or experience. They’d do better with the Superliminal approach of areas you have to walk through which have the story in them.

Price: £15.49
Time To Complete: 7.5 hours
Achievements: 34
Cards: 5
Worth The Money: Not At All

Overall, there is not a game for me, to the point where I wouldn’t really consider it a game. It’s a simulation (as it’s advertised) but not as much of a game as it feels it is. It’s super polished and is really intuitive to play, and honestly feels like something I’d enjoy playing if the environment/world I was in was enjoyable. It has that high levels of “I am more in control of this character than other games allow me to be” but gave me nothing to do with it. Honestly, it’s not something I can recommend to most of my friends, as they would all get bored with it much quicker than I did.
For a gun nerd who doesn’t give a shit about a story or being entertained by changing aspects of the game, this is for you.

Zesty Rating
3.5 Out Of 10
It’s got the glitz, and it’s got the glamour, but it’s got as much weight as an inflatable hammer. An empty simulation game which gives you the story in miss-able drips and drabs, and really drags when all you do is train, again and again. I apparently felt like rhyming because the itchy trigger finger sends my frustration climbing.

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Please bear in mind that this is a repost. There have been slight changes to the post such as spelling and grammar fixes, images added, and things generally organised in the fashion I'd like them presented.  Apart from that, the main context of the review has not changed, opinion has not been altered and everything is sacred. I look forward to writing for you all again.

NOTE: This game is flagged as “Retry”.