Hidden & Dangerous 2 review

Keeping watch for enemy troops on the water.

Hidden & Dangerous 2 is the long awaited sequel to the popular squad based World War II FPS title. The original Hidden & Dangerous game was one of the pioneering FPS games to add a tactical team aspect to proceedings. Plagued with bugs, it never really managed to reach a legendary status, although Gathering are obviously hoping that its successor will succeed where the original failed. The game puts you into the shoes of one of four SAS troops and puts you through your paces in a variety of missions, from gaining entry to an enemy base to search and rescue.

Ganging up

Use your squad to set up an ambush for the enemy soldiers.

Controlling the team is a pretty important aspect to this title and the control you have is pretty powerful, but also quite straightforward. You press a number key associated with the team member you want to order and a command menu appears. You then select from a main menu (movement, silent movement, combat, etc.), which displays a list of commands that can be selected with the numeric keypad. You can issue a command to all troops using the 0 key. The troop AI is pretty good - their targeting ability is pretty useful as they can take out the enemy before you’ve spotted a dot on the horizon. That’s not to say that strategy isn’t important though.

You must use the strengths of the squad to form the correct strategy for the mission. This might mean dividing your team so that you can flank the enemy or grouping together to charge an enemy base. Unfortunately the enemy AI is quite flaky. They can usually spot you before you spot them but they often fail to see you when you stand nose to nose with them. Fortunately, your team-mates don’t suffer with the same problem.

Taking control

Use the wire cutters to get into the enemy base.

Controlling the game can be a little tricky. Aiming is fairly straightforward with the right mouse button bringing up a close-up looking down the gun-barrel. The main control is standard FPS stuff, with the numeric keypad being used for commands for the rest of the team. The rest of the keyboard is used for various other actions – walking speed, climb, jump, crouch, prone, action etc. There are a lot of keys and you have to assign all of them before you can leave the configuration screen, so knowing which ones you’ll need to use is really important. Once you get the controls sorted out you’ll find that it can be quite intuitive, if complicated.

There he is, get him

An enemy officer relaxes just before you storm his quarters.

The missions are a bit of a mixed bag. They have a realism to them that makes them compelling but they do have their problems. The enemies are in the same place every time you run the mission, which removes from the tactical element as you have plenty of chances to establish the best strategy for each mission segment. The maps are generally large with long winded, drawn out objectives and your navigation map has few useful markings on it. Thus the game plays as a slow stealthy game more akin to Rainbow Six or Ghost Recon than a fast paced shooter like Unreal.

Stats and Strategy

Using a vantage point to maintain a lookout.

Statistics and attributes in Hidden & Dangerous 2 are boosted through each mission based on performance and are divided into a few categories: shooting, lock picking, health, strength, endurance, stealth and first aid. Having only one shooting category means that there is no distinction between the classes of weapons available, with a good marksman being equally at home with a sniper rifle as with a bazooka or heavy machine gun. This means that there are essentially four troop types that you should consider for your team – marksman, medic, stealth and all rounder. Of course you can mix and match the team members as the mission dictates.

Each mission is introduced with a detailed briefing using pre-rendered graphics to set the scene. You must then equip your troops with every item you think they might need from a compass and binoculars to ammo and guns. You can only re-equip troops between mission groups and so you must choose wisely. The briefings don’t generally give you much idea of equipment to take, as they tend to just spell out the mission objectives.

Now Showing

Just checking the troops quarters.

The sound in Hidden & Dangerous 2 is pretty impressive. The voice acting on the cut scenes is about par for the course but weapons and explosions sound meaty and realistic. This extends to convincing sound effects for each of the different weapons and explosive types. The graphics are also very well done. The draw distance is impressive and the scenery is well drawn and detailed to a high standard. The game engine used is the same one as for Mafia – LS3D – and does show its age in a lack of environment interactivity and slightly blurry textures but the game still looks good.

The character models react realistically to being shot with rag-doll style deaths, as well as taking a realistic amount of damage depending on the body part shot, i.e. head shots kill whilst limb shots merely wound. The models don’t look as good as they could with the joins between body/damage sections being clearly visible, although this is probably down to the age of the graphics engine being used.

Too much like its predecessor

Exchanging papers at a desert checkpoint.

Hidden & Dangerous 2 builds on the strengths of its predecessor with improved graphics and squad AI. It still falls down in important places such as enemy AI and certain aspects of the level design. The original was one of the first games of this style to the market place and so had room to be accepted as a genre leader. This version of the game lands in a marketplace that is becoming crowded with the likes of Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six, giving fans of this style plenty to choose from.

Coming from a well regarded predecessor will give Hidden & Dangerous 2 an existing fan base to work with whilst the problems are ironed out. This could become a great multiplayer title and could really benefit from the input of amateur mapmakers. With the AI problems it remains a good game that is too flawed to be a great game.