Originally posted here: https://cultclassiccornervideogames.wordpress.com/2019/10/10/mod-corner-paranoia-2-saviour-half-life-2015-review/
NOTE: There are slight spoilers for the first game.
Surprisingly, 8 years after the first Paranoia, a sequel was released, this time developed by a team called KPLabs exclusively for the Xasd3D engine, a reverse engineered version of the GoldSRC engine, meaning it didn’t need the original Half-Life to run.
Set three weeks after the events of the first game, the charter you played in the first Paranoia wakes up in a military hospital and finds it deserted. After briefly running around the hospital, the game cuts back to three weeks ago, two hours after the first game ended, the Spetsnaz troops are informed of the creatures breaking out the main laboratory and spreading across the lower labs.
The troops are ordered to do a clean-up and eliminate the monsters. After restocking on ammo, the Major and his team enter the lower labs, and eventually reach KROT-1 where the command has made a decision to have the laboratory destroyed. However, the infection of the virus has moved from the mutants to ordinary people, transforming them into Zombies. Soon, the virus escapes the laboratory and starts making it’s way into way Russia.
I had to find that out via a wiki since the game never really communicates this to the player all that well, but it lines up well enough to the story that it makes sense. Either way, the story is cliched and campy enough that it’s not much of an issue.
This time around, the game looks pretty fantastic. You can barely tell it’s the GoldSRC engine unless you’re looking pretty hard. It even comes with a few new bells and whistles such as new water and glass effects, all of which looks pretty decent for the engine that it’s on.
All of the gameplay mechanics from the first one make their way over to this game. Iron sights, painkillers you can carry around, being able to pick up ammo from bodies, having a ballistics helmet that can protect you a bit more in combat. Even the gas mask gets some actual use this time. This time around, the game has a lot less ammo. Not enough that it was anger inducing, but the game was definitely going for a more survival horror attempt this time around.
A few problems from the first game seem to persist. Every now and again I’m not allowed to go through a door unless every friendly NPC is in position, making a second play though a bit tedious in places. And this time around, every now and again I can’t pass one of the companion AI. Which wouldn’t be as annoying as it is if the companion AI didn’t give you shit for either getting in their way or standing still for half a second too long.
The game is a lot more slow in a few places, and I suspect that this is why this game/mod isn’t as popular as the first game. A period of the game is looking for research documents that are located around a level and you can’t continue unless you find them all. This is pretty tedious since some of the documents blend into certain parts of the level, even when you know what your looking for. The checkpoints throughout the game are also pretty far apart, so quicksaving is a must.
Paranoia 2 seems to be a little more buggy than the first one. Whenever the game is loading, it’ll seem like it’s about to crash, but it’ll load the game anyway. I have had a crash or two as well. It was never really a big deal, but it’s something to watch out for.
In the middle of the game is a boss battle, and on the easiest difficulty of the game you just fire your gun into it as you run backwards for barely 6 or 7 seconds. I was surprised that it was over so quick that I died from a few zombies entering the room because I took a moment to go “What, was that it?”
Looking at some footage on Youtube, you’re supposed to kill it by leading up under one of the giant pistons and pulling the switch, crushing the monster under said piston. I don’t know if my game was glitched or the team behind this mod expected that the player would immediately get that you’re supposed to crush it with one of the pistons and never expected someone to unload an entire magazine or clip into it, even on the easiest mode.
Enemies are incredibly accurate, and the game has a tendency to have enemies surprise you when you enter a new room an aren’t expecting it, resulting in an immediate death upon entering certain environments. Sometimes it can take you 3 or 4 deaths before you get your bearing and you know where the enemies are. Maybe you have to slowly go through the level like you have military training, but it happens just often enough and so unexpected that I doubt that.
Is Paranoia 2 as bad as fans of the first one lead on. No, not really. But is it any good? And the answer to that is a bit complicated. It’s crashed enough that I don’t know how much i can recommend this to people, which really bring the whole game down, and if it didn’t crash as much as it does, I could have give in a more warm reception.
NOTE: There are slight spoilers for the first game.
Surprisingly, 8 years after the first Paranoia, a sequel was released, this time developed by a team called KPLabs exclusively for the Xasd3D engine, a reverse engineered version of the GoldSRC engine, meaning it didn’t need the original Half-Life to run.
Set three weeks after the events of the first game, the charter you played in the first Paranoia wakes up in a military hospital and finds it deserted. After briefly running around the hospital, the game cuts back to three weeks ago, two hours after the first game ended, the Spetsnaz troops are informed of the creatures breaking out the main laboratory and spreading across the lower labs.
The troops are ordered to do a clean-up and eliminate the monsters. After restocking on ammo, the Major and his team enter the lower labs, and eventually reach KROT-1 where the command has made a decision to have the laboratory destroyed. However, the infection of the virus has moved from the mutants to ordinary people, transforming them into Zombies. Soon, the virus escapes the laboratory and starts making it’s way into way Russia.
I had to find that out via a wiki since the game never really communicates this to the player all that well, but it lines up well enough to the story that it makes sense. Either way, the story is cliched and campy enough that it’s not much of an issue.
This time around, the game looks pretty fantastic. You can barely tell it’s the GoldSRC engine unless you’re looking pretty hard. It even comes with a few new bells and whistles such as new water and glass effects, all of which looks pretty decent for the engine that it’s on.
All of the gameplay mechanics from the first one make their way over to this game. Iron sights, painkillers you can carry around, being able to pick up ammo from bodies, having a ballistics helmet that can protect you a bit more in combat. Even the gas mask gets some actual use this time. This time around, the game has a lot less ammo. Not enough that it was anger inducing, but the game was definitely going for a more survival horror attempt this time around.
A few problems from the first game seem to persist. Every now and again I’m not allowed to go through a door unless every friendly NPC is in position, making a second play though a bit tedious in places. And this time around, every now and again I can’t pass one of the companion AI. Which wouldn’t be as annoying as it is if the companion AI didn’t give you shit for either getting in their way or standing still for half a second too long.
The game is a lot more slow in a few places, and I suspect that this is why this game/mod isn’t as popular as the first game. A period of the game is looking for research documents that are located around a level and you can’t continue unless you find them all. This is pretty tedious since some of the documents blend into certain parts of the level, even when you know what your looking for. The checkpoints throughout the game are also pretty far apart, so quicksaving is a must.
Paranoia 2 seems to be a little more buggy than the first one. Whenever the game is loading, it’ll seem like it’s about to crash, but it’ll load the game anyway. I have had a crash or two as well. It was never really a big deal, but it’s something to watch out for.
In the middle of the game is a boss battle, and on the easiest difficulty of the game you just fire your gun into it as you run backwards for barely 6 or 7 seconds. I was surprised that it was over so quick that I died from a few zombies entering the room because I took a moment to go “What, was that it?”
Looking at some footage on Youtube, you’re supposed to kill it by leading up under one of the giant pistons and pulling the switch, crushing the monster under said piston. I don’t know if my game was glitched or the team behind this mod expected that the player would immediately get that you’re supposed to crush it with one of the pistons and never expected someone to unload an entire magazine or clip into it, even on the easiest mode.
Enemies are incredibly accurate, and the game has a tendency to have enemies surprise you when you enter a new room an aren’t expecting it, resulting in an immediate death upon entering certain environments. Sometimes it can take you 3 or 4 deaths before you get your bearing and you know where the enemies are. Maybe you have to slowly go through the level like you have military training, but it happens just often enough and so unexpected that I doubt that.
Is Paranoia 2 as bad as fans of the first one lead on. No, not really. But is it any good? And the answer to that is a bit complicated. It’s crashed enough that I don’t know how much i can recommend this to people, which really bring the whole game down, and if it didn’t crash as much as it does, I could have give in a more warm reception.