Posted September 09, 2014
Finished I.G.I. 2. Judging from the number of comments in the game's forum, not a lot of folks have picked this one up, much less finished it. A shame, because IMO it's an extremely enjoyable game that improves significantly on its predecessor simply because it lets you save mid-level (on the default difficulty, you get three saves per level). This one tweak makes the game infinitely more playable especially for time-challenged players like myself, as compared with IGI 1. Like IGI 1, the AI can be really frustrating in that baddies have pinpoint accuracy with all weapons from just about any range; this, combined with the limited saves, makes it almost mandatory to exploit the AI's dumber tendencies in some of the harder levels (i.e. you can find a protected position, fire off a few shots to alert the enemies, and then pick them off at point blank range one after another as they parade to your position, until the level is depopulated, leaving you free to complete the objectives without much fear.) All in all, a solid, rather old-school FPS with decent graphics for the era, high but not unfair difficulty, and a large campaign with lots of interesting locations. Definitely recommended.
PS - there are some fairly serious bugs to contend with in the GOG version that are mentioned in the game's forums. While quickloading a mid-level save works fine, if you die in a level prior to making your first save, you must reload the level from the main menu or the graphics will glitch out. Not a huge deal but still highly annoying.
Second (and I assume this is intentional behavior) if the player is in the prone position and very near a wall (which is often, since firing from the prone is far more accurate) your ability to mouselook will often disappear, presumably because the game is calculating that the player-model doesn't have enough room to physically turn around, or something. This feature/bug will lead to many unnecessary deaths, but once you understand when it happens, you can play around it.
PS - there are some fairly serious bugs to contend with in the GOG version that are mentioned in the game's forums. While quickloading a mid-level save works fine, if you die in a level prior to making your first save, you must reload the level from the main menu or the graphics will glitch out. Not a huge deal but still highly annoying.
Second (and I assume this is intentional behavior) if the player is in the prone position and very near a wall (which is often, since firing from the prone is far more accurate) your ability to mouselook will often disappear, presumably because the game is calculating that the player-model doesn't have enough room to physically turn around, or something. This feature/bug will lead to many unnecessary deaths, but once you understand when it happens, you can play around it.
