I enjoyed the first game quite a bit, but for some reason never got around to playing the second until a few days ago. It's like they took everything good about the first game and threw it out the window. The platforming is worse than Jak and Daxter, the shooting is much worse than Ratchet and Clank, and the open world and vehicle segments are much worse than the GTA games. I don't mind the darker tone that the game takes, but it just seems like they wanted to go as far away from the first game as possible and completely fix what wasn't broken in the first game. The completely overzealous guard AI, the plethora of annoying timed missions and awful racing segments are really ruining it for me.

I'm honestly thinking of sending it back to GameFly without finishing it, which is something I never do. This is easily my least favorite platformer on the PS2, and I've played pretty much all of the good ones. I'm 68% of the way through the game right now, currently on a mission where I have to escort three NPC AI characters through a sewer full of Metal Heads. This is a prime example of my issue with the game: There was a cutscene after lengthy bouts of fighting Metal Heads and the save icon popped up, which I assumed meant there was a checkpoint. Wrong. One of the AI died, and now I have to start the whole fucking mission over. Why did it save if I have to start over anyway? To quote the AVGN: "What were they thinking!?"