Isometric Crazy Taxi with guns. Speed around a cartoonishly crime-ridden city, picking up gangs of robbers left and right and dropping them off at safehouses or getaway vehicles, while a timer ominously ticks away overhead and the world's most aggressive police force descends down upon you, sending out a neverending army of cruisers, SUVs and heavily armored SWAT vans, trying to run you off the road with little regard for collateral damage, initially barely scratching the paintjob, but soon enough the air becomes heavy with the oppressive stench of shotgun pellets and burned rubber, intensity steadily mounting, before a minor steering mistake sends you off the road and flying into a sleepy mom&pops-store's newly painted facade, as the entire population of the severly overfunded and -equipped county sherrif's department plant their grills deep into the gaping hole where your rear bumper used to be, the heavily modified muscle car and mountains of loot in the trunk subsequently evaporating into a low-poly explosion. It's a common scenario and one that never stops being frustrating, especially when you've been steadily cruising along for a while already, but that's the just in the nature of the genre and besides, runs are short and restarts are fast, so fuck it, just try again and again and again until you get it, until you enter the zone, effortlessly weaving in and out of opposing lanes, powersliding around street corners, wildly firing in all directions, until all deliveries are fulfilled and you can dash onto the highway, riding off into the sunset, leaving the boys in blue to bite their steering weels in frustration and the satisfaction of that one god-run will make you forget about all the bullshit up till then.
Of course, finishing one level is only part of the battle, since there's quite a few, each decently sized and with widely varying difficulty, which doesn't always follow the sequence in which they're unlocked, with the first level for example being one of the more difficult ones in the game, thanks to a huge canyon stretching across it, falling into which unsurprisingly leads to an instant game over. This, combined with how many attempts may well be necessary just to clear out one of the levels, grants the game surprising longevity, in spite of its overall simplicity. There's a pretty sizable collection of vehicles to unlock as well, though many of them end up feeling a bit redundant, or even just useless outright, as is the case with most of the bulkier rides, which are supposed to help you face your pursuers head-on, however in practice, the copper density gets so high from about the first dozen deliveries onwards that they'll melt through any armor, no matter how thick, which means that the best way to proceed at that point is inevitably to just go pedal to the metal, outrunning the SWAT vans and magdumping any Crown Vic that dares to violate your personal space. On the subject of guns, this is one area that could've seen some improvement, since there's not a whole lot of them, only about a dozen, half of which are sadly complete garbage. There's like a million cops closing in rapidly from all directions, you want something to spray and pray with, leave the sharpshootin' to the professionals. Progression in general feels a bit spotty and suffers from some noticeable "mobile-isms", like how cars can be upgraded, however these upgrades don't get applied globally, so every time you buy a new one, you'll have to spend some time upgrading it before you get to use it for real. And even then there's no guarantee that it'll be any better than what you already have, since the game's tight-lipped when it comes to info on how the vehicles actually differ.
In terms of visuals, the game goes for a simplistic, low-poly style with a thin coating of lightweight "retro"-touches, like the annoying VHS filter, which can thankfully be turned off. A trip to the options menu should be the first thing on the agenda anyhow, since there's a ton of obnoxious visual effects inexplicably enabled by default and which only serve to turn the whole thing into a blurry mess, get rid of 'em and the game looks fine. It's not gonna blow any minds, but everything's clear and immediately readable, the lighting does a good job on the atmosphere and the levels have a solid amount of detail, given the artstyle.
In the end then, PAKO 2 is a very solid way to waste a few hours and should be well worth the low asking price to anyone interested in fast-paced, arcadey action and who can forgive the simplistic overall structure, lack of a clear end-goal and flawed progression.
Final rating: 7.8/10
originally written on 04/06/2024
