Slaughter 2: Prison Assault is a third person shooter in which you and a group of special ops agents break into a prison to basically kill everything that moves. A mad scientist named Tsantsa seems to have turned all of …
Slaughter 2: Prison Assault is a third person shooter in which you and a group of special ops agents break into a prison to basically kill everything that moves. A mad scientist named Tsantsa seems to have turned all of the inmates into crazed undead with a thirst for murder, and it’s up to you to stop them.
It’s a great set up for a balls out action game, and gets you right in the mood for shooting some fools. You take charge of an agent from a third person perspective, and slide on the left of the screen to move, and the right to aim. A virtual button lets you zoom in on an enemy and shoot, and occasional prompts pop up on the screen allowing you to whip out your knife and stab enemies, open gates, or read notes.
The controls are fine for the most part, but there is one glaring issue. When you press the shoot button, the camera zooms in. This is fine, and even welcome, when shooting distant enemies, but the vast majority of your opponents attack you from melee range. So zooming in actually becomes a hindrance more often than not.
There’s no option to turn this off or tweak it in the settings either. You can turn off auto-firing, but all that does is keep you zoomed in at all times, and an optional first person mode provided a similarly view that was too close for comfort.
Having said that, we did find ourselves getting used to the controls the more we played. It also helps that most enemies go down quickly, and don’t really deal much damage.
Visually, it’s a bit of a mixed bag. The environments, character models, and effects are decent enough, but it does overall look like a 90s action game given the HD treatment. That’s also a criticism we can level at the level design, which is basically just linear corridors with the occasional “secret” room. In these you’ll find notes that help detail what’s going on, and extra ammo or health packs.
It doesn’t help that the environmental design doesn’t change during a level. In fact, we’re pretty sure certain sections are recycled too. We often found ourselves convinced we’d gone in circles, only to find that we were just in an area that looked almost identical to another we’d just been to. There’s no map marker to follow either, and the only indication that you’re going in the right direction is that enemies are still spawning.
Savage 2: Prison Assault isn’t the finest example of a mobile shooter then, but it’s a solid effort. It’s more about function than form, and if you can forgive its misgivings, there’s an evening’s worth of solid popcorn shooting action to be had here.
