Gameplay

Weapons

Ritual has included a good number of weapons into FAKK 2 - since there are well over 10, they've organized them into six loose groupings, including swords/axes, handheld guns, slings/shields, and heavy weapons. To select a specific weapon you press the number (from 1 to 6) corresponding to the grouping, and keep pressing to cycle through all the weapons in that group. You then right click or left click depending on which hand you want to arm the weapon in. Yes, FAKK 2 gives you a fairly nifty weapons interface that allows you to arm weapons in different hands. For instance you can put a sword in your right hand and a pistol in your left. This allows Julie to attack far away enemies with the pistol (left click) and remain lethal against closer baddies with the sword (right click). Some weapons require both hands, and some must be placed in a certain hand, but for the most part, your loadout is very customizeable

Change of outfit

Gibs!

Combat

For the most part, combat in FAKK2 will be close in, melee fighting. The ammunition for the ranged weapons is rather sparse, so you'll need to exercise discretion with the amount of bullets you spray around. Ritual included a simple combo move for the melee weapons - right click to start your swing, then just as you finish the swing, left click to begin the rest of the combo maneuver. Depending on what's in your left hand, the combo will vary. In general, you do a lot more damage with combos than you would if you simply bashed the right mouse button all day long. That's good because it encourages you to use the move, but the bad part is that you lose a good deal of control over your character while doing combos. The other annoying part of combat was aiming with the guns - this is always a problem with third person games, and FAKK 2 didn't really do anything to improve the situation. Aside from the very unreliable targeting reticle (it wouldn't always pop up), aiming with guns was a very trial and error exercise.

That chainsaw sword is interesting

Those big hands pop out in a pattern - can't kill them so you have to try and run by

Monsters

The funny thing about FAKK2 is that there are probably more weapons in the game than there are distinct monsters to kill. The first ones you run into are GASP, mosquitoes. That's a bad thing. Yes - either FAKK 2 was too far along the development cycle to change, or Ritual didn't learn their lesson from Daikatana. Swarms of mosquitoes attack you all throughout the game, and killing them is probably about as annoying in FAKK 2 as it was in Daikatana. Later on in the game, firebreathing mosquitoes fly out to antagonize you. The same pattern follows with the other creatures. You find one kind of monster in the beginning of the game, and later on a different version of that monster comes out. Stinging mosquitoes. Then fire breathing mosquitoes. Stationary plants that shoot you. Then plant things that can shoot you AND walk around. There's a lot of "recycle the boss as a regular enemy later" in the game too.

It doesn't look good for Julie!

Saved by a mutant rastafarian

We're quite puzzled about this - aside from the unfortunate decision to include mosquitoes, most of the monsters are fairly interesting to shoot up and chop to pieces. Why they only decided to put a small handful of different ones into the game is beyond explanation - it's almost as though Ritual needed to hire another modeler or two.