An Alternative Gaming Experience
Having played the original Receiver, I was exhilerated to see Receiver 2 finally come out on Steam and I purchased it on the day of release. Receiver 2 is a rule breaker. Brutally unforgiving in gameplay, yet delightfully empathetic in tone, theme and story. This is Receiver 2. An unconventional game for an alternative gaming experience.
Receiver 2 is a first person shooter game with a unique control system. Instead of the conventional system where your gun is locked to your mouse and mouse movements control the crosshair; Over here you have a control system that features two modes of looking-around which layer over one another. The mouse first controls the direction in which you're looking at (Think of this as the mouse controlling which direction your face is pointed at), while the gun is held at its default resting position (barell pointed at the ground). You then press the right mouse button to raise the gun to line up it's sights to the center of your screen, at which point your aiming becomes more fine tuned.
Compared to conventional FPS games, this is a much more organic system which accurately mimics how a person in the real world would move.
Meticulously Mechanical
This unique movement/aiming system is attributed to one of the main highlights of Receiver 2 - Realistic gun simulation. A lot of work has been put into detailed gun mechanics and operation. Accurately modelling how each component of the gun works in conjunction with one another. The player can individually control each component. Press and hold 'R' to pull back the slide, release the 'R' key to make it spring back into place. Or if you want to lock the slide in place, press and hold 'R' and then press 'T' while holding down the 'R' key. Then release both keys. This comes in useful when fixing malfunctions in the gun.
Receiver leaves a lot to the imagination………….a whole lot (as you’ll find out later in the review). But gun operation is not one of them.
No auto reloading. Do it yourself!
If you run out of ammo, a simple '' Press R to reload '' is not going to do the trick. It expects you to do all the work involved. Press the ' E ' key to slide out the empty magazine, place your gun back in your holster so that you have both hands to work with. Press the ' Z ' key to individually load each bullet into the magazine. Once you're done, unholster your weapon and press the ' Z ' to slide it back into the gun. Press the ' R ' to cock the slide back and release it. Your gun is now ready to use.
During gameplay you will run into malfunctions. Sometimes the casing of the bullet you just fired, will fail to properly eject out and then get stuck within the frame, causing the slide to jam. In instances like this, you have manually pull back the slide so that the casing can come out. But be sure to tilt the barrell upwards so that gravity can make it fall.
All of this would seem overwhelming for a new player, but with practice it’ll soon become muscle memory.
Lots of room for error. Suspension of disbelief much?
There are several other intricate factors that feature in when handling guns. Probably the most frustrating is the accidental discharge when drawing your gun. If you draw your gun too quickly, you can shoot yourself in the process. Which is why you need to either slow draw, or flip the safety before holstering so that the trigger won’t make it fire. The slow draw feature is very tricky to get a hang of. It’s the difference between pressing a button, and holding it. Not as easy as it sounds.
And now to bullet physics. Recoil is accurately animated. Different guns have different varying recoils. The guns really feel alive in this game. With a good sound system, you wouldn’t need a force feedback controller to feel the kick.
Bullets travel through walls and other surfaces. The caliber will decide how much it can penetrate. There were many instances where I encountered an enemy, in one room and after the engagement, notice bullet holes in a completely different room.
The more you progress through the game, the more guns you unlock.
The Story
And now to the theme and story of the game. Receiver 2 is a very abstract game. The rough premise is that you’re a solitary man in an empty urban landscape, and your goal is to walk around and collect audio tapes. When you collect your first tape, the narrator of the tape will put things into place and tell you what’s what.
It’s a premise that can cause one to interpret any number of ideas. But I believe that’s the idea. It is what you make of it. But it fits well into the dystopian theme of other films like the Matrix where humanity has apparently reached an apocalyptic state because of one big force that has threatened it. And you (the protagonist) are one of the few who have realized this threat and are being trained to counter it. The training comes in the form of audio cassette tapes which you have to find as you move through the game. The more tapes you find, the more you learn about the ‘’ threat ‘’.
There are deep references/explorations to the human psyche and psychology. Talking about the inner workings of the mind, how trauma can manifest, how people can get over it, existential dread, and loads more. There is also one very cool mechanic which I won’t go much into to avoid spoiling it for the player. But in short, you will reach instances where the protagonist (the person you are controlling) will attempt suicide and you have to get creative to try and stop them.
Also, the tapes sometimes feature a nice history lesson about the gun you just unlocked. From the inspiration, design, engineering, and the business background of whatever company made it. These will keep you well nicely entertained during gameplay. There is no save function in the game. You collect a number of tapes for each level, and then progress to the next. If you die in one level, you will be reverted back to the previous level and start there. That’s how the game goes. Personally I think its great because it forces to player to take the game seriously and be more careful in their gameplay.
The levels get harder as you progress. You face new types of enemies. And the tapes get more interesting. Have no doubt, this is a VERY difficult game. You will face immense frustration when you die and get reverted back to the previous level, knowing that all the work you put in the current level seemingly went to waste. But you would have learnt a thing or two about what tactics to use to best stay safe.