Pandemic felt that while certain things worked well in the premiere game, there was lots of room for improvement. For starters, there are new weapons. To go along with the standard blasters and anal probes, you'll wield new weapons like the Meteor Strike. This powerful tool is a charge weapon that calls down a massive 50 foot diameter flaming meteor from space, which devastates everything in its path. There is an exceptional sense of destruction in letting a bunch of innocent hippies get totally slaughtered by this one-shot-goodbye weapon.
The Meter Strike, in a way, represents the way Pandemic is going with DAH2. The game is clearly bigger, now taking place in the US, plus countries such as Japan, Russia, and the UK among others. It's also more devastating. You have other weapons, too. One such weapon is the Disc Locator, a glowing blue plasma shot that acts randomly every time it's used. For instance, you'll shoot it at a civilian, who'll get slammed into a car, bounce off it, wipe out a row of civilians, crash another car, and then bounce into the sky. Other times the Disc shot will bounce right back at you, or at least send random cars and heavy objects your way. In total, there are eight weapons, double the amount from the last game.
The demo level we saw was based in the US and naturally Pandemic was picking on the obvious hippy population. During the age of flowers, love and peace, hippies in this level provide an enormous amount of information, though it's all clouded in a mix of humor and stony haze. Like in the first game, you can read people's minds, gaining valuable clues or simply entertaining yourself with their random thoughts. Given the more liberal times, the women characters are particularly interesting to mind read, as they're constantly talking about sex. Of course, all the hippies are funny to listen to, but the change in times also means a change in the subject matter, creating perfect possibilities for humor, clean or not.
The full story hasn't been revealed yet, but you are once again Cryptospordium-137, a Furon sent to Earth to collect Furon DNA. And the voice of Crypto is still supplied by Invader Zim, Richard Stephen Horvitz (who also did the voice for Raz in Psychonauts), and Anthony Head, who performed as Giles in Buff the Vampire Slayer. Pandemic plans flesh the game out with less linear levels, the addition of multiplayer co-op, and five new open-worlds.
The build we saw was early looking from a graphic standpoint and not all of the sound was in yet either, giving the whole experience a rather unwashed feel. But, DAH2 should finish off well, just as so many Pandemic games have in the past. Expect a really fun, deep game to hit store shelves sometime later this year.
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Yes our favorite Human killing game is finally coming this fall 2006
