There’s gotta be a better way to kill these things, man. You play as Blaster Jackson, a name I picked specifically because imagining forcing a Japanese voice actor to constantly have to call someone “Blaster Jackson” makes me giggle. Five years ago, a colossal Titan attacked Wall Maria, the outermost wall of the three walls that protect humanity from the Titans, giant human-like monsters who’s only instinct it is to eat humans. With your parents dying while protecting you, you are inspired by everyone’s favorite shouty boy Eren Jaeger to join the military and take the fight to the Titan threat. Along the way you become everyone’s best friend and also cut the Titan population by, like, 70%. This game does that cool anime-game thing where you get to make your own guy. There’s a lot of options to choose from, so I ended up making an absolute unit of a teenager with an eyepatch and a pompadour named Blaster Jackson. Because if I’m going to be the deadliest thing on the planet, I may as well look the part. This is basically a re-do of the first Attack on Titan game from consoles/PC, which might be my most popular review I’ve written, but that is to say that AOT2 is an improvement over AOT1 in every way, and I really liked AOT1. How the game works is that you use Omni-Directional Movement Gear to swing around enemies that can range anywhere from “Tallest guy at a kindergarten” to “Absolute UNIT” and get at their weak spot. Titans can only be killed by cutting through the nape of the neck, a reason I didn’t understand until I looked it up. Now I understand but I can’t explain why that is. Titans are a lot more aggressive this time around, keeping track of you more easily than they did in the last game. This forces you to get more intimate with the damage system where you use your targeting to lock on to a body part so you can cut it off, stunning the Titan for some time and giving you an opening. That or you can just jump them. Nothing stopping you from just spending the extra gas on a sneak attack. It is a pretty fun system, enough to keep me entertained through the story mode. My only problem is the abnormal and bizarre titans have weak points you need to do damage to before you can do actual damage, and sometimes the targeting can just be too finnicky for that and you’ll have to have a fight with it. LUCKILY, you are Spider-Man and movement in this game is really fun. ODM gear is really fun to use and just swinging around the maps is a joy. Even if you can hook to anything, you still have a horse to go around in. The story mode implies that you, Blaster Jackson (That is the canonical name debate me you won’t) were always there during the events of Attack on Titan, the manga/Anime just never focused on you. But Eren, Mikasa, Wild Child Armin Armlet, and everyone else knows who you are and had a positive change to their lives by just having known you. Because you are everyone’s best friend and also the best. There is some, as the youtubers would say, narrative dissonance involved in the story mode. Like how the veterans of the military will say “Good job Rookie, but you have a lot to learn!” when you’re doing good and not “Who is this Godzilla child that just committed a war-time atrocity on the Titans in our area?” Levi told me I needed to get better at Titan killing when I had 1500 confirmed kills at that point. Buddy, I’ve killed more Titan’s than YOU, and you are the Titan killer guy. There’s actually a lot of content to keep you busy if you’re a fan of the gameplay. Outside of talking to characters and raising friendship levels or going on main story missions, you can also do scouting missions, which are just side missions that exist to raise your level and gain new resources to upgrade or build new gear. It took me around 25 hours to reach the end of the main quest, which a few detours to do some scouting missions. Outside of the main quest, there is also the character modes where you do a set of missions as one of the anime characters, the “Final Battle” DLC is part of this mode, giving you the ending of what is essentially “Part one” of the series. I guess part one, maybe like, part 5, I dunno. Outside of that and a mission mode you can play online, there is also Territory Recovery mode, basically a “What-if” quasi strategy game where you have to reclaim lost territory in the name of humanity. In this mode, you make your own regiment, get a free girlfriend, and then go out over the wall to take back what was lost. While the Scouting Regiment tried to find ways to stop the Titans and aid mankind, in this mode, your what-if Regiment basically just goes out to enact war on the Titans, pushing them back and exterminating them wherever you can find them via extreme violence. I called my regiment the "Marauder Regiment" because I felt like having a cooler name than "The Scouting Regiment" would attract more volunteers. Because what part of “Godzilla Child” did you not understand? You can actually play this mode with any character you’ve unlocked, so the Daz Corp is completely doable. Send out the soft boy. Turn him into a soft MAN. I had a lot of fun with AOT2, although I’m not the biggest fan of the series, and fell off around the time the whole Annie thing happened, these games are always a treat to play. You have a lot of content to go through, character episodes, a replayable strategy game, side quests, I can see why some people have hundreds of hours in this. Its not perfect, although the way they move is cool as hell, the Titans will sometimes just hug to a wall and make it a pain in the ass to actually fight them, or they’ll flop around so much that actually targeting their vitals is the video game equivalent of cracking your tooth on a peanut, but I still had a lot of fun with the game. It goes on sale often, I wouldn’t pay the full asking price for an 8 year old game, even if it is already discounted. But for the money I spent, its easily a 9/10 experience, at least for me. My reviews have never been objective. Isayama, the author of the AOT Manga, originally wanted to end the series a few volumes in. Also, the sound the grunts the Titans made were the sounds the Hulk made in Hulk:Ultimate Destruction. I thought that was neat. [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/7124597/]Join the Dirk Regiment, we steal our equipment from the other regiments and that’s why people keep dying. Sorry.