With Tony Tough 2, Anaconda has released a classic 3rd person perspective adventure game, which has its strong points, but is overall not very impressing.
This game is actually a prequel to Tony Tough and the Night of Roasted Moths. The game is divided into several chapters, some mere cutscenes, others requiring just a few mouseclicks to get through, others requiring quite some work.
You guide a child version of Tony Tough through the village of Washington -- his hometown -- to solve his very first case. The setting is that of a nearly-depopulated town, and the makers did a very good job in capturing the rather desolate atmosphere that hangs over such towns. As you progress in the game, you'll endure a number of flashbacks, which will, bit by bit, reveal the background of the case to you. This can lead to some confusion in the game; you'll see things happen, but only later you will learn how they came to happen.
The graphics are great, a joy to behold. The game is worth playing for the graphics alone. All the backgrounds are exquisitely drawn, with painstaking detail. Shadows, backgrounds, lighting, it's all very nice. The camera angle will frequently - and sometimes unexpectedly - change as you walk along, and that also is done very well, you always keep a clear view of Tony.
Gameplay is good, the game runs smoothly (although it may crash, see below.) The movements of the different characters are very detailed as well.
Sound is good. Background noises blend in well, and do not disturb the player. Voices are very nice (done by professional actors as I understand).
And now for the bad points. While this is a game with a 13-year-old kid as the main character and cartoony graphics, the game is definitely NOT for kids. When you're expecting another game like The Night of the Roasted Moths, you're in for an (unpleasant) surprise. The spoken dialogue, described in the ads as "raven-black humor," is often rude and vulgar, and contains passages that could be termed offensive to religious people. There's lots of bad language (the words sh*t and d*mn occuring very frequently), and the game contains at least one very raunchy joke (about bestiality).
Another turn-off: The game is buggy. At least a lot buggier than I'd expect from this company. Several inventory item/game item combinations will cause the game to crash. Often Tony's (or other's) comments do not make sense because they are the wrong texts. The spoken texts frequently do not match, and in some situations you just get stuck because you used an inventory item the wrong way and can't progress any further.
There aren't that many puzzles in the game, and the challenge factor isn't really impressive. It's actually rather obnoxious most of the time. Again, Anaconda could have done a lot better here.
The game is also a bit unbalanced: you don't get a clue as to what your "case" is until the middle of the game.
Overall, a game that is visually very attractive and fun to play, but contains too many cons to be really impressive.
