After four long years, developer Illusion Softworks released the sequel to H&D, the oh-so-originally named Hidden and Dangerous 2. You would think that with four years of feedback to fall back upon that the developers would learn from their mistakes and at least attempt to avoid making those mistakes again…right? Wrong!

The first thing that most of us PC gamers do is configure the graphics, sound and control options before we get into the action, and with H&D 2, that’s where the problems begin. This game has a novella’s worth of control options to wade through. To make matters worse, the control assignments will go return to the default settings for no reason at all, causing you to have to reassign them until they magically decide to "take." The game manual isn’t much help when it comes to the control layout and there is no quick reference card to help you navigate your way through the overwhelming number of keyboard commands. Whatever happened to the old saying "simple is better?"

It seems that after all the advancements that have been made in the past few years in AI development we shouldn’t have to put up with team members that get stuck in doorways, against trees and behind hundreds of other obstacles during gameplay. Apparently, that’s not the case with H&D 2. More than once I lost my cool and shot my own squad mates who kept me blocked in a room that they just couldn’t seem to make their way out of, even with a wide open exit in front of them. Then, I’d reload my game and find the squad once again getting caught in the same room. The only relief from the simpleton-grade AI comes from the "Lone Wolf" mode that lets you take on the missions single-handedly. This solves the problem of micromanaging the world’s stupidest teammates, but why should we have to play a "squad-based" shooter without a squad?

There is some enjoyment to be found in H&D 2, like the ability to drive vehicles, blast planes from the sky with a mobile flack cannon and enjoy some nicely designed stealth operations. But with all the flaws in the game, those bursts of enjoyment are altogether too short.

H&D 2’s gameplay is a real tension inducing experience thanks to frequent crashes to the Windows desktop. If you’re really lucky, it will totally freeze your PC, requiring frequent reboots. Now that’s what I call innovative gameplay.

Hidden and Dangerous 2 does sport some beautiful graphics and top-notch use of lighting and textures. Some of the scenery in the game looks so real you’ll feel as though you are looking at a live camera shot of your surroundings. There obviously has been a lot of attention paid to making the environments look and feel alive. Likewise, the audio is impressive; from the loud booming of explosives to the cracking of the rifles, it’s a virtual audio smorgasbord. The musical score give you the sense that you’re watching a movie as it intensifies in battles and provides a suspenseful background for the stealth missions.

If you grow tired of trying to manage your squad (or mowing them down) in the single player game, you can take your skills online. Hidden and Dangerous 2 offers three multiplayer game modes: deathmatch (of course), objective-based mode and a territorial based mode (control more territory than the other team to win). Much to my disappointment, there’s no co-op mode, which should be a prerequisite for any game labeled "squad based." There are some well-designed maps and gameplay ideas in H&D 2’s multiplayer modes, but actually finding and joining a server is a chore in and of itself. The few games I managed to connect to were virtually empty and were almost completely unplayable due to lag issues. If you want to play a great online game based on WWII, you’re better off looking elsewhere.

Hidden and Dangerous 2 is one of those games that could have been great, but due to the overwhelming control system, the terrible AI and all the crash-and-freeze bugs it ends up a game that most of us would rather forget about.