Receiver 2 is an all-time favourite of mine that, since its release, I’ve put over 300 hours into. It’s a first person shooter roguelite by Wolfire Games focused on realistic and convoluted gun mechanics.
Everything takes place in a neon lit city made of procedurally-generated sectors and filled robots that have the sole goal of gunning you down.
The goal in Receiver 2 is to collect tapes across five ranks of difficulty. It’s a very slow and methodical game where taking care is important and creativity is required in later ranks. It’s probably easiest to explain as Slender: The Eight Pages, but with guns.
Realistic Weaponry
The guns in Receiver 2 are all built to be as realistic as possible, including using complicated keyboard control schemes. When the store page says every spring is simulated, they really mean it.
It takes about eight inputs for me to reload a weapon that has a safety on it. It’s overwhelming at first, but becomes second nature pretty quickly.
Due to the realism, and depending on the difficulty, guns can malfunction by jamming up, or having blocked out pieces of their barrel, or failure to feed. You can even shoot yourself in the foot if you aren’t careful. You have to treat the weapons as if they were the real thing and the game actively punishes carelessness.
The Few, The Complicated
There are only two enemy types in Receiver 2. Turrets (of various types) and drones. The gameplay variation mostly comes from the placement of these enemies and their movements.
Some turrets can only swivel 90 degrees and some are placed on the ceiling instead of the ground. You have to fire precisely at these enemies because it actually matters what you aim it; you can hit a leg to knock over a turret, but it will still be fully active and shoot you down on sight. Knock out the camera on a drone and it won’t be able to see you, but it can still fly around.
Both enemies have several parts to them that each act differently when hit, however, you can cause situations for yourself, such as knocking out the rotation on a turret and so forcing it to stare, fully loaded, at the door you want to go through.
Level Generation
The world of Receiver 2 is compiled through a selection of prebuilt rooms spiraling infinitely in two directions, with turrets and drones scattered around seemingly at random.
There are rooms such as arcades and apartments, although overall the level generation is kind of lacking as you will see the exact same room several times in one area, plus rooms can change in theme while being right next to each other. The game explains this away in one of its tapes (more on them shortly), which questions what this virtual world even is.
Due to the procedural generation, sometimes the placement of enemies can feel incredibly rude, or you’ll have a distinct lack of ammo on certain runs. However, in my hundreds of hours, I have yet to feel like it was the game’s fault that I lost. There always seems to be a way out of a tough situation.
Lore & Order
While a lot of the tapes you collect tell you narrated bits about gun history or gun safety and operation, some of them cover serious topics such as media manipulation and suicide.
There is a mechanic (that I turned off because it’s annoying to deal with for several reasons) where you can pick up tapes that are essentially cursed. After listening to them your character attempts suicide via forcefully pointing the gun towards you.
The lore of the game is pretty interesting if not vague, and it uses real-world cult tactics, with the developer even calling the first game a bit of a religious experience. It’s very cool and the game takes these darker topics seriously.
Receiver 2 is simple in some areas and very complex in others, and the whole package becomes one of the most interesting, stressful, and fun shooters I’ve ever played.
There’s nothing like it out there and there probably never will be again. You gotta have a large amount of patience and it will take a lot of skill to beat the game, but it’s all worth it. I highly recommend it!
This is a re-worked version of a review that was written back in December 2020. Receiver 2 is available on PC (Lin, Mac, Win).
