Even though I don’t outwardly regret any of the time spent playing COH2, I am learning more and more that budget games are a dime a dozen, and this dime could’ve been better spent somewhere else. Everything here, from graphics to the actual foundation of the game, is flawed in some way, resulting in encounters with floating enemies, impromptu visits to your task manager to close the program after a lockup, and a bug producing a high-pitched sound that threatened to liquefy my brain. There are, however, genuine attempts to impress the player, including a decent array of guns, and special effects that, while not state of the art, are still worth a golf clap.

Things such as cover you can shoot through are good for a start, even though it usually works more in the enemies’ favor than in yours. In one level I thought I was being clever by charging through a cubicle farm full of shotgun-toting terrorists and ducking into a nearby hall for some cover and a bottleneck opportunity. This didn’t work, though, as I was perforated not only through the wooden door, but also through the walls bordering the door. Whether this was intentional or not is beyond me, even if it actually makes sense, but the dynamic lighting did a good job of tricking my eye into thinking that I was looking at something far more substantial than what was actually there.

This trickery only went so far, however, as I encountered more than one example of folly to counteract the game’s visual successes. Perhaps I can best describe it as a 1980s Ford Escort with really flashy rims. You’re only fooling yourself if you think a few doodads and whatnots are going to make up for the fact that the rest of your car is being held together by rust.

Code of Honor 2: Conspiracy Island is a walk down the bargain aisle to pick up some King Vitamin cereal, only to find that the prize inside is actually a spider’s nest. Read the box before you start eating next time, and check out the nutritional information on the next page for more…or less, as the case may be.