Newly released Steam game Hood Warfare 2 plays like the gang-war side of modern Grand Theft Auto titles stripped down to a fairly focused multiplayer first-person shooter. The $5.99 release arrived on Steam on October 8, touting fast-paced gang battles across a series of Chicago-themed maps as its main selling point.

Hood Warfare 2 is a direct sequel to Trapstar Games' 2023 Hood Warfare, a small indie FPS built around a similar premise in Detroit. The follow-up moves the action to Chicago and shifts from Unity to Unreal Engine 5, while retaining the original game's mix of gang-themed combat and varied multiplayer modes, with bot support also being part of the package.

At its core, Hood Warfare 2 overlaps with quite a few Grand Theft Auto multiplayer ideas, but compresses them into short-form shooter matches. Rival gangs fight over urban territory, while players compete in team deathmatches and objective-based modes across maps ranging from downtown streets and suburbs to The Trenches and Chicago Mall. Gang warfare is a prominent theme across several GTA games, but that is largely where the immediate similarities with Trapstar's latest title end. Despite falling under the same broad umbrella of a crime game, Hood Warfare 2 is a match-based FPS rather than an open-world title.

The most obvious example of that narrower focus is the game's six-mode lineup. Turf War has gangs capturing territory and earning points for the areas they control, while GangBang is a straightforward team deathmatch. Hit A Lick uses a bag as a capture-the-flag-style objective, and Destroy The Block follows a Counter Strike -esque plant-and-defuse setup.

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