Options include difficulty selection, gun looseness, selectable lives from one to nine, continues from infinite to nine, audio modes and tests, controller settings, and light gun calibration. Shooting a hostage will result in the player losing a life.
By shooting various power-ups, players can acquire new weapons including rifles, automatics, machine guns, magnums, shotguns, and additional lives. A boss will mark the end of each stage and include mostly airborne (using jet-propelled packs) enemies who use missile and plasma attacks. A variety of bad guys are armed with axes, knifes, pistols, grenades, machine guns, missile launchers, and more. Levels can be played in any order via the stage selection screen, and after the first part of each stage two selectable paths are offered. Conflicts take place through banks, city chases, hotels, apartments, ports, luxury liners, trains, subways, warehouses, and more. Played as an on-rails shooter, Virtua Cop 2 is split into three stages: Big Chase, Save the Mayor, and Railline Shootout.
Virtua Cop 2 is the follow-up to the heavily successful light gun-based cops-and-robbers shooter on the Saturn and provides more levels, missions, enemies, weapons, and three crime zones.
