Standoff 2 is a class-based shooter, with both player and team-based objectives. Players can choose to play as riflemen, grenadiers, scouts, or machine gunners. The Rifleman's role is to provide covering fire for his teammates and eliminate enemy players from long ranges. Grenadiers are the main anti-tank asset of the team; they wield an anti-armor grenade launcher that can effectively punch through tank armor.
Scouts are lightly armored soldiers armed with either semi-automatic rifles or submachine guns, they serve as forwarding observers and move in ahead of the rest of their squad in order to gather intel on enemy positions while evading detection by enemies at all costs. Machine gunners lay down suppressing fire to pin down enemy positions.
The game features single-player, co-op, and multiplayer gameplay. In co-op mode, players play against the AI in a team of up to 4 members. In PvP mode, 2 teams composed of 8 players each compete in one or more objective-based maps with both Annihilation and Victory Point modes.