Good vs Bad - more shooting racks up the difficulty, which scales with the environmental hazards. Brilliant sequel !
THE GOOOOOOOD
-A few tweaks were brought to the core gameplay. Missiles now fire much faster and for a lower heat cost, allowing you to plow thru dirt a lot faster and speed up gameplay. There's also a new move that sends you spinning against enemies and thru dirt. Jumping from one enemy to the other thanks to the spin's auto-aim, all while dodging bullets and hazards, is awesome. There is also a collection of new and useful suits to play around with.
-Music once again written by High Frequency Bandwidth, the guys we owe PJS1's OST to. The awesome atmosphere is back and better than ever.
-GameSpot pointed out PJS2 puts emphasis on shooting and it's not exactly true because environmental puzzles and hazards are still around and, thanks to new fluids and elements, a lot more challenging than they used to be. The game is once again divided in 3 worlds and, just like PJS1 did, all levels manage to include new gameplay elements. As you get closer to the last level, you'll notice everything shown to you isn't dumped and forgotten like they do in so many games these days. Instead they re-use known patterns and mix things up a lot making for interesting and clever gameplay/puzzles. The last 2 levels use almost everything in ways so clever you can't help but think PJS2 is the best. The emphasis on shooting is actually misleading because what is actually shooting more this time around is not you but the enemies. It's never too hard but sometimes it felt like a schmup with all those bullets flying across the screen. Hit one and your heat goes up a little... so it's exactly like before. It's about carefully guiding your ship thru the dangers and, should the heat rack up a bit, hurry back to water. The spin move I mentioned above helps with last-second maneuvers, too, and a lot of times made the game a bit more hectic than the very slow-paced PJS1.
-The game now sports a multiplayer component, and a very great one at that. It's my favorite multiplayer so far this year. In short, it's 1-1 battles where players alternate between Offense and Defense. Across the maps are scattered survivors which, as Offense, you have to capture and bring back to your zone. As Defense, you fly around the map hunting for the other player. You have a bunch of dots coming out from where your ship is currently aiming at, should they collide with the Offense player, he'll get frozen for half a second. At this point you may want to use the items you bought with the points earned in multiplayer. There are all sorts of crazy items out there like the missiles, lava bombs, joystick inverter and so much more. The multiplayer is very balanced and skill-based, it's not there to help noobs. So it's hard. But nothing impossible if you stick to it... in the end it's much more rewarding this way. Barely any lag whatsoever helps making this an enjoyable experience where deaths/losses are yours to blame.
-A lot of new and varied enemies making up for PJS1's somewhat redundant bestiary.
-Bosses are more varied and imposing than PJS1's. I won't spoil anything but having your wits about you when fighting them is a must, the devs put a lot of efforts to come up with varied and unpredictable movesets. Especially the final boss who pretty much blew my mind. It reminded me of Kirby 64's last boss and that is an instant win in my book.
-Levels tend to last twice as long as they did in PJS1 and pacing was improved, leaving better breathing room between the more intense and calm moments. A nice balance was achieved here.
THE BAAAAAAAAAAD
-Enemies spawning directly on you can still be a problem sometimes if you're like me and rush a lot. Random, instant death is not very fun.
-Camera shake was overused in some instances.
-The Hungry Suit had weird controls. Sticking your face to walls to keep it from moving is awkward.
Yep, that's all for the bad points. As long as you're not a trophy hunter/content tourist/rusher you will certainly enjoy the mix of colors, fluid gameplay and soothing atmosphere this game have in store for you. After all, games are meant to entertain, what's the point of rushing thru them just for bragging rights? You just end up refusing yourself good moments.
I might edit this later if anything comes to my mind.
Anyway I give this solid sequel a 9.5, thumbs up to Q-Games for delivering such a good game in an age of washed out sequels.