*Insert obviously easy "less than perfect" qoute*
Story
It's a lot better than 2. Cortez now travels through history (again) in search of how to prevent the wars from ever happening, and the comedy is on spot! At least the first time around. But it's a damn good, well crafted plot. But it does feel out of place, what with the serious tone given from TS2 it feels like a parody of itself. What sucks worse is the actual villain can't be taken seriously nor any other character (though I guess thats what they were trying to do). Ah what the hell, it's good.
Level Design
For the main Story, it's good for the first 6 levels but after that, they only seemed to care about giving you the most boring, tedious spots ever found. The newer levels leave you wanting to go back, play the original story levels because they seem more varied and less repetitious. The Multiplayer levels are a worse offender, with many maps being uninteresting or even more claustrophobic than the previous game. Thank god for Mapmaker...Speakiing of which.........
Mapmaker
Is so damn inferior to the first one. I dont like to compare things much but they stripped so much out of this Mapmaker that it feels cheap. Sure the death rooms are a nice touch and the auto guns for outside story mode is good and having more than 2 teams is good, but where's the extra large areas and the ability to place more of the same items WITHOUT taking up free space? Also, why is there STILL space to conserve? Honestly, I dont want to make maps yet worry if I have enough space to continue making larger than before. And with some of the tacky normal levels being so large and so crappy, you can't build any to be better because free radical is afraid that you might be better level designers than them! So they BS you with the same (dont use too much space) crap from TS2 and even worse, strip out even more BETTER versions of map spots. Even worse, the ZOOM feature is nerfed beyond help. It's now just some white blocky view of the blocks you inputted instead of an actual sight of how the arena will look INGAME! WHICH ALSO HELPED YOU GET A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF HOW THE ITEM PLACEMENT WOULD LOOK! So now that thats gone, you have a watered down version of mapmaker which isn't even better in ADVANCED MODE! MAJOR FAIL!
Gameplay
Aside from that terror that is the new MM, the gameplay for some could be better or worse. Some weapons perform better and worse than originally but the worse outweighs the better. The realistic load times hamper the gameplay way more than they help in immersion. I hate realism in my games. This way it BS's you more than it helps. When reloading guns, it nearly takes 10 seconds before you can start firing again, which unlike the last gun, it would go to the bottom of the screen and come back up ready to kick some more ass! But no, to compete with crap like Halo because their fanboys demand every FPS play it for more "tactical gameplay" bull, we TS fans have to sit through 10 seconds of reloading so we should be more tactical than being frantic and FAST PACED! And the ammo starvation seems worse in this game as certain guns and ammo packs are harder to find, but it's like this for every FPS so I wont down it for that. The main story game introduces the new "cpu tag" system or what I'd like to call "Tedious escort missions from hell". Your partners for each mission will usually range from good to complete horse crap and in most situations you have to save them from certain locations. It's not with everyone but then they do the "partners in time" gig where you get to team up with past/future versions of yourself, but this is nothing but an attempt to make the game even more tedious, as you have to protect your other self from certain death. And while they are capable of defending themselves, they're so stupid that they will just deliberately sit on their asses and take hits like a punk! It's not "teaming up" like the back of the box says, it's a whole friggin escort mission because your other self is mentally retarded. And the worst part is thats what story mode is. A gigantic escort mission for the ages (pun intended and not proud of it). So if I were you, i'd do co-op all the way through this drek of a story mode, so you wouldn't HAVE to escort people all the time. Multiplayer (despite the crappy maps) is still at least fun and the character gestures are funnier and characters are the best rosters ever, and it's still gonna keep you up until 5 AM in the morning, but the game feels more watered down and stripped of good features it's not even funny. Even customizing controls is more restrictive than ever before. Firing, sidestepping, and that ish are all limited to certain control inputs unlike the previous where you could modify it ANYWAY YOU WANTED TO! The Challenge Mode is a huge improvement with racing,m basketball, and the like, but it's so frustrating, I don't even bother.
Music and sound
Terrible music compared to TS2 but sound effects or OK U I guess. Voice acting is top notch
Overrall
If you loved TS2, some part of you will hate this game for being so watered down in terms of mapmaker and guns and another part would love for the same type of addictive gameplay but if I were you, i'd slap on AR for story mode non co-op because it's not worth the frustration. The whole game was a dissapointment for me.