The addition of multi-player along with better levels and story make it better than the first, but it's way shorter
Everything found in the original titles makes it's return to Pandora, with a few additions and improvements. The engine remains untouched, as well as the visibility meter displayed in the bottom left corner of the screen. There are a few main differences that fans of the original game will notice sooner than later. First of all they added the option to open doors while you have an enemy on your back, which certainly helps the pace of the game. Second, when you hide a body in the corner the game forces it to stay in that room, where as in the first game their head or limbs would sometimes go through the walls. Also when you holster your weapon while hanging from a pipe or rope you'll see Sam aim upside down while he hangs from his legs, making for more room to shoot in certain areas. Putting your back up against a wall is now done by clicking in the right thumb stick, as opposed to pressing the white button from the first game. The black button now adds the option to whistle in order to distract enemies, which helps a lot if you run out of diversion gadgets. There's also a different animation when performing a split jump between two walls. Sam will actually lean towards one of the walls as he mounts himself up top. After that though, most of the alley's which you can do it in will have a ledge that you can jump up to. Press the jump button again to get up to the ledge, but it will only work if Sam is leaned on the opposite side. Most importantly is the addition of the combat turn. Press A when near a gap in the wall that you're pressed up against, and Sam will perform a quick twisting turn as he moves to the other side. It looks cool but only comes in handy a couple of times during the game.
All of the old gadgets make their return, including the sticky camera, diversion camera, ring air foil round, sticky shocker, smoke grenade etc. They all have the same functions of the first game (read my review of the original game under the Xbox section of Gamespot).
While the missions in the single player campaign are very short, the levels are still fairly large and are much more fun to navigate through, a few of them being dark jungle regions. Sam can still do all of the same things he could in the first game, including climbing pipes and ledges along with knocking enemies out and taking them as human shields.
The addition of multi-player is both fun and exciting as well as somewhat awkward. One person plays as a shadow agent looking to either find information in the map, or disarm/arm a trap etc., while the other person plays a fully equipped mercenary trying to thwart their efforts. There can only be 4 players max during one play with 2 on each team, but that actually makes sense considering the pace. It's well executed for the most part. The mercenaries will get rifles and flashlights, while the shadow agents will get cloaking devices and stun gadgets. The awkward part is that when a shadow agent tries to knockout a mercenary from behind it usually doesn't work. Other than that, multi-player is a blast.
There isn't much else to say about the game, as it mirrors everything from the first just with a few minor additions and a major one being the multi-player option. The game would be perfect if it wasn't for the fact that is has only 8 levels to complete and multi-player being unresponsive in one or two ways a majority of the time.