The first thing you might notice about Pandora Tomorrow, the sequel to the breakout stealth game Splinter Cell, is that it plays a lot smoother than the first. Makes sense. This is pretty typical of follow up games. There are plenty of other ways that Pandora Tomorrow builds and improves upon the original game. Sure, the ability to lure enemies with whistling is a nice improvement, and being able to draw your pistol while hanging from a pipe or in the splits, but it's far from the only thing.
One of the more interesting things to notice about the game is how frequently they put you outdoors and in light conditions. The tutorial mission starting the game sees super spy Sam Fisher at dusk trying to make way through a village to rescue hostages. After the first game trained players to shoot out all the lights they could, the second forces players to find alternative ways to sneak through levels. There's almost always going to be some shadowy areas to hide in, but there may also be stretches where dark cover is very limited. At another point in the game, you must make your way through another base outdoors. It's still dusk, but it's brighter. Other levels feature plenty of neon signs or other, farther away light sources that can't be shot out. This forces players to move a bit more quickly and decisively, as they plan their moves.
Another interesting thing is the number of levels where civilians are thrown into the fray. In Splinter Cell, there were people that you could not kill, but pretty much everyone was available to knock out. In Pandora Tomorrow, there are scenarios in which you can't even be spotted. There aren't just "terrorists" and "security guards" or "CIA agents." Now, there are full blown civilians that you must completely avoid. This first occurs early on when you must sneak your way through a passenger train, careful to avoid civilian attention. Then, there's a mission in Jerusalem where you must stick to the shadows completely. The final mission puts you in an airport full of civilians who you can't get spotted by at all, security guards and employees who you can knock out, and terrorists who you must kill. It adds a lot and forces the player to approach each level a bit differently.
Speaking of levels, level design is also improved upon. Splinter Cell saw very linear maps. You simply moved from point A to point B and had to maneuver around the in-game obstacles, whether it were a door you had to pick or guards in your way. This can easily be forgiven for a game released in 2002, where linear levels were the norm and technological limitations prevents much expansion. Pandora Tomorrow doesn't exactly open it up completely. None of the games in the franchise play as open world, nor should they really. Yet here, the designers present players with multiple routes. Your starting point is always the same. Your end point is always the same. There isn't too much deviation from the linear approach, but they do provide occasionally divergent pathways. In some ways, this calls do mind the difference between Uncharted and Uncharted 2. Still linear, but the fact that players have choices in how they approach a rather linear level makes the maps feel bigger than they are.
The on screen information is also streamlined and upgraded. The menus for swapping gadgets and weapons is cleaner, and it just looks nicer. The health bar and visibility meters are clearer and more helpful, which is required given the amount of "natural light" you must contend with in some levels. The pistol is still woefully inaccurate, sometimes even at close range, but odds are that you'll spend most of the game relying on your rifle anyway. Ammo isn't particularly scarce, and with enough patience, headshots and one-shot kills are easy.
As I mentioned in my Splinter Cell review, I've been playing the first three games on the PS3. There is an HD Remaster collection on the PS3 store (if you can access it - seriously, how has the PS Store gotten so incredibly terrible on the PS3?). Like the first game, Pandora Tomorrow is also disappointingly buggy. The first time I started it up, I got all of twenty minutes into the game before frame rate issues popped up and rendered the game completely unplayable. I switched to my PS2 copy to compare, just to make sure this wasn't just some strange thing with the original game. (It's not.) I did think to try it again on PS3 after exiting the game. That seemed to help. Barring a few brief moments, the only frame rate issues that came up again were late in the game and only when I looked through the rifle scope. That in and of itself is problematic, given if the frame rate isn't smooth, it is extraordinarily tricky to shoot accurately, but at that point, I was proficient in other styles of play. I compensated for those bugs by approaching the levels differently. Other than that, the audio bugs are far fewer between. There was only one moment where an audio bug really screwed me over (there's a mission late in the game where you have to listen to a conversation, but the dialogue audio dropped out completely so I had to wing it; it took a few tries). With the HD remaster of Pandora Tomorrow being a bit less buggy than Splinter Cell, I can only hope this means they figured it out by the third game.
In many ways, the second installment is a big improvement. The story and characters begin to move away from their more grounded, political thriller, Tom Clancy nature, instead detouring a tad more into typical action super spy stuff. Global politics aren't as much a factor in this game. Instead, Fisher and Third Echelon are hunting down these almost Bond-like villains. It's still grounded enough that it isn't super different. The devolution of the story and characters would come a little later in the franchise.
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