Poppin' bottles in the ice, like a blizzard.
The health bar changes everything, it gives me nightmares. This is the first Sly game flipped on its head. So rather than a one-hit KO (unless you gained a horseshoe) you now have a health bar, a lot of enemies had a one hit ratio in the last game but this one, they're less like Crash villains and actually fight back. This sets off your health bar as "alerted" or spotted which is later a feature in Assassin's Creed, there are even trailing and chasing missions.
There are no longer lives because of this meter and makes it so the levels aren't built the same way to where you need checkpoints. This can be both a good thing and a bad thing because I feel like the jumps are more responsive (that could also just be me with more experience now) but sometimes the controls are too responsive so if there's a wire underneath another or something then sometimes it picks the one that you're not aiming for which has blown my cover before. It would've been a lot simpler to just auto-death from that than to have to try to reset it myself by taking damage.
The levels are no longer portals, they're set up inside the hub world so that you enter whatever building it's leading you to or even take place in the hub itself. There are waypoints activated from your binocucom, mostly easy to find. I can't tell if this is a good thing or a bad thing though because on one hand it fleshes out the area that you're in but on the other hand, it diminishes the amount of variety that was allowed in the last game so one level may look like an extension to the last. But once again, each level acts towards a grander mission, except rather than just collecting keys (unless it's a mission on its own), you collect intel and sabotage the enemy's plans, it's more in depth and makes for some wacky shenanigans.
Making up for that lost variety, one of the big selling points of this game is that there are now multiple playable characters which means separate levels for each. Bentley excels in tech and long range Murray in destruction and Sly in stealth, so it is indeed like I remember it. Basically, (when playing as Sly) unless Bentley says otherwise, you shouldn't fight or you'll fail the mission. You can get away, in fact, you have a run button now since your walk speed is more sneaky but it's a little bit louder so it's really only for getaways. With each character, I feel a slight disadvantage for traversal but it's not too overbearing. (Only Sly can tightrope walk and such)
Without horseshoes, you now have all these leftover coins and I've mentioned this in other games and this one actually follows through, it lets the coins act as currency to buy useful items, in this case the stuff that you would've unlocked from the bottles in the first game.
So, now the levels no longer hold the bottles but the hub worlds do. This makes it a bit harder because like I said with "unless Bentley says so", if you've started something to do with a level, go too far away from the area you've chosen and Bentley might make you abandon it. So only collect at certain times because it's easier when there's less to keep track of. (That's a good euphemism for this game overall tbh, it's a flip flop whether it's better or worse than its predecessor)
The vault is held in one of the levels but since it could be any of them, you do have the chance to go back to that level once you find it if you haven't had the chance to collect them all the first time around. The bottles still give you abilities, exclusive ones that the coins won't net you, so you actually have more abilities than the first game.
I've complained enough about the differences.
One of the games that I want more of is Beyond Good and Evil and I just haven't found anything like it...until I played this game, I mean you even get to take pictures (not like you would on PS4) but it's nice to see it implemented into the gameplay, especially seeing as BGAE came out just a year before this. And as much as I loved the first game, this one actually actively gave me ideas for how good that supposed movie could've been, it's just a shame we lost it (though maybe a blessing as well?)
I enjoy the story of this game more and while there are some things better, there are some things worse and I think my favoritism of the overall picture would be ratioed to Thievius Raccoonus.
The health bar changes everything, it gives me nightmares. This is the first Sly game flipped on its head. So rather than a one-hit KO (unless you gained a horseshoe) you now have a health bar, a lot of enemies had a one hit ratio in the last game but this one, they're less like Crash villains and actually fight back. This sets off your health bar as "alerted" or spotted which is later a feature in Assassin's Creed, there are even trailing and chasing missions.
There are no longer lives because of this meter and makes it so the levels aren't built the same way to where you need checkpoints. This can be both a good thing and a bad thing because I feel like the jumps are more responsive (that could also just be me with more experience now) but sometimes the controls are too responsive so if there's a wire underneath another or something then sometimes it picks the one that you're not aiming for which has blown my cover before. It would've been a lot simpler to just auto-death from that than to have to try to reset it myself by taking damage.
The levels are no longer portals, they're set up inside the hub world so that you enter whatever building it's leading you to or even take place in the hub itself. There are waypoints activated from your binocucom, mostly easy to find. I can't tell if this is a good thing or a bad thing though because on one hand it fleshes out the area that you're in but on the other hand, it diminishes the amount of variety that was allowed in the last game so one level may look like an extension to the last. But once again, each level acts towards a grander mission, except rather than just collecting keys (unless it's a mission on its own), you collect intel and sabotage the enemy's plans, it's more in depth and makes for some wacky shenanigans.
Making up for that lost variety, one of the big selling points of this game is that there are now multiple playable characters which means separate levels for each. Bentley excels in tech and long range Murray in destruction and Sly in stealth, so it is indeed like I remember it. Basically, (when playing as Sly) unless Bentley says otherwise, you shouldn't fight or you'll fail the mission. You can get away, in fact, you have a run button now since your walk speed is more sneaky but it's a little bit louder so it's really only for getaways. With each character, I feel a slight disadvantage for traversal but it's not too overbearing. (Only Sly can tightrope walk and such)
Without horseshoes, you now have all these leftover coins and I've mentioned this in other games and this one actually follows through, it lets the coins act as currency to buy useful items, in this case the stuff that you would've unlocked from the bottles in the first game.
So, now the levels no longer hold the bottles but the hub worlds do. This makes it a bit harder because like I said with "unless Bentley says so", if you've started something to do with a level, go too far away from the area you've chosen and Bentley might make you abandon it. So only collect at certain times because it's easier when there's less to keep track of. (That's a good euphemism for this game overall tbh, it's a flip flop whether it's better or worse than its predecessor)
The vault is held in one of the levels but since it could be any of them, you do have the chance to go back to that level once you find it if you haven't had the chance to collect them all the first time around. The bottles still give you abilities, exclusive ones that the coins won't net you, so you actually have more abilities than the first game.
I've complained enough about the differences.
One of the games that I want more of is Beyond Good and Evil and I just haven't found anything like it...until I played this game, I mean you even get to take pictures (not like you would on PS4) but it's nice to see it implemented into the gameplay, especially seeing as BGAE came out just a year before this. And as much as I loved the first game, this one actually actively gave me ideas for how good that supposed movie could've been, it's just a shame we lost it (though maybe a blessing as well?)
I enjoy the story of this game more and while there are some things better, there are some things worse and I think my favoritism of the overall picture would be ratioed to Thievius Raccoonus.