Antihero

Jerusalem's a hell of a looker for a 2004 level. And great ambience. Fisher sneaks past houses and can hear people praying, chatting, dogs barking, babies crying. Ubisoft Milan nailed every last facet of this level's atmosphere and crafted a pretty great environment for Sam to run around in. Gameplay wise, it's not as memorable. A majority of the sneaking you do is great, but you spend a majority tailing someone you end up doming before dropping into an underground lab where things go slightly downhill. Mission-wise, the train level prior is probably the peak. A relatively straightforward, short level, but it's got an exciting concept and executes the idea of sneaking around a train, going in and outside of it amazingly.

Pandora Tomorrow has been far more spy action-y than its predecessor, and I've so far been seeing it in the same lens as Bioshock 2: Good QoL improvements, weaker story. 4 more missions to go, halfway there!

Hey look! Product placement! Wonder if this is why the game ain't readily available digitally? Hitting up Internet Archive, I was able to find a completely preinstalled version of Pandora Tomorrow with a lot of tweaks to fix compatibility issues. After that... the game has some growing pains if you're coming hot off the first. Primarily swapping default keys from SC1, like making spacebar jump and interact enter. This has lead to me hilariously jumping behind a guy when I meant to grab and knock them out.

So far the game's been a slightly better version of its predecessor. Stepping stones to Chaos Theory. Slight improvements to gunplay and a better HUD. I have only gotten two missions in, the story hasn't been as engaging as its predecessor, but I'm enjoying it. Lambert sure sounds different, though I read the original voice appears in Chaos Theory, but Dennis Haysbert does a fine job as a temporary fill for Don Jordan's role. Pandora Tomorrow is one mission shorter than SC, so I wonder how long it'll take me if the first only took me a few days at most.