Sly 2: Band of Thieves quite literally expands on the first game. The first game's level structure called for a natural progression through the level. You'd follow the path from A to B to C. Sly 2 ditches that form of level progression in favor of a large sprawling hub world from which to seek out jobs. Each chapter gets its own hub world. Each hub world will have a safe house location that you use as your base of operations. You can go there to switch out the characters you're playing as. The jobs in each world are story based. They do an excellent job of advancing the plot. In the Jailbreak chapter for example, you need to bust Sly and Murray out of jail as Bentley because they've been captured. He'll need to survey the area first. He'll need to do something about the alarms he's noticed surveying the area. He'll need to figure out how to break Sly out. Once Sly is out you'll need to work on getting Murray out. It's continues along needing to do this or that so you can achieve the main goal. Instead of just going from hotspot to hotspot on the map as you were in the original game, you need to find waypoints that mark the start of a job. They add in a nonlinear feel to it by letting you decide on which mission to do first for the most part. Sometimes only one will be available to select. In the first game there were bottles that contained clues that you needed to collect in order to break into the vaults within each level. Only the hub world has them this time around. There are thirty in each location along with the one vault per location. The vaults still contain new moves for the most part. They're not required to complete the game. It's an entirely optional aspect to the game. The bottles and vaults are counted in the 100% level completion rating though. It's this new format that is adding considerable size to the game. I am 50% through the game at over ten hours. The game is looking to be about twice the size of the original and it's offering up all of the same great gameplay. That's sort of the textbook definition of sequel. More of the same, just bigger and better.
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