When we last dealt with the cloning alien race, the Furons, Cryptosporidium137 -- or Crypto -- was tearing it up against a na¿ve America of the fifties. It was a simpler time -- and a simpler game. In DAH2, just like its backdrop of the hectic and turbulent sixties, things are a lot more complex. We start off by learning that, due to his ability to assume human form and toy with folks' brains, the angry, evil, and constantly horny Crypto 138 -- Crypto 137's clone -- is now President of the United States. (I cut developer Pandemic some slack here. They combined the qualities of two presidents from the sixties, presumably to save time and move the story along. Kennedy was constantly horny. Nixon was angry and evil.) He's having a grand old time running the country until his boss, Pox and his mothership are blown up by the Russians. And, just like America was, he's thrown into a conflict that will polarize the nation.
His ensuing mission will take him from San Francisco to London, Japan, Russia, and beyond. The good news is that Furon Research & Development was pretty busy in the ten years between Crypto's adventures. They've let him loose with a revamped arsenal of old faves and new goodies. One of the knocks against the original game was the lack of diverse weaponry. Here, he's just got more toys to play with. In addition to his Zap-O-Matic and Anal Probe, he's now got The Dislocator, which fires discs that attach to people and things and them whip them around mercilessly, a Meteor Strike, which causes a fireball to destroy just about everything, and Gastro, which calls up a hovering sidekick to take care of the enemy like some perverse alien version of a Final Fantasy Aeon summon.
On the mental ability side, he can still use his psychokinetic powers to pick stuff up and toss it around (which never seems to get old), read minds, hypnotize humans, and body snatch -- body snatching being a slightly fancier form of Holobobbing from the original game. He now, though, has a craft. His Transmogrifying ability lets him take common earthling doo-dads and turn them into ammo for his weapons. With all these new abilities and tools, the focus is clearly on action here. The stealth requirements have been knocked down considerably. That's a good thing. If stealth heroes were supposed to be sarcastic jabberers, Sam Fisher would have been voiced by Dane Cook. The emphasis on action and violence and the increased number of ways to get involved in that action and violence makes for a game that's more varied both visually and in terms of gameplay.
The gameplay also got an upgrade in the way things flow. It's just a lot smoother this time around. In the first game, things felt very formulaic. You'd tackle a level and once you've furthered the story and taken care of your main objective, you could either head back to the mothership or hang around and earn some upgrade currency by completing mini-game-style side quests. In DAH2, the story progresses a lot more seamlessly. You're not heading back to a menu screen so often. You don't even have to interrupt play that much when you want to upgrade your gear. You just head back to where you left your ship and you can do it automatically, without having to skip a beat.