How they managed to screw up everything that was good about the first game here is beyond me...
The first thing I noticed was the graphics options. The first SC had a lot of thing to choose from here, making it actually look pretty good for an 8 year old game. By contrast, the newer Pandora Tomorrow looks really ugly. There are only two options, resolution (which constantly reverts back to it's original 640x480, when you attempt to change it) and graphics quality low-high. There is no AA whatsoever, which combined with the low resolution forced upon makes everything look extremely jagged.
Textures and shadows also look worse. Instead of having really dark shadows like in the first game, everything in PT looks blurry and darkened, without having any real contrast between light and shadow. This means you have no idea where you are supposed to sneak, as the shadows all look alike! You can be standing in the middle of a street and be completely invisible even though you can clearly see your character, or you could move 3 feet to the left behind a wall and instantly be spotted, even though that area is just as dark. Likewise, taking out lights to blind your enemies only seems to serve to make them spot you easier.
In short, you have to completely rely on your stealth meter which erratically swings between invisible and neon sign, regardless of how well lit your environment really is.
Audio quality is also terrible, sounds like someone recorded all the sounds with a cellphone. Sam Fisher thankfully is still voiced my Michael Ironside who does a good job, but the rest of the voice actors are terrible, which is not helped by the incredibly bad sound quality that drags down the game even further.
The shooting, which was one of the shortcomings in the first game, is just abysmal here. Moving your sight is like being stuck in jelly, and on top of that, you have to wait for your crosshair to close up for several seconds if you want to hit anything. By the time you have done that, the enemy has most likely moved on and you will miss anyway. And apparently, you can only reload when your clip is completely empty. Good luck entering gunfights with one bullet!
Lastly, rather than increasing the alarm level if discovered, you often automatically fail the mission instead. In one instance, I was hiding in near pitch black darkness according to the stealth meter, pressed against the wall, with no enemy in sight... and suddenly lost the mission. Perhaps they found an unconscious guard somewhere I had forgot to hide, but why would that result in mission failure?! Nobody saw me knock down the guard, no alarm was raised either, just mission failed!? WTF!?
Oh, and when you do fail, you cannot just quick load like in the first game, you HAVE to see the mission failed screen, press enter to continue, choose last save and then reload.
The first game had its issues in terms of weak shooting and trial and error gameplay, but it was still a great experience overall. Pandora Tomorrow is worse in every way, and a bad game at that.
I pray that Chaos Theory will be better.