Enemy behavior has changed slightly as well; sometimes you'll roll up to a group, take out two of three, and the third will run away from you, only to group with another set of opponents. The overkill bonuses are in effect, though upgrading your weapon adds that many more checkboxes for you to fill before you get the combat bonus conferred.

You'll discover new inventory items as well, including Mustard Gas, which has an area effect; Healium Gas, which affects all party members to bring hit points back up; and White Christmas, which ... I don't know. It blows things up. White Christmas? Only Tycho knows for sure.

You'll still hunt Fruit F*$&ers for their parts to upgrade your weapons, but at one point you'll purchase your upgrades from a vending machine instead of getting them from Ann. Your rake gets a double-headed treatment and an eerie glow, but it's still just a rake. A new weapon choice would be welcome, but you stop thinking about it after a few minutes.

Reacting to player feedback from the first game, there are more puzzles to complete in Episode Two. One of them is a truly mind-bending fast-reaction thing that requires you to revolve pieces to complete neural pathways in your character's brain in an effort to stave off madness. If you've ever played one of those games that require you to connect tracks while a train is riding them, you'll be familiar with this type of puzzle.

One unexpected improvement over the first game is the noticeably faster load times between areas. Where I was used to clicking an area on the map, then getting up from the computer to go make a sandwich, now it's just a matter of seconds before the new environment is loaded and ready to play. Speaking of that, you get to explore a couple of new places, including a rather long series of hotel floors that may or may not have been an homage to running up the Shin-ra building in Final Fantasy VII. You'll also encounter a World's Fair, an insane asylum, and a scientific symposium, where you'll see a few familiar faces returning from the first game, one of which gives you a truly alarming serum to inject (if you dare).

The way Jerry and Mike manage to integrate their comic strip characters makes for a really engaging experience; you never know who'll appear next, but as they empty their roster, it will be interesting to see how they'll introduce various personages who you might think would be too specific for inclusion, such as the Cardboard Tube Samurai, arguably one of their most popular entities. But hey, Div made it in, so why not the CTS?

If each game is indeed going to keep building on the previous one, then we're in for a treat with the remaining two episodes, whose release dates remain unannounced. Best of all, the pricing for both Episodes One and Two have dropped, from $20 to $15. Now two gods wait on the windowsill ...