Surpasses the original in almost every way.
Evil alien invaders are still up to no good and it's again your job to put an end to their evil world domination once and for all. That's the plot you need to start shooting.
Graphics are better than ever and especially the level design in general is now much more varied and interesting than before. Game's 30 Areas are varied with nice themes in them. Music is grand and big reminding me of an 80's action movie Predator. Unfortunately there seems to be only one song so it loops way too often and in the end you may find yourself irritated by the music.
Gameplay is enhanced so that you can now hijack enemy vehicles, namely a mechanical walker, a tank and a helicopter. There's also a lot more fighting on foot than before and some Ikaruga style aerial battles. Sadly some of these space battles are fought so that sometimes it's almost impossible to see what's ahead of you. Luckily these parts are not that long and many.
There are many big boss battles and they are almost exclusively fun and satisfying. My absolute favorite was a big mechanical beetle.
Game is surprisingly long consisting of 30 areas (as I said earlier), when the original game had only 17 areas. It takes anywhere around 4 to 10 hours to play through the whole experience. As before the game is at its best when playing with a friend either locally or via Xbox Live.
It's worthy to mention that the menus and general instructions on how to play are now much easier to use.
Assault Heroes 2 is a great sequel to a great game and if you liked the first one you should definitely experience this one as well.