No matter what teammates are chosen, they'll both share the same life bar -- more specifically, they have points divvied up between them. Getting hit by a bullet shaves off a single point, but completing a task for a team member or finding little point icons can help pad things so a single bullet won't end the mission (since you have to start over for that character from the beginning of their part of the mission). With the exception of mission-specific icons that represent stuff like drugs or money, these life points are the only things beyond weapons that you'll find scattered throughout most missions, and they're tucked away most of the time.

So far the storyline affords the occasional instance of a boss battle, which usually means a lot more running and gunning than the cover-heavy exchanges with normal enemies (though they are present in boss battles too for a little extra spice). The storyline hasn't exactly taken off so far, but then we're only about 10 missions in. So far the voice acting seems... well, the voice actors are certainly Canadian, that much is obvious.

Visually, the game runs at a nice framerate, and there are a lot of objects scattered around the subway stations, wherehouses, mansions and office buildings we've seen, but environmental interaction is minimal at best (you can sometimes break crates, but they've obviously not part of the same props as the rest of the level and stand out quite a bit).

We don't have much longer until the final version of the game hits, but we can say that even from this semi-early build of the game, it's already leaps and bounds better than the first game. We'll have the final verdict for you in a few weeks.