A little better than the first one, but not by much. The addition of grunts made the game a little more fun, but they were all pretty much the same, and died instantly. I thought that the ability to block bullets was funny, but being entirely impervious to damage while blocking is not a good thing. I felt that you should've made the enemies be able to punish you for blocking instead of it being one sided that way.
Just as the first game, there was a significant difficulty spike, where it results in the game not being of skill, but rather of chance. First two levels were good, then the invincible man came, and ruined it.