Much, much better. It's mostly about being able to move just slightly faster than them so you can stop and reload. I was actually able to make it to the end of level 1 and see all the cool stuff you put in there (the pools of blood are a nice touch).
My main problem this playthrough was not being able to do many inputs at once. For instance, I'd hit "right" to pull out my gun, hold it and then press and hold "down" to aim down, and then hit "S" to crouch, but then you can't fire the gun unless you release "right", which is a little unintuitive.