The story picks up 10 years after the events of BioShock. Jack, the unfortunate soul from the first game, is out. This time you play as a totally different character, a Big Daddy that's searching for a specific Little Sister. It's a tale that lacks some of the bite-your-tongue chaos and panic of the first and, because Rapture is a familiar place now, some of the mystery. But it makes up for that by being more tightly wound and digestible. While Rapture's still packed with lunatics, a lot of what you encounter, from the audio logs stuffed under soaked refuse to the hastily scrawled messages on the walls, for the most part directly refer back to the main events of the game. For the sequel, where there are fewer questions about what a splicer is and why the city failed and more about who you are and what you're doing, it turns out this kind of approach works well, driving the action with a more coherent momentum.
That's not to imply Rapture's lost its endearing madness in transition -- far from it. Dedicated players who are willing to wander and pick up all the audio tapes will find plenty of details to absorb, which I won't spoil. Throughout the experience you'll find a more clear-eyed approach to bringing the player to moral crossroads in several ways, one of the more obvious examples of which has to do with the Little Sisters. Big Daddies, in case you aren't familiar with BioShock's fiction, were created to protect the girls. Since you actually play as one of these giant armored monsters in BioShock 2, the connection is strengthened. You're no longer an outsider looking in at an inexplicably strange relationship dynamic; you're the overprotective parent of the pair. In that sense, it makes harvesting the sisters for their Adam (killing them so you can upgrade yourself), even more reprehensible, again reinforcing a sturdier system of moral choice.
If you don't want to harvest, you can choose to adopt one of the Little Sisters instead. This leads into defense sequences where you'll perform the role of other wandering Big Daddies seen in Rapture, standing guard while the girl pulls Adam out of the dead and blasting away all the splicers that invariably try to interrupt the process. With a nice array of defensive options in your arsenal, from hacked security bots to trap bolts and rivets and mini-turrets, in addition to all your regular offensive options, these sequences can be a lot of fun. Alongside the Big Daddy battles and more challenging Big Sister encounters, they serve as yet another opportunity to dig into your deep arsenal of plasmid powers and multiple ammunition types. If the thought of a defense sequence makes you slightly nauseous, it should be reassuring to hear you can skip them entirely, the cost being that you just missed out on a bunch of Adam.
The more you dig into BioShock 2, the more you'll find to like. While BioShock was a statement game and served as evidence that creativity doesn't come at the cost of commercial success, BioShock 2 follows along a familiar path for sequels. It doesn't take extreme liberties with elements that worked before; it improves them in simple but effective ways. No longer do you have to switch between active plasmids and weapons; they're just both up at once so you can shoot and shock without an irritating swap. No longer does the research camera require you to dance around avoiding enemy fire while snapping pictures. Instead, it works like a video recorder, and lets you fight as you normally would while it records your actions. Gone is the pipe hacking mini-game, replaced by a real-time variation that keeps the action going as you take over flying robots, turrets, and security cameras. All these changes contribute to a less fragmented flow and, along with the smoother narrative, a more unified experience.
The way weapons and plasmids are upgraded has also been given some attention, as you now upgrade things like your double-barreled shotgun and launcher in more significant ways. The first two upgrade tiers make the weapon more effective in combat, and the next unlocks a special function, such as fire damage from your rivet gun and cluster explosives with your launcher. It's not a huge change, but it adds an extra carrot to chase after on your way through the entertaining story.
Plasmids have been given an overhaul, as they now alter in function as you purchase additional tiers. For instance, your Insect Swarm plasmid will initially daze and injure enemies. Upgrade it all the way and anyone killed by the bugs will turn into a kind of living bomb, spewing out more stingers at any enemies that pass by the corpse. These added wrinkles to the upgrade system, in addition to the wide array of tonics you can find and equip for passive bonuses, give you a better sense of progression and achievement as you progress. They may even be enough to get you to play through again while following different upgrade tracks.
Like many sequels, what you get with BioShock 2 is a number of tweaks and improvements to gameplay. When it comes to story, unfortunately, none of the characters introduced in BioShock 2 are quite as fascinating as Andrew Ryan, though you will still hear from him quite a bit through audio tapes. A new lord has taken over Rapture named Sofia Lamb. She's obsessed with bringing into existence a utopian society in which compassion is the keystone, where the sense of self is entirely snuffed out and where everyone instinctually strives to act in accordance to what's beneficial to the whole. In practice this meant the development of a cult following in Rapture diametrically opposed to Andrew Ryan's belief in progress through the ambition and determination of the individual. It's a simple but effective foil for the game, and if you're picking up the audio recordings you'll hear more detail of how Ryan worked to silence Lamb and the ways in which your story is wrapped up in the power struggle and your origins.
You'll see a lot of familiar enemies here as splicers surge at you with guns and melee weapons while shrieking and giggling, but you'll also find a few new opponents. Bulky brute splicers take far more damage to bring down and you'll see new types of Big Daddies as your struggle with Lamb progresses towards its climax. Then there are the Big Sisters. These skinny diving suits fight with ferocity unmatched in Rapture, and in addition to charging directly at you, they'll also resort to plasmid use to try to put you out of commission. Overall this means you'll be squaring off against a wide variety of foes with a nice mix of offensive behaviors, something those who played the first game with its more limited range of enemy types are sure to appreciate. Should the combat prove too challenging, death in BioShock 2 works similarly to BioShock, as there are Vita-Chambers that serve as respawn points throughout the game. If those bother you, however, there is the option to turn them off at any time and rely more on reloading your save files. I'd also recommend veteran gamers bump the difficulty up to hard, which can be done at any time during play.
Rapture's halls aren't quite the visual spectacle they were when we saw them back in 2007, but the subaquatic city is still a terrifically detailed and engrossing setting. Water ripples down walls and pours from ceilings, blurring your vision, a reinforcement of your precarious position and foggy understanding of events within a city that, from the looks of things, should have imploded long ago. It's a reminder of the fragility of the human condition and how philosophical ideals, no matter how well-intentioned, will crack and seep into nothingness when put up against the eternal advance of the forces of nature.
It's going to be a familiar experience for anyone that played the original, but BioShock 2's improvements to gameplay and its more focused storyline make for a game that's more playable and easier to digest. Some of the sense of awe and mystery is lost in transition, but the strength of the setting and more interesting implementation of moral choice make for an experience that's more consistent and rewarding. Anyone looking for a first-person shooter that offers more than flat, stereotypical characters and copy-and-paste supersoldier plots, one that attempts to establish a sense of right and wrong and loops you into the decision making process, and one that's set in one of the most vividly realized settings around should pick up BioShock 2. It's a game in which story, setting, and gameplay are expertly blended to create an experience that's as thought-provoking as it is entertaining.
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