Written by: David Entin

Rapture was a leaking, rusted, urban sprawl built in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean. Founded by the industrialist Andrew Ryan, it was a city of the spirit. Every man earned his share, every man was his own ruler, and every man very rapidly turned on the man next to him. The city crumbled, and the residents turned to modifying their genetic code with a substance called “Adam.” With this substance, the residents of the city could shoot lightning from their hands and crawl along the ceilings. As they did, they went insane and grew deformed, and among them, young girls called Little Sisters who were guarded by massive drill-wielding protectors roamed the destruction gathering Adam from the dead. It was a morally ambiguous seascape, and in the first Bioshock, players entered, explored, and changed the fate of the drowning city in the early sixties.

Disregarding the choices made in the first game, players return to Rapture many years later, taking the role of the first Big Daddy. Big Daddys are massive powerhouses in Rapture. They wear pressurized dive suits equipped with drills and heavy weapons, lumbering about the world guarding the Little Sisters from the dangerous locals.

After ten years, the city is worse for wear; there seem to be more corpses  and flooded, rusted sections of the city, and the maddened screams of the surviving residents seem more feral. Unlike its predecessor, playing as a Big Daddy grants the player a role in this world. The Little Sisters, who are an essential resource for obtaining Adam, which is used to upgrade your genetic abilities (Plasmids), are inclined to trust you. Whether you reward their trust by protecting them and helping them in their duties, or harvest the Adam within their bellies and kill them in the process, your choices will determine the fate of this flooded utopia.

The enemies have been vastly refined from the first game. Enemy Big Daddys are more varied in their abilities, but their unexpected speed is still their most unnerving skill. The crazed locals wield Plasmids, weapons, and their own deformed bodies as weapons with a new ferocity, often attacking in much larger groups and with greater diversity than in the first game.  Bioshock 2’s combat has been drastically refined, and the chunkiness and awkward shooting of the original feel smoother and quicker, which is surprising considering the player’s constraint to a diving suit.

The story is less captivating than its forebear, tasking the player with finding the Little Sister he is charged with protecting before his mental conditioning kills him. The characters met along the journey are interesting, but they lack the imposing presence of Andrew Ryan and Atlas of the first game. Thankfully, Ryan does appear in select audio logs scattered throughout the city.

The ability to adopt the Little Sister allows the player to carry the girl to a corpse that she will harvest from, while Dad defends against an alerted horde of enemies with traps and weapons. It’s an interesting new concept, but it can grow tedious quickly.

Visual hiccups can be significant at times, with sloppy texturing and rendering glitches occurring unpleasantly often. Level design also has an unwelcome feeling of déjà vu, often dropping the player among all too recognizable décor and scrawled messages.

The multiplayer is a welcome addition. With Call of Duty style levels and abilities matched with unique gameplay modes, combined with the notable ability to become a singular Big Daddy on the map and tear through the other players like tissues, the experience is very rewarding.

Unfortunately, the inherent inaccuracy of the period weapons and large health bars slow the pace of the combat. The longevity of the online play feels limited, as many players are already returning to more competitive titles like Call of Duty and Halo.

There has been a perpetual struggle with encouraging the player to experiment with abilities and weapons. Though some new features truly do allow some exciting combinations, a handful of weapons become a dependable standby with plentiful ammunition the player will be tripping over, rarely necessitating variation.