This sequel tricks out the scenery and throws in some new thrills, drills and kills, but it otherwise plays the same.
A decade has passed since your last visit, and the shattered utopia aquatic is looking a lot worse for wear. Its remaining denizens are yet more crazed - most still hopped up on that processed stem-cell juice called Adam, though some of them have set about riveting the place back together at its busted seams. Also, a few of Rapture's fêted "Little Sisters" have Big Daddied up into Big Sisters with a hate on for you in your old school Daddy armor. And there you are, ensconced from Jump Street in that scuba gear cum warrior armor that took a whole game to don last time around.
But the thrill is gone, primarily because the game's once-astonishing dystopian atmosphere, its coolio retro tech chic, its tailor-made, Alice in faux-Arian-nation gene splicing mythos and that distinct, dual wielding techno-telekinesis (technokinesis?) and bionic reamer shtick were all breathtaking the first go round. Now, it's a lackadaisical case of "didn't we just leave this party?"
Like the first game, BioShock 2 remains aware of your choices and conundrums, deeds and inactions, self-preserving sensibilities or altruistic tendencies, and will deliver different experiences if you play it more than once.
The tale it tells is well written, often clever and certifiably twisty, but you know, been there, done that, got the t-shirt, washing my car with it. That kind of originality. A tale you won't particularly care about, something along the lines of "blah blah blah science," "blah blah blah matriarchal communism," and "blah blah blah trust no one." There's that t-shirt again. Whatever. Just find some fuel for your bionic reamer and drill those Splicers a new one. Maybe toss a little projectile electroshock therapy their way first. Have fun.
This is not to say that Rapture is no longer a wonder to behold. Visually, it's as drop-dead gorgeous as ever - aurally immersive as all get out and pretty good with the tactile tub-thumping feedback felt in the controller, too.
And whether you've played the original or no, there's plenty of opportunity to explore and scavenge for loot and food (yay! Beans!). The habitat is bent and clogged in such a way that you are roaming through the same old in new ways, coming up against some new, some iconic baddies now calling this second-generation Rapture home. But it's not the massively convoluted complex of old, the one that you could roam freely. The illusion of corridors ad infinitum remains, but this second visit is decidedly linear, a structured stroll from A to B with some action and/or intrigue in between.
It's now much easier to "hack" computers, drones and door locks, too, thanks to a spiffy swing meter that seems more at home in a golf game than the pipe-fitters jigsaw hacking routine of old. Just a well-timed button press or two and poof, you've got hack.
In fact, if anything, BioShock 2 has dumbed down complexity of the whole shebang. It's an unoriginal sequel that plays more like a straight-up shooter that happens to be set in a whacked out underwater world, rather than the whacked out, underwater sci-fi deco role-playing game (RPG) hybrid of the original. Fair enough. It's great like that. But it succeeds only because it's riding on the shoulders of the original Big Daddy game, BioShock, and steering by rote.
- BioShock 2 TIP: Trust no one. Duh.
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