The return to Rapture is a trip worth taking
Bioshock 2's story picks up ten years after the original. After a pretty interesting intro, you wake up to find a destroyed city, and that you are a Big Daddy. A creature that was created to protect Little Sisters, who collect ADAM from dead bodies. ADAM is a drug like substance that can alternate a human's DNA, and give special abilities that a far beyond a normal human. But your not just any Big Daddy, you're the original prototype, otherwise known as Project Delta. And your only goal is to reunite with your Little Sister Eleanor Lamb, who is the daughter of Rapture's new leader, Sofia Lamb. Sofia Lamb is almost the exact opposite of Rapture's last leader, Andrew Ryan. Instead of believing in the power of your own selfish goal, Sofia believes in the power of all. She is the leader of the group that's now taken over Rapture, The Family.
The story is a pretty powerful tale. My only problem with it is that it doesn't touch the memorable moments that were in the first game. Anyone who's played Bioshock probably realizes that the story was what really made the game. So it's kind of disappointing that the story doesn't draw you in as much as the first game. But like the original, the story is better then you'll probably find in most other games. So if you're looking for a good story, you'll find one here.
But if you're looking for improvements over the first game, you will find them. The combat in the game has a much better feel this time around. The guns have a harder punch to them. Like in the original, you can use plasmids. Plasmids are powers that you can use from getting ADAM, and they give you abilities like shooting fire, turn splicers against each other, or summing insects to hunt down your enemies. But what makes them better this time around is that you now have the ability to use your guns and plasmids at the same time, which the game calls, duel wielding. Instead of freezing your enemy then switching to your shotgun to take them out, you can freeze them and shoot them without hesitation. This makes the combat faster paced, and more satisfying.
Since you are a Big Daddy this time around, you have the ability to harvest a Little Sister, and get a large amount of ADAM, or this time around you can adopt the Little Sister. When you adopt a Little Sister, you can carry her over to a vent, and rescue her and turn her back into a little girl, or you can take her around and collect ADAM from the corpses laying around Rapture. If you choose to collect ADAM, you'll be put into a kind of horde mode, where splicers will come non-stop and keep attacking you. This brings a whole new level of excitement to the game. If you're having a hard time with a level after you've adopted a Little Sister, you can go up to a vent at any time, and once again harvest her. Making the moral choices that much more powerful. After you deal with every Little Sister in an area, you'll then have to deal with a Big Sister. Big Sisters are Little Sisters that have grown up, and taken armor from their fallen Big Daddy. Since Little Sisters gather ADAM, now that they've aged a bit, they use that ADAM for plasmids. So Big Sisters are not only fast, they can use Plasmids like Telekinesis. Fighting the Big Sister is much harder than the Big Daddy fights, which haven't changed any since the first game. The thing that makes the Big Sister fights differ from the Big Daddy fights the most is that the Big Sister will continue to fight you, until she is defeated, unlike the Big Daddy.
Another thing that is new in Bioshock 2 is the multiplayer. For anyone who played the original Bioshock, multiplayer was probably pretty low on your list of things needed for a sequel. But the multiplayer works out surprisingly well. The multiplayer is actually story based. It takes place during the Civil War during the fall of Rapture. You play as any of the selected characters, on the side of either Ryan, or Atlas. All the modes are pretty standard modes for a multiplayer game, but they all have a Bioshock twist. What makes the multiplayer so much fun is the better combat from the story that is present, and using plasmids on other players is a lot more fun then using them on the AI in Story mode. There is also a level up system similar to the last few Call of Duty games. So you can customize your character with different weapons, and plasmids as you level up. This gives you a motive to keep playing, and will likely keep you coming back.
It may be disappointing that Bioshock 2's story doesn't quite live up to that of the original, but it's still a great story. With Bioshock 2's better combat, great moral choices, and addictive multiplayer, there are plenty of reasons to return to Rapture. If you haven't played the original Bioshock, you might want to play that game first. But for the rest of us, you owe it to yourself to play Bioshock 2.