raptures back and a hell of a lot scaryer
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 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 move forward. 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.