A return trip to Rapture turns out to be just as exciting as the first time.
After the first Bioshock game you have become a big daddy. A bunch of stuff happens at the starting of the game and you are on your way to find your daughter who is also a little sister.
Game play: This game has a variety of guns and abilities to deal with your enemies. This makes for a very enjoyable fresh time with each encounter you have with a baddie. For example you can freeze your opponent then launch a spear rocket at them to watch them fly around the level or you can shock the water and electrocute 3 guys at once. For the most part though a lot of the stuff in this game is the same as the first only improved to the point of being much better than the last. You can still use your camera to "research(level)" creatures in order to gain bonus's. You can still hack all robotics(with a much quicker and better hacking system). Most of the bad guys are the same(there is only 9) but you never feel like your fighting the same thing twice. The boss battles are fairly weak and don't feel much stronger than the normal foes with the exception of the big sisters. I played on hard mode but I always had this feeling that my guys health was weak but with all the abilities I attained I also felt pretty badass. I would often find that if you rushed into a battle you would die no matter what but if you planned it out you would always come out on top which is nice to not play a game where you can rush in and head shot everything.
I think my favorite part in the game is when you get the little sisters. You get the option of letting them harvest up to two bodies for atom(used to buy your abilities/tonics). Once you let the little sister start harvesting a body a little bar pops up like a loading bar and as it is filling every bad guy with in a million miles comes out of the wood works and tries to kill you and the little sister. So for this brief 1-2 mins you are fighting off tons of guys however before you start you have a chance to set traps, and hack robots and so forth which can be very satisfying when you start harvesting and the guys come out of no where to get owned by your plans.
There are weapon upgrade stations, 14 of them to be exact which are crucial to getting through the game and you gotta get atom as well which can be done through little sisters or killing the big sisters Who appear after you are done with the little sisters for that specific level. think of them as a sub boss.
The atmosphere in this is relatively scary. the music when it starts to play is a very thriller kinda sound and makes you think something will pop around the corner to get you when usually it won't, but when it does let me tell you how fast you will be pulling that trigger:P. A lot of the AI will often be in conversation when you go unnoticed and there is plenty of audio logs to be found. The graphics are superb and the water is even better and to those that look and explore you will always be rewarded with items.
The last thing I will talk about are the abilities. You have plasmids and tonics. Plasmids are your active abilities like shooting fire out of your hand and tonics are your passive abilities that are always active. Depending on what kinda style of play you like best you can come up with some pretty interesting character builds. There definitely should be enough builds to satisfy your needs.
I would say if you played the first Bioshock you should definitely pick this up, but if you haven't maybe you should rent it as the main story is about 20 hrs long. I am sure this will come packaged with another game 6 months from now so pick it up when the price drops but definitely don't pass this game up altogether or you will be missing out.