Bioshock2, $59.99 - PC (Reviewed) PS3, Xbox 360

Last week, we discussed the notion that the video game industry waxes and wanes like the cycles of the moon. It seems as if these content droughts last forever, but when it rains, it pours. The first three months of the year seem to be filled with large “blockbuster” game releases. January brought us BioWare’s Mass Effect 2 and this month we see the release of 2K Marin’s Bioshock 2. Next month, we’ll be seeing the Final Fantasy XIII among other releases. It’s a good time to be a gamer.

The original Bioshock brought us something special. The idea of an art deco styled underwater utopia gone wrong (Rapture) was something that elicited an experience that no other first-person shooter had provided before. Add to that the idea of genetic modifications that would allow you to possess the power of the elements and you had something truly unique. Gameplay quirks like being able to shock large amounts of enemies though electrocuting the water they stand in, setting “tornado traps, augmenting your weapons with upgrades, and the ever-so-creepy little sisters that crawl their way through a network of tunnels really made the game have a style of its own. The whole game seemed to smell of stale cigars and issue a feeling of 1950s Vegas – you know, like Frank and the rat pack would come out of the corner wearing masks and wielding pipe wrenches... or something like that.

Fast-forward to Bioshock 2 and the gaming media is up in arms. New developer 2K Marin has a large amount of the same team members from Bioshock, but everyone seems to worry that this underwater dystopia will have lost its bite after the fall of Andrew Ryan. Not to mention that you’re not playing the same character from the first game and it takes place 10 years after. After much anticipation and numerous “Will is suck?” articles the gaming media can finally come to a consensus, Rapture still rocks.

In the beginning of the game, you quickly find out that no one has done a thing to repair the ailing Rapture. Water gushes from cracks in glass, small fires burn uncontrollably, and the splicers (people who are essentially the crack heads of genetic modification) still run wild. Andrew Ryan is done and gone and Jack (The unfortunate soul from the first title) is no more. In his place stands you, a “Big Daddy”, which looks like an overgrown 1930s deep-sea diver from hell. You’ll remember them as those corkscrew wielding defenders of the little sisters from the first game. In this title, you’re tasked with finding a specific little sister. You can find lots of audio logs and pick-ups that help to develop the story if you’d like, but delivery is pretty straightforward. You need to find her, and you have lots of tools at your disposal to do so.

This time around you get to control that giant corkscrew and yes, it’s just as devastating as it looks. Tearing through splicers like the cheap cork off of a bottle of Beringer, you’ll find the re-vamped weaponry is be a nice change of pace from the slow-to-fire guns of Bioshock.

One huge change in gameplay will allow the player to use both plasmids (those genetic modifications) and firearms at the same time. So instead of clumsily switching your fingers from the number row to the function keys, you’ll be able to set the appropriate plasmid and weapon before entering a firefight. This places much more emphasis on smooth gunplay and combat rather then deciding which weapon combination will get the job done.

In the previous title, your relationship with the little sisters was held to “freeing” the enslaved girls or “harvesting” their ADAM (essentially money collected from dead bodies). Since you play the big daddy this time around you have the option of harvesting the girls for resources or carrying them around on your shoulder, placing them down to harvest ADAM from bodies after a firefight. This adds another variable to the moral dilemmas presented to you when having to deal with the sisters.

You’re still able to hack turrets and sentry bots, although the Pipedream-esque mini-game is gone. Replaced by a twitch-reaction game that makes you stop a scrolling needle at a pre-determined point. Although this mini-game is much faster paced, it’s a little simple this time around. It is, however, nice to see that this iteration of the hacking system does not detract from the action taking place as it did in the old title. Some major game publications were bashing the developers for using the original game engine to power the sequel, but the level of detail in this version of rapture more than makes up for any lack of polygons. Since the original Bioshock was the first ever DirectX10 game, few users got to take advantage of the advantages of the graphic infrastructure. This time around, most gamers have DX10 compatible hardware and thus will be able to benefit from all of the environmental and particle effects. Add to all of this 2K’s telltale sound design, a wonderful score, and a fun if not addictive multiplayer (plasmids in play anyone?) and you have a fun and memorable romp back into Rapture.