Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: 2K Marin
System requirements: Windows XP SP2/Vista/Win 7, AMD 2.4 GHz or Intel 3.0 GHz CPU, 2 GB RAM, 11 GB hard-drive space, NVidia 7800GT or ATI Radeon X1900 or better graphics card, DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound card, Internet connection (required for activation and multiplayer)
Genre: First-person shooter
Release date: Available now

Welcome back to the beautiful (but decrepit), fallen city of Rapture, where the halls once again echo with the sins of the past. Set eight years after the events of Bioshock, Rapture is now under the control of psychiatrist Sofia Lamb. While Andrew Ryan believed in the genius of the individual, Lamb espouses collective effort and the power of the community. Under Lamb’s rule, the first generation of Little Sisters has matured into adolescence. She sends Big Sisters out to coastlines across the Atlantic, kidnapping little girls and turning them into new Little Sisters. Into this grim picture comes Subject Delta, a fourth-generation prototype of the Big Daddy with no memory of his past, chasing an unseen foe in search of answers and his own survival.

You visit an older, completely different area of Rapture this time around, connected by an old monorail line instead of by the bathyspheres. You continue to pick up audio diaries along the way, and you’ve got access to six new weapons: the drill, the rivet gun, the machine gun, the shotgun, the spear gun and the launcher, all of which can be upgraded up to three times at Power to the People stations. Unlike Bioshock, however, there are not enough stations to fully upgrade all the weapons, so you’ll have to choose your upgrades with care. Also unlike the original game, you can have a weapon and a plasmid equipped at the same time. Eventually, depending on your purchases at the Garden of Eden machines, you can have up to eight plasmids and 24 tonics installed at once.

Hacking is completely different in Bioshock 2 than it was in the first game. You actually have a tool able to launch darts at distant objects, so you no longer have to get close to dangerous items such as turrets. When you start hacking, instead of the electric fluid puzzles of Bioshock, you simply get a needle sweeping rapidly up and down a dial. The idea is to stop the needle in a green or blue zone. A white zone ends the hack with a nasty shock, and a red zone triggers security alarms. The research camera also returns to Rapture, but it works a bit differently this time. Instead of taking still photos, it works more like a movie camera. Lock onto an enemy and squeeze the trigger to start the camera rolling, then the game automatically switches back to your most recent weapon. I like the way the new research camera works, but I’m not so sure about the new hacking technique (though I love the ability to hack at long range).

Speaking of enemies, you’ll face the usual thuggish splicers, leadhead splicers, spider splicers, Houdini splicers, and varieties of Big Daddy. You’ll also face the new Brute Splicer and the Big Sister. The Big Sister in particular is extremely tough; it’s actually a good thing you only face about five or six of them. They’re almost as tough as a Big Daddy, but far more agile, with an arsenal of plasmids at their disposal and the ability to drain Adam from corpses to heal themselves.

Finally, there is actually a multiplayer component to Bioshock 2 in which you take on the role of a splicer fighting in Rapture’s civil war between Andrew Ryan and Frank Fontaine. There are seven different modes, including Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch, in which the player or team with the most kills at the end of the match wins; Capture the Sister (a variant on Capture the Flag); Adam Grab and Team Adam Grab, in which you must retain possession of a Little Sister for several minutes; and Turf War, in which you must capture and hold control points for the longest time. As you win Adam, your avatar goes up in rank. As your rank increases, you gain access to new weapons, plasmids, tonics, masks and melee weapons.

There are very few negative aspects to Bioshock 2. There are practically no bugs in the game, aside from a problem with the field of view when using 16:9 and 16:10 aspect ratios, which was quickly fixed with a patch. If I must pick one truly negative thing, it’s in the ending. There are six different endings to the game (depending on whether or not you saved or harvested the Little Sisters), and there are three places where you can choose to kill or spare the lives of some of the major characters. Two of the endings are very similar to two of the others, so there are actually only four endings. And despite having multiple endings, there is very little replay value in the single-player mode, since the only reason to play it again would be to see the other endings (which you can watch by going to YouTube).

Overall, though, Bioshock 2 is a very good addition to anyone’s game collection. The single-player campaign is substantial in length, and the multiplayer mode extends the value even further. Plus, the developers are planning some DLC, mostly for the multiplayer modes. The first, the Sinclair Solutions Test Pack, is due out on March 11. I’m really looking forward to seeing what else 2K Games has in mind for Rapture. There are rumors that there could be as many as four more games in the series, so the tale of Rapture is far from finished.

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