I just finished BioShock 2. IMO, it measures up in every way to its predecessor, and definitely has me looking forward to BioShock Infinite. The basic gameplay is the same, but I really can't complain about that because BioShock's gameplay was just plain fun. The new interaction with the Little Sisters is very cool, if often frustrating: rather than just rescuing or harvesting, you can now have each one lead you to two "angels:" corpses full of ADAM which the Little Sister will then harvest for you. After the second angel, you take your Little Sister to the nearest vent, where you have the familiar options of rescuing (killing the implanted sea slug from the inside and returning her to normalcy, gaining a modest about of ADAM in the process) or harvesting (ripping the slug out of her, killing the child but gaining much more ADAM). The frustration comes from the fact that as soon as a Little Sister begins to harvest ADAM from a corpse, Splicers and (later on) Alpha-series Big Daddies spawn with the objective of lodging a spliced-up foot in your armored ass. Some angels are located in defensible positions where you can use traps to thin the foes' ranks, but most of them are out in the open and/or in places where there are too many entrances to monitor effectively. Expect to die.

One of my favorite callbacks to the first game is the fact that you can now execute the Big Daddy's signature drill charge: you rev the drill, then charge forward at great speed, dealing heavy damage to whatever you hit. Most Splicers can be killed in one hit. Big Daddies... not so much. There are a couple of new Big Daddy variants: the Rumbler, armed with a grenade/rocket launcher, and the Alpha, which are prototypes like the player character and wield the same weapons (either a rivet gun, shotgun, or machine gun). The Big Sisters are outright terrifying: heralded by a scream that sounds like a steam engine being tortured, faster than any other foe, teleporting, plasmid-using, wall- and ceiling-running, giant arm-mounted syringe-wielding maniacs who continue to pursue you even after you die and respawn. The game never really explains where they come from, who made them, or for what purpose; all you know is that they want you dead and are eminently capable of making that happen.

The only real complaint I can level at BioShock 2 is that the story follows essentially the same arc as the original: a rogue influence arises in Rapture and challenges the local visionary, who in the end chooses suicide over defeat. The only difference is that there's no bait-and-switch, no Fontaine-analogue: the Big Bad is exactly who you think it is. Still, the ride is fun, even if you can see the ending from the start.

Bottom line: If you like BioShock, you will like BioShock 2.

I liked Bioshock 2. My only initial complaint was that the diving helmet HUD thingie was distracting at first, but I got over it.

The helmet occupied so little onscreen real estate that the only times I ever noticed it were the underwater sequences, when it became more prominent.

If the vita-chamber mechanic from the first game is still present, then this is completely irrelevant. The vita-chamber ruined any challenge in the first game for me. Since the damage you inflicted on enemies in the game persisted between vita-chamber respawns, you could quite literally beat everything in the game to death with the wrench, provided you wanted to take the time.

You have the option to play with no Vita-chambers in Bioshock 2.

Also, I'm not 100% sure, but I think they made opponents reset their health much faster when out of combat - every time I died and ran back most opponents seemed to be back to full health.



-k

You can disable those if you want.

Can you?

No idea. I never used them in the first game (Even when going through with a wrench as my only weapon on hard) and only used them twice in Bioshock 2. That first Big Sister fight is a real doozy. Was for me at least.


Except that in this one I'm fairly sure that if you die while a Little Sister is harvesting, you lose the Little Sister, which is a big chunk of ADAM. Could be wrong about that though.
I've actually found that they are almost exclusively in locations that are good for setting up defenses, and with the ability to put traps in cyclones, summon your own upgraded security bots, and about 3-4 different trap type weapons, setting defenses up is generally fairly easy.


Actually the game goes quite in depth as to where they come from, who made them, and what their purpose is. Not really a spoiler, but just in case you want to find out on your own:


It has similar elements in that we're looking at another power that challenged Fontaine, and we are of course still in rapture. But otherwise... quite different. Instead of being... oh, right...


But yeah, I'm looking forward to the new Bioshock as well. That sky rail thing looks cool, and I'll likely waste a good bit of time just riding around on those if the game will let me in a fun area with lots of them to jump between.

Yeah, it was in the options when starting a new game.