Bioshock was one of those strange creatures - the spiritual successor - and has now spawned its own literal successor Bioshock 2. The end of Bioshock (either one) didn't really lend itself to an obvious sequel... and the nature of the game itself - which is to say one that invested itself so heavily in a single locale - rather committed any sequels that might come to again returning to the underwater dystopia of Rapture. Naturally, that's not a bad thing per se because the atmosphere of Rapture was superb but it does mean that the game is going to be covering familiar territory.

And indeed, it does. Despite the fact you're playing as a Big Daddy - the most iconic adversary from the original game - very little has changed. Hardly anything, in fact. You still have guns and plasmids... the place is still full of crazy splicers and you do research with a "genetic camera" but other than that, it's all quite similar. The only big difference is a somewhat insubstantial one - the weapons are different. As a Big Daddy (well, Big Daddy prototype... at the start of the game, you're as weak as a kitten) you get a drill as your default weapon and a rivet gun, later collecting a Gatling gun, shotgun, remote hacking tool, rock launcher and the like. This is really the ONLY area of the game where it feels like anything substantial has been reworked.

Plasmids are almost completely unchanged, there are a few more tonics and unlike the first game, you have a common pool for them, rather than only getting X number of tonics for one type of enhancement... The enemies haven't changed a great deal. There is exactly one type of new splicer - the Brute, who is somewhere between the Incredible Hulk and Mr. Hyde from the lamentable Van Helsing film (or The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, take your pick). They're easily the most powerful of the splicers but still some way below a Big Daddy. There is in fact a NEW Big Daddy, the Rumbler - he uses turrets and stuff... and looks kinda different and of course, there's the much touted Big Sister. They're pretty damned rare, while you have to fight a Big Daddy every time you want to get a Little Sister, Big Sisters only turn up after you've harvested or saved about three Little Sisters... so, you'll fight only a handful of them... although, they are considerably more powerful than Big Daddys, with their plasmids and agility, so that's probably for the best... and that's ALL the new enemies, all three of 'em. Oh no! There are two new versions of the Big Daddy, the Rumbler and the Alpha Series. So, four. Four new enemies.

The main change to gameplay - in fact, make that the ONLY change - is that as a Big Daddy, you can now adopt Little Sisters, after you kill their Big Daddy. So, to get more ADAM - the stuff that lets you buy fancy new plasmids to shoot fire, electricity and so on - you have your Little Sister harvest corpses... which leads to the splicers attack and naturally, you need to defend the Little Sister until she's done. In fact, if this leads to you having some deja vu - that'll be because you did this IN THE FIRST GAME. It's just that back then, it was an arbitrary task and had no reward beyond progressing in the game... so, yes innovation ladies and gentlemen!

No, you're definitely not going to be playing Bioshock 2 for revolutionary visuals or gameplay because this is very much more of the same. So, it's fair to say that if you liked the original game, then you will probably enjoy this... if not, then you won't like this. It's hard to say much more about the game - it's enjoyable enough, although even on hard with due diligence, not even Big Sisters or Big Daddys pose any real threat and regular enemies must attack en masse to be anything more than a nuisance. In fact, the game has something of an inverse difficulty curve - at the start of the game despite being a Big Daddy, you can be offed quite easily by a pair of splicers if you aren't paying attention, by the end of the game with the right plasmids (and it seems like the freeze plasmid might be a TAD overpowered when used in conjunction with a fully pimped drill) the only real challenge comes at the very end of the game when wave after wave of high level enemies are sent at you.

If one were to ignore the story, then this might as well be some extra levels for Bioshock, so few and far between are the differences. One might not necessarily see that as a bad thing, of course - Bioshock was an enjoyable game, as is this one and of course, this has the addition of multiplayer, if such things should interest you. So, if you liked Bioshock - get it and if you didn't don't bother.