The faint trickling of water. Blue neon flickers in the shadows. To your right, a garden of large coral glows crimson, overwhelming a decaying stairway. To your left, a silhouette standing tall with chest out, arms aloft, and judging all caught in its stony gaze. Above you, the decorative bronze that once flaunted freedom with pride is now overrun with a scrawling of Revelation 18:2 that shrieks out: “Fallen. Fallen is Babylon.” In the darkness of a vent, a pair of small yellow eyes shine out, watching every one of your slow, uneasy steps into the horrors beyond. Welcome back to Rapture, son.

It is a very welcome return indeed to the gold-tinted luminescence of this Atlantis. For all of its intoxicating powers and sinister subversion, BioShock was always about Rapture. Its crumbling art deco, its tinny bubbliness, all set against composer Garry Schyman’s wistful strings and the ubiquitous ocean blue. While not quite the same, as replicating Rapture’s astoundment is an impossibility, BioShock 2 gets close enough. The sequel’s mystery is inherent to the ten year gap since the first game’s events, as each new corner, bloodied defacement, and terror-filled audio tape delves further into Rapture’s dark secrets. While animation niggles sadly resurface, Rapture retains its eerie beauty without palpable graphical touch-ups.

Speaking of audio tapes, the voice acting is once again dead-on. Replicating Armin Shimerman’s excellent performance as ruthless visionary Andrew Ryan is a tough task, but Fenella Woolgar’s cold, dominant portrayal of altruist Sofia Lamb is a strong replacement. The Southern drawl of new radio support Augustus Sinclair (Doug Boyd), mixed with his explicitly selfish motives, plays craftily on memories of the previous game’s betrayal.

Not your character’s memories, of course, as BioShock 2 follows a brand new avatar. The 2K team attempted something different this time around by slotting you inside the Big Daddy’s shell, but there’s no elaborate statement on convention here. While the goal of your quest is to escape once again, the city’s constant loathing for and moral discrediting of you and your actions asks absorbing questions of your motivation. In one scene, you intrude on a couple quietly dancing. As you soon raid their corpses for loot, your claim of self-defense feels somewhat debatable.

 

 

BioShock 2’s plot starts off rather sluggishly, although it is interspersed with a few dramatic moments. The new mutiny in Rapture leisurely surfaces between the evil Lamb and her extraordinary daughter Eleanor, with you caught unwittingly in the middle of their family dispute. This tussle evolves rather slowly and predictably, although things pick up towards the end when Lamb makes her cataclysmic final move. Thankfully, the pacing near the end is far improved from the protracted original’s final hours. As said before, do not expect lightning to strike twice with the same rod, but do expect some creative, captivating scenes throughout the campaign. Also to its credit, BioShock 2 treats you as if you’ve played the original, something not enough sequels are brave enough to do.

Surprisingly, the subplots of BioShock 2 offer the best scripting, with the Gil Alexander story acting as a fascinating diversion in particular. Alexander, a man with a premonition of his upcoming psychosis, lays out an itinerary for you to follow in order to defeat his now insane self. This leads to a host of bizarre scenarios, as well as some riotous ones – be prepared when you enter stage left. Having said that, one significant criticism of the plot is that it’s hard to believe in the emergence of prominent sequel characters--like Lamb, Sinclair and Alexander--when they simply weren’t there the first time around. At least the game doesn’t complicate matters by getting too wrapped up in explanations.

But that’s the issue that BioShock 2 has dealt with since it was announced: does the sequel belong in that universe, acting as a continuation of such a stand-alone masterpiece, or does it feel a little out of place? Fear not, because the answer is yes, as the 2K teams have worked hard to ensure that BioShock 2 belongs. To do so, however, they had to play things safe, both in the game’s sluggish, slightly detached story and in a few other areas.