Bioshock 2

Climbing into a metal daddy’s clunky iron shell and moving around the Atlantean city of Rapture is a very different gaming experience. It’s nothing like the sluggish and claustrophobic Big Daddy level of the original and it’s 20,000 leagues away from your tentative adventure as the decidedly punier and softer Jack Ryan. Known as ‘Delta’, a prototype Big Daddy, your every step is an iron-shod stamp at a heavy manufacturing plant and the first time we caught a glimpse of our own shadow, that of a drill-wielding, bubble-bonce giant, we span on our axis only to attack the air behind us.

The hacking mini game has been replaced by a much simpler game based on reflexes

But Delta’s not as badass as you’d think in this decrepit, post-Andrew Ryan dystopia. If you expect to swat Splicers away like insects then you won’t be entirely disappointed: at melee range they take a fraction of a second more for your arm-mounted drill to blitz into mincemeat than steak in a wood-chopper. But they’re at least as fast as you are, wield various projectile weapons and attack in numbers, so you’ll rely on as much guile as sheer brawn to get by. We discovered this the hard way, but the major advantage Delta has over any other Big Daddy in the Bioshock series is that it is an sentient creation that has “awakened” to regain its autonomy. And the new boss of Rapture, managing director Sophia Lamb who is as cold and cruel as Fontaine was twisted, is not happy with this situation at all.

The feel of this new Rapture isn’t that of the original’s anarchic asylum, where multiple factions vied for power and anyone unfortunate enough to cross the lighthouse threshold was fair game for the sadistic pastimes of its denizens. Sophia Lamb is the unambiguous master of this domain and its collection of colourful, homicidal maniacs. As the usurper of Andrew Ryan’s regime she preaches the “suppression of self”, effectively a self-imposed psychological lobotomy via mantra and sheer mind over matter that apparently, is the means to realising a sort of Nirvana within her cult. And you, as an aborted experiment that has somehow achieved self-awareness, represent the antithesis to her dogma, an abomination that must be destroyed. Cue an assortment of rabid, deformed Splicers and far worse crawling out from every rivet and seam in the metropololis as Lamb rallies her troops over the Tannoy.

Tackling the front line of abominations arrayed throughout each level is tactically different from Rapture of old. Unlike his predecessors, Delta has the capacity to improve beyond the hard-wiring of his nature and can equip plasmids as well as upgrade a roster of weaponry that swaps out the archaic drill. Bioshock fans will be well-acquainted with most of the plasmids available to Delta and the means of upgrading them by spending Adam in the Gatherers Garden vending machines. So picking up the electric, incinerate and telekinesis plasmids that are the foundation of your DNA arsenal won't come as any surprise. But 2K promised a much, much deeper experience all round and tactically, you options during and even prior to battle increase exponentially once you've equipped the cyclone plasmid, picked up trap rivets for your rivet gun and furnished yourself with a few choice tonics.

In the words of Harry Hill, “Fiiiiiiiiiight!�

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