BioShock 2

The player slips into the mighty boots of Delta, making his way in a typical first-person-shooter-style through the city of Rapture to find and confront Dr. Sophia Lamb, who holds Eleanor against her will. The switch of perspective brings with it a few changes in gameplay. The most important being, that the player can now use both one of the eleven available plasmids and one of the several different weapons at the same time, allowing him to burn enemies while pumping them full of bullets. Other plasmids include “Winter Blast” which freezes an enemy or “Scout” which allows the player to leave his body and look around unnoticed. The weapons range from the famous Big-Daddy-Drill over a powerful double-barrel-shotgun to a grenade launcher.

As in the first game, both weapons and plasmids are upgradeable. While the weapons just require the player to find a special workstation, upgrades for plasmids and tonics (granting passive effects) are bought at special vending machines called “Gatherer’s Garden” with the rare substance called “Adam”. As in the first game, the Little Sisters roaming the levels are the key to getting access to Adam. But since the player himself is a Big Daddy, the process is a bit different this time around. While the player still needs to kill the accompanying Big Daddy to get access to the Little Sister, he can choose to adopt it afterwards instead of just harvesting it.

Setting down a Little Sister to harvest a body will unleash hell as every splicer in the level will try to kill her, requiring the player to protect the little girl from harm until its finished collecting. Once a Little Sister has harvested two bodies, the player can again either harvest her himself, or free her. Either action grants him more or less Adam and at the same time may alert a Big Sister.

Another important change is the new hacking-mini-game which requires the player to hit the green or blue spaces on a gauge with a constantly spinning needle. If he doesn’t hit the right field, he either gets an electro-shock or will sound the alarm. A successful hack on the other will lower the prices at vending machines or turn turrets over to the player’s side.