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BioShock 2 rarely gets the respect it deserves, though it's not too difficult to see why. It was a sequel nobody was really crying out for, even before we got our first glimpse at Columbia - a return to a city whose story felt comprehensively finished, and one looking more like a retread than a revolution.There's some truth in that, especially in terms of combat and graphical style - though BioShock 2 does refine much of the original experience. There's more to it than raw mechanics though, and while it's far from one of the best sequels ever made, giving it a chance reveals it as one of the smartest. Its moment of genius? New creative director Jordan "Fort Frolic" Thomas (an odd middle name, admittedly...) and team taking the original game and ruthlessly inverting all its themes. Same city, new perspective.
The new main character establishes the tonal shift. In BioShock you'd been a squishy man, but now you're an elite Big Daddy called Subject Delta, with a drill-arm capable of carving through splicers with impunity. BioShock's focus was primarily on the elites of Rapture, while BioShock 2 spends its time walking amongst the poor. The villain's philosophy is collectivism, mirroring Ryan's objectivism, taken to the point where altruistic selflessness turns into arrogant disinterest in the individual. The first game assumed ignorance of Rapture, while the sequel requests a decent level of familiarity. It was also primarily a story of what had happened, whereas BioShock 2 is about what happens next - about Rapture's final legacy to the world.
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