Welcome to Rapture ... again

Just finished playing through Bioshock 2 on Xbox for the second time.

Those of you who are gamers probably are familiar with Bioshock even if you haven't played it.

The premise of the game is thus: Rapture is an underwater city created by Andrew Ryan who believed people should live as they want to, free of government and religion telling them how to live their lives.

Part of Ryan's "utopia" is that his scientists have developed a way for people to genetically alter themselves so that they can throw electric shocks, incinerate with fire, use telekinesis to manipulate objects ... you get the idea.

In the first game, Ryan basically losses his mind and dies and you have to defeat his under boss to save the city.

Bioshock 2 picks up where the first left off and you're now playing as one of the bad guys from the first game, a Big Daddy named "Subject Delta" who was the first Big Daddy ever created, so you're a good guy. This time out, you have to defeat the new leader of Rapture, Sophia Lamb, while looking for and saving your daughter, Eleanor.

And yes, I'm way over-simplifying the plot of the game and leaving out tons and tons of details (splicers, audio diaries, etc.). If you really want to delve deeper into the world of Bioshock, check out the Bioshock wiki here.

What's amazing about the game is how immersed one gets in the whole atmosphere of the game as you play. For starters, it looks simply gorgeous in the Art Deco style of the 1930s and 1940s. The sound, too, is all-encompassing as every single part of a good home theater system is used. More than once I would turn around because I heard something in the background and thought someone (or something) was behind me.

Making my way around Rapture and looking at the environments, I kept thinking (as I did with the first game) how cool it would have been to see Rapture before it went to hell. You're in a decaying world in which most things are broken down or rotting and it would be amazing to see what this world looked like at its zenith.

Anyway, the game play in BS2 is great, too, and improved upon from the first game. You're free to mix and match the genetic alteration you want to use in whatever combinations you want whereas in the first game it was more restrictive.

And quite frankly, walking around Rapture as a Big Daddy is just too damn cool. At the end of the first game you actually became a Big Daddy and the second game has another plot twist that's just as bizarre.

**ALERT: MAJOR SPOILERS TO FOLLOW**

But for me, one of the best thing about the game is that it actually has three different endings. Depending on who and how many people you kill during the game, there can actually be three different outcomes:

• everyone lives happily ever after,
  
• you sacrifice yourself so that Eelanor may live, or
  
• you sacrifice Eleanor to save yourself.
  

What's really interesting, though, is that only if you sacrifice Eleanor do you get even the hint that there could be a Bioshock 3 and man, it's a hell of a teaser because of what the story line in the third game could be.

**SPOILER ALERT ENDS**

Overall, an excellent FPS game and a very worthy sequel to the first. As one reviewer put it, Bioshock didn't need a sequel, but I'm glad they made it anyway.