In the ten years that separate the end of Bioshock from the beginning of its sequel, the underwater city of Rapture has deteriorated. It’s not that the place has necessarily decayed, though the art deco signage and once plush 1930’s fixtures and fittings exhibit perhaps a little more wear, tear and gunshot wounds than before. Rather, it’s those inhabitants that roam its deep-sea corridors who have worsened with the passing of time, their hellish mutations accelerated yet further by another decade’s worth of substance abuse.

ADAM, the curious, DNA-altering essence extracted from sea slugs and injected into the veins of Rapture’s bored and disillusioned citizens, has diversified and toughened the city’s monstrous population in terrible ways. If Bioshock was about the utopia project turned to dystopian ruin, then Bioshock 2 examines what happens when dystopias descend to hells. 2K Marin is quick to point out that Jack, the brawny but essentially human protagonist from the first game, simply would not survive in this cruel new world of heroin-chic splicers and ethically-bankrupt scientists.

So perhaps it’s just as well that this time around, you play not as a plane crash survivor who stumbles serendipitously into Rapture’s depths, but rather a prototype Big Daddy, one of the hulking creatures – part oversized diver, part portable drill bit – who plod its network of underwater tunnels. Known only as Subject Delta, your character has become separated from his little sister, one of the waif-like girls who accompany each Big Daddy around Rapture harvesting ADAM from its dead and dying citizens. Subject Delta has gained sentience and, importantly, a free will of his own. Unshackled from the whims of his creator, you’re free from the relentless task of hunting ADAM; free, if 2k Marin are to be believed, to become whoever you choose to become.

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