This game is so similar to Bioshock one that I’m having a hard time writing this. It’s good, but it’s not nearly as impactful as the first game. It relies on a different perspective for its storytelling that’s refreshing, but from a gameplay standpoint does not offer many new gameplay elements.

The story this time around is centered around a Big Daddy and a Little Sister. You play as “Delta” who is a Big Daddy that’s mentally aware. You are trying to get back your Little Sister (Evelyn) which just-so-happens to be the new leader of Rapture’s daughter. She has more control over her powers and is aware as well. Initially it was cool to play as a Big Daddy and understand their perspective. The societal intricacies are explained in more depth, but nothing much really happens throughout the narrative. The game is mostly riding a train to a destination, clearing a roadblock and continuing on. There are some NPC storylines in these areas that try to interest you in their machinations, but most of them fell flat for me.

I can’t bring myself to do the evil stuff, so I did a good guy playthrough and man it was a slog. To save Little Sisters in this game you have to kill their Big Daddy and adopt them. Once you do, you can either deposit them immediately, which gets you little Adam, or take them to two bodies to extract Adam and fend off waves of enemies. This takes quite a bit of time, though the reward for these is obviously great. As Adam gives the same benefits as the first game. Big Daddy gets a drill and harpoon gun, but otherwise the powers and weapons are all the same as the first game. It got old fast. I really didn’t want to partake in the combat much, but I will say the hacking change was the single greatest thing they did. It’s now a simple rhythm-based check. It removes a lot of the tediousness from the first game and I really liked how simplistic they made it. It’s too bad that saving Little Sisters became a three-step process as this change reimplemented the tedious feeling that hacking gave in the first game.

One of the main problems I had was the lack of respect for the player’s time. Almost every scenario was “You can’t pass here without doing these things” then when you went to do the second thing on that list, “You can’t access this without doing this first,” rinse and repeat. I understand that this game is relatively older, but I can’t excuse the absolute waste of time some of these levels exuded. I actually ended up playing most of the game on “easy” so I wouldn’t have to worry about dying while I ran through the levels.

There isn’t much new to explore. It’s still Rapture, and though the areas you see are new, they don’t evoke any new feelings. Most of the game felt like DLC for the first game. Hold on, let me look up when one and two came out, because I’m thinking they were really close… Apparently there was a three year gap, which is baffling to me. There’s almost nothing new here other than the narrative, but the route to getting the best ending is the same, save the Little Sisters.

I liked the game as it was just more Bioshock one, but it really didn’t do much different. I even tried to just use the drill as much as possible to spice it up. If you played the first game and want more, this is for you. Unfortunately there was not enough new here for me, so I wasn’t able to enjoy it as much as I wanted to. Here’s hoping Infinite spices it up!