It's time to return to Rapture

For whatever reason, I was really slow to pick up on the first Bioshock game.

Bioshock 2
2K Games
Xbox 360
Hayden Meikle
Four Stars (Out of 5)

It was probably a good six months after its release that I finally played it.

Two weeks after that, I put it down with a very satisfied smile on my face.

Futuristic (yawn), first-person shooters (been there, done that) flood the gaming market but there was something about this game - its atmospheric underwater world, its engrossing storyline, its playability - that really clicked.

Now it's sequel time.

The game returns to the fictional dystopian city of Rapture, with events taking place 10 years on from the original.

A big change is the playable character: you're now Subject Delta, the first Big Daddy, a sort of bodyguard clad in a large and formidable underwater suit, and you are in search of the Little Sister to whom you were first bound.

(It is impossible to do the Bioshock or Bioshock 2 story justice in a few hundred words.

You really need to play it to understand what it's about.)Into this tortured world you head, and you soon find some handy weapons to protect you from the splicers (humans gone bad) and other Big Daddies, whom you must attack to gain access to Little Sisters hoarding ADAM, the material used to purchase plasmids and tonics, special gene-altering abilities.

The main weapons at play are a huge drill, which is a bit cumbersome and constantly runs out of fuel, and a rivet gun.

A change from the first game is the ability to dual-wield, so you can equip a plasmid (perhaps an electro bolt) in the left hand and a gun in the right.

Hacking into security bots is again a regular feature, though the pipe mini-game has been replaced by a simple swinging needle that must be stopped within a certain colour.

The levels are super-deep and super-atmospheric, the narrative is gripping and the run-shoot action is intense.

Bioshock 2 might not be a quantum leap from the first game, but it is a worthy follow-up.