Time to get CONTRAVERCIAL, people!

BIOSHOCK 2! That whooshing sound you just heard, reader, was the exultant cries of hundreds of 2K Marin fans at the mere subconscious mention of Bioshock 2. And there it is AGAIN! I will admit, Bioshock 2 got through even my cynical armor to my soft, nougaty core. Once again, the keyword is atmosphere. Or... is it?

Sadly, no. It's not.

In case you've been under a rock for the past several years, Bioshock 2 is a followup to the widely-acclaimed first game, from 2K Marin. In case you've had a life for the past 20 years, Bioshock was the "spiritual successor" (read: complete clone) of the Crystal Dragon Jesus that is System Shock 2, which is basically, the Matrix meets a God complex. Bioware is the same game, but now the really scary AI, SHODAN, is the really AWESOME magnificent bastard Andrew Ryan, and the Matrix part is a giant underwater city that was secretly built by a group of seditious artists. Hooray for original plots!

The sequel casts you as a Bid Daddy, who were in the first game, basically Pyramid Head from Silent Hill 2 in a steampunk deep-sea diving suit with a drill instead of a sword, who guard freaky little vampiric girls called Little Sisters, who drain the dead of blood, and do it all in a rather disturbingly perky, innocent way.

That was in the first game. Apparently, Big Daddies have suffered an immense drop in badassitude, because now every insane genetic aberration is banging down bulkheads to take a shot at you. Anyway, you, Delta (AKA Topside Johnny, deep-sea diver with Balls of Steel), must reconnect with your Little Sister, now all grown up and suffering from acute Alma-itis. (If you don't get it, play F.E.A.R., you uncultured toad) Mummy dearest is a psychologist gone wrong controlling the entire city like some kind of goddamn giant Manson family. And then there's Big Sister... Big Sister is always watching.

All that sounds incredibly atmospheric and scary, right? Wrong. The tension from the first game? Gone. The idea that the entire world has fallen apart and you've come just in time to be eaten by the wolves gnawing at the corpses? Gone. The wrist-tattoos? Gone. No horror, no messages scrawled on walls in probably-human blood beyond the repeated-so-often-it-got-annoying "We will be reborn in the Ocean".

It's still a great shooter, and the fact that you can dual-wield your giant .50-cal machine gun and still have a hand left over to use your psychic flamethrower (yes, it's actually a flamethrower) to cook gribblies like Will Smith stopping an alien invasion makes it all the better. The problem is, we have thousands of good, solid FPS's. I have at least 10 of them right in front of me. What made Bioshock great was the fact that it was scary. Atmosphere is gone, and what made Rapture Rapture went with it. Good, but not great. Now, would you kindly...