When the first installment of BioShock was released in 2007, I wasn’t quite sure what I was getting into when I picked it up. The hype for the game was impressive, and since I am a huge fan of forward-thinking first person shooters (FPS), I had reserved a copy.

The concept seemed cool: Your character, surviving a plane crash, drifts upon a mysterious entrance to Rapture, an underwater city founded in the 1960’s to escape the status quo of societal norms. The city recruited the brightest scientific minds of the day to experiment freely within its walls. But soon you find the darker side of this dystopian society.

Everything about the game was phenomenal. From a pure game-play standpoint, it was almost a new class of game altogether. It blended the role playing game (RPG) and FPS genres seamlessly to the point that you weren’t even sure which you were playing, but it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that you couldn’t stop playing. The new open world format for the shooter gave players the choice to explore freely and tackle objectives as they chose. The game was also open-ended, a characteristic you would find in all good RPGs, allowing the choices that the player makes throughout the game to have a direct impact on how it all ends.

Graphically, the game was innovative in its use of nostalgic realism, and the use of water and color throughout the game was impressive. I was sucked in from the first hour, and in terms of total game-play hours, it was far from a let down. There’s nothing more disappointing than a great game that sucks you in just in time to realize that you’ve beaten it in a week. BioShock didn’t disappoint. Boasting an average game-play time that nearly doubles some other notable titles, it seemed this game had found a winning formula of exploration, strategy, and action.

The result was a game with a deep immersive story that you really felt a part of as the player (as you’ll find in any RPG worth its salt), while never for a moment loosing the intense action of a good FPS. Even the mood and feel of the game were impressive: scary at points and dark in tone, but not restricted to the ‘horror game’ niche. Aesthetically the game carries a retro feel—accomplished in character costumes, setting, and sound—while remaining somewhat futuristically themed. All things considered, the bar had been raised. BioShock was named “Game of the Year” by IGN, and in past game reviews I have even humbly dubbed it “the best game ever created.”

So with all the success of the first title, the release of BioShock 2 in February 2010 was much anticipated. There was good reason to expect good things from this game. Forums had been buzzing about it for some time. The developers, 2k Games, had remained extremely tight-lipped about the details of the sequel which made the scene ripe for speculation. I saw rumors that the new game would be set in New York. False. A host of other rumors online turned out to be false as well.

So, could they really top their first effort? I hate to say it, but, no.

Let me start by saying this: I’m not disappointed because it’s not a good game—or even because it’s that much worse than the first one. It is a good game, but I guess what is frustrating is that it’s exactly the same game as the first.

Sure, your character is different, and there are plenty of storyline changes. There are some new allies and new enemies. You spend some time outside the walls of Rapture underwater. There are some new plot twists and revelations. But the bulk of the sequel is almost exactly the same as the first.

Same abilities, same basic weapons, same ammos—O.K., redundant but forgivable—but same levels? Now basically we just have the same game. I wasn’t necessarily surprised when I saw that the game returned you to Rapture, the same underwater city setting as the first game. The setting was part of the allure of the first title. It was part of what made the game unique. But I was surprised when I started playing and instantly recognized that at least portions of levels were exactly as they appeared in the original. The whole thing comes off as (forgive me) lazy. There could have been more new areas of the city that we never got to explore in the first game. There could have been new abilities and weaponry that we never got to unleash. They are few and far between.

The designers did address the one major gap in the original by including an online multi-player mode in BioShock 2. The one knock (and I do mean one) on the original was that you couldn’t play it online at all. No co-op, no multiplayer, no nothing. It was strictly a single player story game, and nowadays that alone can make a title seem dated.

A sequel should carry the same feel as the original. The tone and mood should carry through seamlessly from one title to the next. But the challenge in creating any sequel, regardless of the medium, is how to keep it fresh. The problem with BioShock 2 is that it ignores this fundamental question. The sequel should be a close cousin of the original, not an identical twin, not a ‘dolly the sheep.’ In this case, I feel like they slapped a new cover on a game I’d already played and charged me full price for it again.

The shame here is that BioShock was a game-changer. It was a game that changed the gold standard for all great shooters—that gave game designers a new way to think about what a good shooter should be. The shame is that the sequel to the game that changed so much, changed almost nothing. The sequel to the most forward-thinking game I’d ever played, failed to even take one step away from the original. The problem is not that the sequel isn’t a good game, but that’s because it is virtually the same game. Period. It’s too much of exactly the same good thing.

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