Overall, not much in the game has changed. Same interface, same abilities (except for the big honkin' drill on your right arm), same enemies.
Were we able to melee with any weapon in the first one? Or was the B button reserved for First Aid kits? Can't remember.
Machine gun still sucks. Rivet gun is kinda like a longer-range shotgun though.
Big Sisters are pretty tough. Kinda like a combination of spider and nitro splicers, with the endurance of a Big Daddy. I died 5 times before finally killing her.
And one of the reasons that I died 5 times is that I had no ammo, no money and no first aid kits or EVE hypos. It seems that supplies are much more scarce in this version; I'm constantly having to conserve and scrounge.
The Big Sister battle, the only one I've gone through so far, was a boss battle, it wasn't like a Big Daddy battle where you can choose if/when to attack and choose to disengage and run away if it's not going your way. Many doors are locked and the Big Sister hunts you down and kills you. Not sure I like that, because once you run out of ammo and first aid kits, it becomes frustrating and repetitive as you're constantly re-spawning, getting in a few hits before running out of the little health you re-spawned with, dying and then re-spawning again. Ad nauseum.
Heh. I note that there is now an option to disable Vita-Chambers, conceding to the mob that complained that they nerfed the previous game. I wonder how many people are going to use that.
Can now only carry 5 first aid kits instead of 9. Sucky sucky!
The maps are huge and labyrinthine. Kept getting lost and turned around. And other floors on the map are visible from the current floor but are kind of shadowed, so it's really hard to discern between greyed-out parts of the map that belong to other floors and greyed-out parts of the map that are just areas on the current floor that you haven't yet visited.
I ran across several areas with locked doors that are labeled "Maintenance Personnel Only." I can see lots of goodies through the window, but I've no idea how to get into them, even after I finished the level.
I'm glad that they brought back the part where you've got to protect Little Sisters as they harvest ADAM. That was one of the toughest parts of the previous game.
The hacking mini-game reminds me of the old console golf games. And it's now irritatingly easy to trip the security alarm and summon security bots.
The long-distance hacking is a nice improvement.
None of the vending machines talk anymore! Which is great because the Ammo Bandito had the shrillest voice ever in the history of video games, but I kinda miss the Circus of Values sounding off whenever I walk by.
In the first game, when you destroy a health station, doesn't it disappear from the map? They're still there on this one, so I keep backtracking thinking I missed one (free first aid kit!) only to be disappointed when I see that I already smashed it.
I haven't yet run across any U-Create machines? I'll be happy if they're gone; it was irritating to scrounge all kinds of useless random junk.