When BioShock 2 was announced, I must admit that I wasn't all that excited. While normally I would be thrilled that one my favorite games was getting a sequel, BioShock not only didn't need a sequel, I couldn't even think of a way that one would make sense. It told its story; it didn't need anything else. I was further concerned when I heard that the sequel would have multiplayer; since BioShock was all about story and setting, multiplayer not only didn't make sense, it was unnecessary.
Despite all of my concerns, a week or so ago I found myself in Best Buy paying full price for BioShock 2. Despite some quibbles with the game, I feel that I got my money's worth.
While it is probably most fair to review BioShock 2 on its own merits, I find it impossible to not compare it to the first game. For comparison, I reinstalled BioShock and played the first 2-3 hours. BioShock starts in a way that introduces you to Rapture, plasmids, and even Andrew Ryan in a heavy and even spooky way. The game even features some amazing System Shock 2-style flashbacks showing what had befallen some of Rapture's deceased inhabitants. BioShock 2 has... none of that. It starts by informing you that you were a Big Daddy, you died, then you were alive again. There just isn't feeling behind your character or you being where you are. Where Rapture was an integral part of the story in the first game, it's merely the setting of the second.
Perhaps the biggest change between the two games is what I just mentioned: you play as a Big Daddy. This affects your game play in a number of different ways. First and perhaps foremost, your suit allows you to wield a plasmid in your left hand and a weapon in your right instead of being forced to swap back and forth between them. The ability to have both a weapon and a plasmid out was definitely a welcome change, but after going back into the first game, I must admit that it really didn't make all that much difference. In all honesty, a good portion of the time it merely served to make the battles much more frantic. While I've heard that swapping weapons and plasmids would briefly pause the game on the console, it gave no such respite in the PC version. Having to worry about having the correct weapon and plasmid out in the heat of the battle seemed to get really complicated at times.
The second big change that your Big Daddy suit effects is that in addition to merely harvesting or saving Little Sisters, you now have the option to adopt them. After adoption, they ride around on your back guiding you towards "angels." After you place them down gather, all the nearby splicers descend upon your location looking to sate their ADAM appetite. While this mechanic definitely felt like something that was supposed to be the most unique and new in the sequel, it was hands down my least favorite part of the entire game. I was provided with some interesting new pieces of equipment (deployable turrets, etc), but these sections simply weren't fun. Even though they were technically optional, they provided me with some additional ADAM making them full much more compulsory. In all fairness, the first couple of times I did one of these segments I thought they were interesting; they just weren't fun any time after that.
Other than that, being a Big Daddy doesn't really affect you at all. In fact, I didn't FEEL like a Big Daddy. I moved and otherwise did pretty much everything else the same way I did them in the first game. I'm not sure if that is a good or a bad thing, but my Big Daddy-ness just didn't really affect my game at all.
My next major complaint with the game is the default control scheme. It just doesn't make any sense at all. Besides having your mouse buttons mapped to opposite hands on screen, they moved around a lot of the actions from where they were in the first game. I remapped quite a few keys to something that made more sense, but was further annoyed when the on-screen prompts didn't update with my key changes, something that actually caused me to harvest a Little Sister I was trying to save. After firing up the first game, I found that the default mapping was different than what I had changed my keys to in BioShock 2, but in pretty much every case they actually made more sense than what I had changed them to. I have no idea why they decided to change the defaults so heavily from the first game, but it was definitely to the detriment of the game.
As for the overall story telling, it was a mixed bag. BioShock had some brilliant narration and an amazing twist... before trailing off pretty heavily in the latter part of the game. The first game also did an amazing job of using the game itself to tell the story via dynamic lighting, flashbacks, in-game movies, and other similar devices. BioShock 2's story was merely presented via radio communiqué and cutscenes. Even though it didn't tell the story as well as the first game, nor was it even close to as compelling, the story was still quite good in its own right and managed to stay strong (even pick up) in the final stages of the game. If I was evaluating the story of BioShock 2 on its own, I think I would be very pleased with it. In comparison to the first game, it fails in most areas, but succeeds in others.
At this point, you've probably noticed that I haven't talked about the actual gameplay much. Why? It is more or less EXACTLY the same as the first game. The enemies are almost exactly the same, the weapons are almost exactly the same, and the plasmids are almost exactly the same. While they did mix a couple of things up, for the most part the game plays more like an expansion pack than a sequel. I wouldn't necessarily call that a bad thing as the first game was a lot of fun to play, but I would have liked to see more improvements. They did add a couple of new enemy types (and removed at least one), which were pretty solid additions for the most part. They also switched up the weapons a little bit and adding some additional hacking options, such as remote hacking, but again, it was still remarkably similar to the first game. That reminds me of another pretty big change: hacking.
In the first game, hacking was a Pipe Dream-style mini-game that paused the game and required 10-30 or more seconds to complete depending on the difficulty and your skill level. While I didn't really have a big problem with it initially, after playing the second game and then going back to the first, I can see why they changed it. In the second game, entering the hacking mini-game does NOT pause the game. However, hacking itself goes a lot more quickly merely tasking you with stopping a moving needle inside of a correct zone, computer golf style. Depending on the difficulty of the hack, you have to stop it more times and in smaller zones. Even though I don't think this method of hacking is perfect either (failure was much more likely, later in the game it became wildly impossible), I do think it helped the flow of the game as hacking felt much more integrated into the overall world.
I think at this point, about the only thing I haven't mentioned is the ending. I went the "good" route, saving all the Little Sisters and the plot NPCs I came across. I was pretty impressed as this not only had a significant impact on my ending, but also on some things in the final portion of the game. If there is one thing that BioShock 2 does better than its predecessor, its the final portion of the game. While it fails to have anything resembling a significant twist, the story stays strong all the way through the end, reveals some interesting new insights into the minds of Little Sisters, and even provides you with a relatively fulfilling ending.
There IS one more thing I haven't discussed: the multiplayer component. I won't spend too much time on it, but it is so atrociously bad, I could hardly believe it. In nearly every way, it feels like a mode that was meant to go with the first game; the hud, weapons, play style, and even the maps are lifted almost wholesale from the original game. That wouldn't necessarily be a problem, but it just isn't fun. There is less reason to have multiplayer in a BioShock game than there was to have a sequel. I desperately wish that they had skipped the mode in favor of spending more time with the single player experience. As it is, it is a mode a handful of people will play for a couple of weeks then will go largely forgotten by the gaming community at large.
So what's the final verdict? It's a brilliant, well made, satisfying and entertaining game. The game only fails to be amazing when sitting in the shadow of its brilliant predecessor. It is a must play by anybody who is a fan of the series or the genre. The only real, catastrophic problem with it is that is was an absolutely unnecessary game. While it would be fun to play more games in the universe, the universe just doesn't lend itself to more games (it didn't even really lend itself to a second one!). Pick up the game, play it, enjoy it, then pray that we don't get a third game.
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have you ever played the flash TD Onslaught? It's worthy of a review. If you haven't make sure you figure out which combos give you the best defense.
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