BioShock 2 Reviews

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Written by Brother None on February 12th, 2010

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You're no exception. Lumped rather inelegantly into a new role by a lengthy cutscene, you're prodded back and forth on little errands to get a feel for things before your first glimpse of Rapture proper a vista of unusual beauty. From these encrusted beginnings the true nature of BioShock 2 emerges: a violent scavenger hunt. You check every corpse, search every container, and look carefully in every dark corner for ammo, cash, food and chunks of story in the form of audio diaries or hurried scrawls. And, every so often, you get into a massive fight.

Another old gimmick with new life is the Little Sister portion of the game. As always, the player can liberate Little Sisters from their Big Daddy protectors. However, once free, the Little Sisters can be harvested, saved or adopted. Adopting a Little Sister places her on Delta's shoulders and players can then gather up to two batches of ADAM from corpses. The catch is that Splicers will instantly swarm to the Little Sister when she gathers. Players will have to prepare before each gathering, setting traps and getting their weapons ready. Once the sisters are saved, Delta must then face off against a Big Sister. This new dynamic is a terrific addition to the game, but it gets very repetitive as the game goes on. By the time the game is in its closing chapters, it's likely you'll be very sick of the lengthy process.

"Fallen, fallen is Babylon." Scrawled across the wall above a board covered with photographs, these words greet you in the waterlogged, decaying opulence of Adonis Spa after you awaken. Ten years have passed since the surprising events of BioShock 2's opening cinematic, and you're a man with a mission: to find your Little Sister. As Subject Delta, one of the original Big Daddy protectors first introduced in BioShock, you were pair-bonded with a Little Sister named Eleanor Lamb through a love that could literally kill you. Your mutual desire is to be reunited, but Eleanor is now being held captive by her mother, Sofia Lamb, the new master of Rapture. As an altruist and collectivist, Lamb is the diametric opposite of Andrew Ryan, the wealthy industrialist who founded Rapture as a place where mankind could be unfettered by petty morals, the hand of government, or the word of God. As an antagonist, she lacks Ryan's charisma and larger-than-life presence, but her personal philosophy and particular brand of madness nonetheless provides an interesting, if heavy-handed, alternative to his.

Since one of BioShock 2's biggest strengths is its narrative, I don't really want to get into more of the story than that... suffice to say that Rapture still holds some secrets for you to uncover, and many areas that weren't present in the first game. Fanatical collectors will learn much about what transpired during the decade-long gap thanks to BioShock 2's hoard of audio logs, which supplement the main story nicely but aren't essential. I was worried that the story would feel contrived, set up in such a way to force Rapture into the plot once again. Yet everything makes sense considering the events of the first game, and is conveyed in such a way that I still felt invested in the characters involved.

Numerous small tweaks and modifications (in addition to the new parts of the city you explore) let you know that this isn't a complete copy-paste of the first game, though. Upgrade your shotgun enough, and you'll fire an electrical charge with each bullet. Hacking now presents itself as a different minigame that instills urgency by happening in real-time. A powered-up Telekinesis Plasmid lets you lift and throw living people. You're now able to wield a Plasmid power and physical weapon simultaneously -- no switching necessary. Even the still-shot research camera has been replaced by a video recorder, allowing you to attack while earning rewards from studying your foes.

This seems less of a bother as you play further, because, generally, BioShock retains every good aspect of the original. The combination of different Plasmids and various upgradeable weapons leaves plenty of room for diverse gameplay. Furthermore, enemies are relentless, from resilient, powerful Big Daddies and Big Sisters, to many types of frantic Splicers that persistently attack you, often using a wide assortment of tactics. They regularly overwhelm you, forcing you to make the most out of the equipment that's at your disposal. For example, when you set down a Little Sister to harvest ADAM (the most precious resource in Rapture), it's advisable to carefully place a number of traps before waves of Splicers march onto the scene. For the less patient, Rambo-style shooting is always an option, but it usually doesn't have a happy ending for our hero. Enemies are very cunning and use debilitating melee attacks. Getting into challenging fights and shootouts isn't the only great aspect of this sequel. The cool thing is that your weapons may be enhanced to allow for extra features such as electrical or ice-based damage. Through it all, it's about how well you use the means that are available to you.

Many of the locations and story moments in BioShock 2 flesh out the origins of the Big Daddies and Little Sisters, all serving to underline the sadness of the whole situation. Without giving too much away, I can say that the penultimate level throws it all into relief: It's a genuinely pathetic sequence that makes you reflect on just how horrible a society would have to be that it would abuse and pervert its most innocent inhabitants.

The original BioShock's story was a twisting and turning affair, with multiple threads -- embodied by the many audio logs and character encounters -- eventually leading the player right to the game's final confrontation. BioShock 2's narrative takes a much more straightforward approach with fewer plot-related twists, but it still offers up an incredibly strong yarn with a worthy adversary in the nefarious Dr. Lamb. The Rapture Civil War takes a back seat to Lamb's crusade against Ryan's objectivist rule, peaking in several Town Hall audio diary debates between their warring philosophies, and casting Rapture's former benefactor in a surprisingly tragic light. On the one hand, here's a man who accepted the challenge of the impossible head-on, pouring his life and soul into building his ideological paradise by way of his unshakable values; on the other is the candid, broken side of this fallen emperor, ousted from power by the prominent threat of change.

Thankfully, you'll be able to use both of your hands at the same time during that fight. Dual-wielding plasmids and firearms is one of the most noticeable improvements to the way BioShock 2 plays. Both types of weapons are are made more useful by the way you can fire them off one after the other. It makes for a faster-paced game, overall. Also, the firearms in BioShock 2 are much better. You'll start out with a simple rivet gun, but you'll eventually collect a shotgun, a machine gun, a grenade launcher, and so on. The weapons feel more accurate and damaging than the guns in the first game. Back then, I was content to play through most of the game using the wrench, since the weapons felt less effective than just running up and whacking your foes. In BioShock 2, the weapons and their upgrades make them a lot more fun to use than the default drill, which requires fuel and doesn't feel nearly as deadly as stabbing someone with a huge, spinning drill probably should. Hacking, which lets you use turrets and security bots as extra defense and can lower prices at vending machines, has been overhauled in a way that takes less time to complete. Research is now done via a video camera concept where you get more research points for filming enemies being attacked in a variety of ways. Both systems are better than their counterparts in the previous game.

Big Sisters are Little Sisters all grown up. Armed with lightning-fast reflexes and an arsenal of devastating Plasmid powers, these screeching assassins are the police officers of Rapture. Screeching, hurling flames and chinning you with a giant needle, battles with the slinky aggressors are frantic and visceral.

But strangely, even though finally defeating them is an epic struggle, overcoming the Big Sisters doesn't feel as satisfying as it should. It's obvious that at one stage the Big Sister was perhaps (or should have been) a single entity with a bigger role in BioShock 2's plot.

With writer/director Ken Levine and his team at Irrational Games not returning for this sequel, 2K Marin (and four additional development teams) took on the task of continuing the BioShock franchise. For the majority of this experience, these developers seem to be spinning their creative wheels, and the tiny bits of new content feel tacked on. The Big Sister is the most noticeable mistake. Early in the adventure, her role seems to be similar to Resident Evil's Nemesis dropping in unannounced to wreak havoc. Her combat prowess dwarfs yours to a degree that you immediately think, (I'll never be able to take her down.) As imposing as she is initially, you end up defeating her within the first hour of play. As the game progresses, her class type becomes a reoccurring boss (usually confronting you at the end of each level). Given the potential she exhibits in the first hour of the game, I'll never understand why 2K Marin opted to change her from a unique antagonist (the original plan and reason why the game was delayed) to a faceless enemy type.

Now, they'll be loot everywhere, in safes an' on shelves an' just lyin' around next to a corpse we've just made. But we've gotta find some ADAM for plasmids an' gene tonics, an' if you're a Big Daddy, those Little Sisters are the golden ticket. Let 'em ride on your shoulder, find a corpse full o' ADAM, an' guard 'em until they can suck it all out. Plenty o' reusable trap ammo just sittin' around as well, so I trust'ya to know what to do with 'em.

For those who finish up the single player campaign (which will take some serious time to get through, especially those who make the effort to hunt down every Little Sister) and are wondering what to do next, there is also a multiplayer aspect included this time around. Set before the original Bioshock, you'll be able to battle one another online using a combination of plasmids and weapons as provided. It includes a levelling system reminiscent of the Call of Duty franchise, and while it might not necessarily be enough to entice a brand new group of gamers to the franchise, it is a bit of icing on what is a fairly delicious single-player cake, and we're glad it's been included for something a bit different and for those who can't get enough of the Bioshock experience.

For a franchise built on originality, almost everything in BioShock's sequel is too familiar. In BioShock 2, the greatest strengths of the original title are still present but they haven't evolved in any significant way. In terms of the visual aesthetics, enemy types, and core gameplay, the campaign portion of the sequel could be mistaken for a lengthy DLC add-on episode.

The weapons in Bioshock 2 are pretty different from those in the first game, as well. There are some new plasmids, and the weaponry that your character will be using in the game will be associated with being a Big Daddy. You'll have a rivet gun, an arm drill, a machine gun, a shotgun, and plenty of mines to use, which come in handy when setting traps for splicer ambushes during harvest sequences.

Without wanting to say much more about the plot, this puts you directly in the way of the schemes of a certain Dr. Sofia Lamb, who, with her collectivist ideals and pseudo-religious iconography, wants to create a new utopia in the wake of Ryan's failure. As if your regular splicers aren't enough, you now have to contend with Lamb's Rapture cult, the Family, plus new enemies in the shape of the gorilla-sized Brute splicers and BioShock 2's signature enemy, the Big Sisters.

Combat is relatively traditional for a FPS. Weapons like the shotgun and machine gun can be tough to control at the beginning, but by upgrading your weapons, you can add stability, a bigger clip size, and ammo that packs a bigger punch. You can also set traps in BioShock 2. These are nearly required to fend off splicers when you have to protect a Little Sister while she gathers ADAM from a dead enemy. The player also has a full arsenal of Plasmid powers, including incinerate, electro bolt and the aforementioned winter blast.

In BioShock, I felt as though ADAM was truly as rare as it was made out to be by the characters, but in the sequel I found myself with more than I knew what to do with. Between being able to harvest it from corpses and/or Little Sisters and finding ADAM Slugs in the brief (and lackluster) "outdoor" stages, my plasmid and gene tonic slots filled up in no time. I feel as though 2K Marin may have felt the original game took too long to get the player fully powered up and tried to rectify that, but BioShock 2 hardly gives you a chance to struggle before splicing you up. In fact, a lot of things are this way. Vending machines are more common, and the amount of Gene Banks and Gatherer's Gardens seem to have at least doubled. There's less strategy involved in picking and choosing your plasmids/tonics, because you know it won't be too long before you can switch them out again.

One of the biggest additions to BioShock 2 is the online competitive multiplayer. As with Uncharted 2, many gamers originally said "why bother?". Similarly, like Uncharted 2, the multiplayer is surprisingly enjoyable. I always prefer a good single player experience over a multiplayer one, though as long as it doesn't negatively impact the development of the single player campaign, it never hurts to have the extra modes. Because Digital Extremes, and not 2K, separately developed the multiplayer component for BioShock 2, it worked out for the better. The online multiplayer serves as a "prequel" of sorts to BioShock 1 with players taking on the role of Plasmid test subjects and fighting it out. Rapture is in much better shape, and many of the decrepit locations found in BioShock 1 and 2 are shiny and new. The gameplay is more fast-paced, customizable, and experience based. I doubt it'll take much attention away from Modern Warfare 2, but it serves as a nice bonus alongside the core game.

In terms of gameplay, BioShock 2 is a vast improvement on its predecessor. Players can now dual-wield guns and Plasmids and the small irritations during combat such as lengthy animations for changing ammunition-types or reloading have been eradicated. The hacking system from the first game, which involved rapidly linking tubes of liquid, has been replaced. Players now fire a hacking dart into whatever machine they want to take control of and then click on coloured sections in a dial that pops into view. Their success rate depends on quick reflexes and as an added bonus, all the hacking can be done remotely. The level of combat customisation is far deeper than in the first game. Plasmids are potentially far more powerful this time round; buying a second upgrade for a Plasmid opens up new combat options such as chain lightning (as in the case of Electrobolt) or the ability to turn opponents into blocks of ice (once Winter Blast is upgraded). Players also have access to a vast array of combat tonics, some of which are new (such as Freezing Drill, which replaces Freezing Wrench) and some of which aren't (Shorten Alarms still does what it says on the tin).

While the Little Sisters haven't changed much, the new lass in town--the Big Sister--is an entirely different threat. Perhaps BioShock 2's female take on the Big Daddy sums up the game best. She is undoubtedly powerful and striking, her ninja array of attacks and effortless strength making her a tough cookie. But you're prepared for her now, and you know the drill pun shamefully intended. Maybe it's the familiarity of the setting or your new stronger shell, but its hard to find her as awe-inspiring as the lumbering Big Daddy was in the original game, coming at you like a cannon fired from hell. Perhaps the fear factor is the biggest casualty of a return to Rapture, as the same old hit-run-and-loot gameplay within the familiar luminous blue does make BioShock 2 feel like Rapture circa 1960, for better or for worse.

As much as we worshipped the original, we worried about the possibility of a sequel. Though we longed to experience another game with that level of mature, masterful storytelling and with that number of unique, unusual ideas, we seriously doubted such brilliance could be captured again. While we desperately wished to revisit the haunting underwater dystopia of Rapture, we suspected that doing so would ruin, or at least diminish, the thematic significance of the initial trip. To us, BioShock was one-of-a-kind, not one-of-a-franchise.

Well, you know what? We were wrong. Somehow, with less than three years of development time and without the direct involvement of creator Ken Levine, the BioShock team has pulled off another masterpiece. One that expands the mythology, but doesn't lose any of the mystery. One that introduces fascinating new settings and characters, but doesn't forget or neglect those previously established. One that gives the player devastating new power, but balances that with devastating new fear. One that takes chances and makes changes, but almost always for the better.

Gladly the game manages to sustain its pace throughout and doesn't come a cropper to a dumb ending, that for many tarnished the original. There are some spectacular set-pieces along the way, the odd moral choice to make and a few twists, but the story isn't as interesting or clever as that of the first game. It's not a bad plot by any stretch of the imagination, but it simply doesn't spark the same reaction as the one that featured Andrew Ryan and co. In the end BioShock 2 is a game with much improved combat, and more memorable confrontations, rather than standout characters and plot twists.

Frankly, I expected BioShock 2 to be a complete mess of a game, and I'm rather surprised that it's only a bit of a mess. There's no doubting that the action is more engaging and the fights more interesting than in the first game, although those still looking for a true RPG in the style of System Shock or Deus Ex (which is the pedigree that this series spawned from) will still be disappointed: you can configure and buy both plasmids and gene tonics as well as upgrade weapons, but there's still no inventory or leveling. The story is much more involved than most shooters offer, and sometimes it's actually too much, as audio logs often drone on long enough to bleed into the action - especially when a splicer rounds a corner while you're trying to listen to someone complaining about Andrew Ryan's final, desperate days in Rapture.

There are also a lot more engaging weapons to wield in BioShock 2. Handguns and Tommy Guns are useless for a Big Daddy, so you'll be packing heat in the form of machine guns, shotguns, and grenade launchers. Like the original, each gun makes use of three different kinds of ammunition, some rarer than others, which you can switch to immediately via the D-pad. Having access to this more powerful arsenal is great, but I took a particular shine to boring holes into the bellies of Splicers with the drill appendage. The drill, like the other weapons, can be upgraded and enhanced up to three times with killer properties. Eventually, you'll be able to deal extra damage, deflect incoming bullets, freeze enemies in place, etc. with your tricked out weaponry.

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