BioShock 2 Review
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Story BioShock 2's story is a mess, plain and simple. The basic premise, in which you play a Big Daddy looking for his Little Sister both because you need her to survive and because of your personal relationship with her is solid enough and certainly more personable than BioShock's story. In narrative structure, both plots are fairly similar, with you moving along Rapture in search of your final goal, aided by some of its inhabitants but mostly fighting off hordes while being taunted by the big bad. It even does a similar thing in taking control from you to advance the plot, which while covered up well in the game's story is weak as a narrative tool.
In the main plot, everything that happened since BioShock sounds somewhat interesting, but it happened without you there, as if the game is taunting you with all these big events you could not be part of. Forgiving it that, 2K Marin seems to have essentially looked at Andrew Ryan from the first and decided to make a bizarro version in Sophia Lamb, whose soft personality and communist ideals are the exact opposite of Andrew Ryan. And the exactness of that opposition the mirror image it is just hammers home how derivative she is, and how badly in need of inspiration or originality the plot is.
What doesn't help the cause is some of the worst writing I have seen in a videogame since Fallout 3. Don't get me wrong, they get the tone right, bombastic statements delivered through radio, so it all sounds impressive. But if you stop for even one second and actually listen, it comes apart at the seams. A good example is this bit of radio taunting, from near the end, as Sophia Lamb speaks to you:
Your body begins to tear itself apart; the compulsion to find Eleanor will drive you to madness or coma. You have no claim on her -- your design was amongst Rapture's greatest sins -- and yet you persist. Why?
Why is she talking about my body tearing itself apart when there is no gameplay equivalent of this? What does my design being amongst Rapture's greatest flaws have to do with negating my claim on Eleanor? And worst of all why is she asking me why I'm persisting after just telling me the need to find her is driving me insane? BioShock 2 is full of little nonsensical speeches like these, and the overall philosophical consistency over all the rants is even worse. In the end, this makes the whole game feel as if the writing is just a bunch of strung together phrases that sound cool or awe-inspiring or epic, without due consideration to consistent writing.
BioShock was widely praised for its philosophical undertones. I thought this point was a bit overdrawn, as BioShock's hammy delivery of Ayn Rand's already unimpressive philosophical views was hardly enlightening, but even this low plateau BioShock 2 does not even approach. In fact, it ruins quite a bit of the philosophical tone of BioShock in its approach. One of the points of BioShock was about the inevitability of the fall of Andrew Ryan's city. A grand experiment, but you get the sense its doom was inevitable, as the underlying world-view simply did not match reality. Sophia Lamb, however, gives the failure agency, it turns it into the problem being a person, changes it into two competing world-views fighting and ruining each other through competition. That pretty much negates the earlier point made of inherent fallacies, making Sophia Lamb and her philosophy not just derivative, but detrimental to the game's setting.
The endings end up just adding insult to injury. It learned from its predecessor's mistakes by expanding the (Hitler or Mother Theresa) into four endings; bad, somewhat bad, sad, and good. The different ending configurations are reached by your choices on saving the Little Sisters, as well as three key NPCs you can either leave alive or kill during your travels. Structurally, this is a massive step forward from BioShock, but considering my preceding notes on the writing, it won't surprise you to hear the endings are badly delivered and overly dramatic pieces of tripe, built on two nonsensical deus ex machinas that shortly precede the final conclusion.
Multiplayer
I expected multiplayer to be a quickly patched on, uninteresting game mode, but left pleasantly surprised. In multiplayer, you play a splicer character, playing to gain Adam that sequentially unlocks new weapons and plasmids, which you can configure into simplified load-outs to play matches with. Its appropriately simplified for more immediate, rushed single-player gameplay, but still complex enough to allow different tactics in the matches.
There are seven different game modes, which are essentially the standard FPS multiplayer modes like free-for-all, arena modes or capture the flag, but with specific twists to make it fit Rapture. Capture the flag, for example, becomes Capture the Sister, in which teams take turns defending a Little Sister, while the other team has to try to capture her and bring her to the Vent so she can escape. Adam Grab (and Team Adam Grab) are more unique modes in which you must pick up and hold the Little Sister. You can't attack with a weapon while you have her, and dying will obviously make you drop her. The one to hold her longest (or in Team mode, the first team to 3 minutes) wins. I enjoyed this and the Capture the Sister modes quite a lot.
However, there are quite a few problems. Lag seems to be a very wide-spread problem in multiplayer, but perhaps more annoying on the technical side is that multiplayer runs through Games for Windows Live - an unperfected piece of software at best.
It has a few design flaws as well, the most significant being the issue of balance. Perhaps due to lack of players, the game groups together low and high ranked players, and considering the power of the weapons you unlock in higher ranks, this leaves the low ranked players with little chance for victory, and thus little chance to gain Adam to rank up. Obviously, this can quickly turn into a frustrating experience. Another big problem is the Big Daddy costume; while it is fun that it appears at random, it is often the case that the first team to pick it up wins by default. Moreover, both picking up and killing the Big Daddy give hefty Adam bonuses, even though both events are somewhat random rather than proof of gameplay skill.
Overall, though, the multiplayer is solid if unspectacular. It's a full, healthy addition to the game that potentially adds quite a few gaming hours, so I have little to complain of here.
Conclusion
All throughout my time playing this game, I couldn't help but feel the game was shouting (I'm unnecessary!) at me. Contrary to what game publishers would like to think, not every successful property warrants a sequel, and while there might have been some potential in BioShock for a sequel or spin-off, the cop-out of handing it to another division to just bang out a cash-in title shows, painfully so. It's hard to play this game without being aware that it's just cashing in, from the feel of it being just a level pack, to the derivative story, to the somewhat half-assed ideas added by the new studio.
If you absolutely adored BioShock and couldn't wait for more, I could imagine the very similar BioShock 2 could fill the need, though it'll do it somewhat deceptively as it's really filling the emptiness with well more emptiness, not adding but at points even detracting. To me, BioShock already disappointed after its hype, and BioShock 2 just adds insult to injury. Yes, the gameplay tweaks improve the shooting action, and it is unquestionably a better shooter than its predecessor. But the game suffers under having no evolution in the RPG elements, repetitive level design hurting the fun, and a terrible story dragging along throughout. At only 12 hours long, I'd have a hard time advising people to buy what is essentially a competent but at points heavily flawed map pack with a multiplayer patch.
