Bioshock 2

"Uh oh, Mr. Bubbles...  Big Sister doesn't want you playing with me..."

Let us pretend, for a moment, that all sequels improve upon the original, rather than simply using an existing title to cash in on an easily satisfied market base.  Once you're ready to step out of that fantasy world, we can talk about Bioshock 2. 

Strictly speaking, Bioshock 2 isn't bad, but neither is it Bioshock the first, which is really its greatest criticism.  Although, plenty more criticism to go, after the jump!

Once again, you submerge into the underwater city of Rapture, built by wealthy tycoon Andrew Ryan to escape government and religious interference on his ever-longing quest for greatness.  This sequel puts us into the shoes of a Big Daddy prototype, Subject Delta, who has increased maneuverability and talent unknown to the other Big Daddies (because prototypes should always be more effective than the finished model).  Because of some psuedo-science, you have been pair-bonded to a Little Sister (now all grown up) and you must save her from a wacky psychologist and her spliced up followers.

Dual weilding, son.  Flames and drills for all!

The game gives us new environments to parade around, a couple of plot points dug out of the well-woven Bioshock, and features similar gameplay.  Magic powersPlasmids erupt from your left hand, you hold weapons in your right.  This time around you can weild them simultaneously, which the game lauds can be used to make ingenuos combos, but I never really got it to work that way.  I'm more of a spray-the-room-with-bees-and-whack-people-with-a-wrench kind of guy, except now the wrench is a big drill.

The mechanics of collecting ADAM, the genetic material that lets you use your mutant powers, has shifted a bit as well: you now collect ADAM with a Little Sister - defending her from those that want to rip her head off - and then choose to save her or rip her head off yourself.  Either way, every three Little Sisters you are confronted with a battle with a Big Sister who takes nearly all of your resources to down and is next to impossible to beat on the hardest difficulty without copious use of the environment.  Understand that this is a good thing, I want a game on the hardest difficulty to be hard.  By then end of my hard playthrough I was able to blast a Big Sister through the roof I was so souped up on Plasmids, so it would have been nice for the difficulty to stay consistent.

Unfortunately, for all its "newness," the game is the exact same fetch-quest, audio tape collecting, turret hacking Bioshock with neat extras (hacking replaces the pipe-dream game with a QTE that recently got a patch to be colorblind friendly). 

The real meat and potatoes of this iteration is the multiplayer.



In-game "trials" help broaden your focus in multi-player.

 Anyone who has read this blog consistently (hi Mom!) knows that I actually despise playing games with other people, except in rare occassions (one night, my best friend Eldronius and I played Baldur's Gate 2 on cooperative mode until the sun rose).  However, I quite liked the multiplayer on Bioshock 2, especially in the beginning.  When everyone is new, it's really an adventure, and finding a unique part of the environment is ... well, unique.  Though bonuses are dispersed as you level up, nothing feels massively over-powered, and you can build your character by the play style you prefer.  There are various match types, including Capture the Sister (a version of Capture the Flag where you must save a Little Sister from the opposing team).  I played enough to get to Level 40 which was a trophy requirement and haven't touched it much since - which is a shame, really, because I actually got to a point where (despite my frequent deaths), I really, really enjoyed it.

Additionally, the multiplayer gives some backstory on Rapture right before Jack's untimely arrival in Bioshock, which is nice, since the main story feels so far removed...

All in all, with Bioshock 2 only being $9.99 via Amazon.com - you could do a lot worse than this title, and it might be what you need to tide of the wait for BioShock Infinite to come out...