Rating of
3.5/5
Genetic Wage Slavery
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/03/14
After being completely underwhelmed by the original “BioShock,” which had received lavish praise from essentially everyone, I was not particularly enthusiastic going into “BioShock 2” (which I purchased in a bundle with the first game). What’s more, fans of “BioShock” seem to universally agree that “BioShock 2” is significantly worse than its predecessor, which left me wondering just how bad things could get. Upon actually playing the sequel, however, I discovered that almost every facet of the game is completely unchanged from the original, with a few tweaks here and there to streamline certain gameplay mechanics.
Presentation
The original “BioShock” failed to impress me with its graphics engine. “BioShock 2,” however, improves upon the original engine with reflective, animated, and interactive water, along with full animation for characters that appear on the handful of CRT viewscreens the player encounters. Environmental designs still look great and positively ooze atmosphere. The deformed and mutated enemy character models return, however there are actually a handful of non-mutant characters with whom to interact.
The audio in “BioShock 2” is just as great as the first game’s. Narration, dialog, and audio-diaries are all fully voiced by an excellent cast of actors. The soundtrack is still a bit sparse, and consists of old-timey ‘40s music that plays from jukeboxes and record players scattered throughout the game’s environments. I would have liked to have seen way more of these environmental music players in the game, as I find the cheerful and disarming music of the period to make an excellent juxtaposition to the horrific events and situations of the game’s plot.
Technically, “BioShock 2” is just as bad as the original “BioShock,” but in slightly different ways. While I had no major difficulties with having to hunt down drivers to make the audio work, as I did in the first game, I found “BioShock 2” to be overall incredibly unstable. It crashed on me dozens of times over the course of its duration (~30 hours, just like the first “BioShock”) for no apparent reason. Some folks in the Steam community claim DirectX is implemented badly in “BioShock 2” with the way the game handles reflections on water, which can lead it to crash randomly whenever it needs to load a new reflection. On the other hand, the physics engine in “BioShock 2” is 100% less spastic than in the original game, and the game’s menus respond to simultaneous controller and mouse/keyboard inputs the way they should.
Story
“BioShock 2” serves as a complement and contrast to the original game, while continuing its plot. Whereas “BioShock” was an example of what might happen if an Ayn Rand inspired plutocrat was able to create an Objectivist utopia, “BioShock 2” looks at what might happen when Communism moves in to fill the power void left behind by the collapse of an Objectivist society.
“BioShock” made no bones about painting Objectivism as one of the Worst Things Ever. “BioShock 2” likewise paints Communism, when taken to the most fantastical extremes, as an absolute catastrophe. (This disdain for both poles of the spectrum left me wondering whether the ‘BioShock’ writers are super-moderate or subscribe to some equally insane political philosophy in their real lives.) Actually, I’m not even sure that ‘Communism’ is the right term for the complete elimination of the individual that the antagonist of “BioShock 2” desires.
Ten years after the events of the original “BioShock,” the ruins of the underwater city of Rapture are still inexplicably functioning and inhabited by a variety of completely insane people who have spliced-up their DNA using the techno-magical McGuffin, Adam, to the point of becoming monsters. In order to give these psychopaths mental relief and guidance, Rapture’s chief psychologist, Sofia Lamb, takes it upon herself to replace the lawlessness and unbridled atheist Capitalism of the old Rapture with a pseudo-religious obsession with selflessness and familial bonds. Over the same 10-year timespan since the first game, the ubiquitous Little Sisters – genetically modified 8-year-old girls whose task in Rapture is to recycle the Adam from the corpses of slain residents – have aged-out of their role. The newly rechristened Big Sisters are given the new role of abducting appropriately-aged girls from coastal cities to be transformed into a new crop of Little Sisters. One of these aged-out former Little Sisters turns out to be none other than Sofia Lamb’s biological daughter, Eleanor, who communicates telepathically and provides assistance to the player throughout the game.
Our hero in “BioShock 2” doesn’t have an introduction. Instead, the player is simply dumped into the role of a Big Daddy (one of the hulking, diving-suited body guards for the Little Sisters) who has mysteriously tumbled out of one of Rapture’s Vita Chambers (which conveniently serve as respawn points if the player enables that option in the game). Before long, it is revealed that our Big Daddy, dubbed Delta, was the original bodyguard for Eleanor Lamb during her time as a Little Sister. Eleanor needs him to escape the clutches of her mother, who has dire plans to transform Eleanor into some kind of genetic messiah. While Eleanor attempts to assist Delta from afar, he is assisted more directly by one of the few sane folks remaining in Rapture, Augustus Sinclair, a former businessman who just wants to get the Hell out of the city.
As Delta makes his way closer and closer to Eleanor, the dark insanity of Sofia Lamb’s plan unveils itself, step-by-step and in disturbing detail. Delta’s backstory is also revealed, and sorely misses the magnificent opportunity for a fantastic plot twist that was dropped directly at the writers’ feet. From early on in the game, I was hoping that Delta’s pre-Big Daddy identity would turn out to be Andrew Ryan, the sociopathic Objectivist who founded the Rapture. With the amount of anti-Ryan, anti-Objectivist material in the game’s narrative, I thought for sure the plot was setting up for a big reveal (especially when one considers that Ryan is also Eleanor’s biological father) after confronting a resurrected Ryan with all the evil he had committed. Unfortunately, I was left disappointed, and the revelation of Delta’s true identity is an ultimate flop that lacks any psychological impact.
“BioShock 2” also features a stand-alone DLC story titled, “Minerva’s Den.” This separate story puts the player in the shoes of a different Big Daddy, this time dubbed Sigma, who has been requisitioned by C.M. Porter, one of the two computer scientists who built Rapture’s computerized control system, to assist in regaining control of the computer, called The Thinker, from Reed Wahl, the other founder of Rapture Central Computing, who has gone completely insane from genetic splicing. Porter needs Sigma to print a hardcopy of The Thinker’s code (which would result in hundreds of pounds of punch-cards, but that’s a small oversight) and escape to the surface with it in order to get a fresh start outside of the underwater lunatic bubble that Rapture has become. “Minerva’s Den” really impressed me with the build-up of its story, and finally delivered the type of psychological twist ending I’ve been looking for in this series. It doesn’t matter that “Minerva’s Den” is only about a 5 hour experience compared to the 30 hours of “BioShock 2’s” base story, as it still manages to capture the true essence of a ‘BioShock’ game without a lot of extra filler.
Gameplay
Almost everywhere I look, “BioShock” fans insist that “BioShock 2” is a significantly worse experience than the first game. I cannot fathom how these fans can hold such a view, as “BioShock 2” is more refined in a variety of small ways, but otherwise unchanged.
Both Delta and Sigma play exactly the same way, and both are bound by a variety of outdated FPS mechanics. The player can stockpile up to 5 first aid kids for a dose of instant healing or pay a small amount of cash for a full heal at a health station. There is a token effort at adding regenerating health via the option to equip a genetic tonic that regenerates both health and Eve (e.g., mana) while the player character is standing in a pool of water… but it is excruciatingly slow and situational.
The vending machines are back and can be hacked for discounts and free stuff (not that money is hard to find). Hacking is more prominent in “BioShock 2” than the original game, as it doesn’t expend a limited-quantity item. Instead, the expendable Hack Tools from the original game have been replaced with a Hack Dart Launcher that can fire special darts (which look like vacuum tubes!) to hack distant machines, while hacking machines within arm’s reach is completely free. The hacking mini-game that once involved playing “Pipe Dream” has been replaced with a simple timed button press as a needle moves across a meter (though it requires several successfully timed presses for each hack). Another notable change in the vending system is that special ammunition no longer needs to be crafted from collected bits of trash, but can simply be purchased from vendors like generic ammo (however, not every vending machine stocks every type of ammo).
The Adam customization system of plasmids and tonics also returns and is 100% unchanged from the first game. The player must collect Adam from corpses by ‘recruiting’ Little Sisters (i.e., killing their existing Big Daddy). The moral decision of whether to Harvest or Save the Little Sisters is also back and, once again, determines whether the player gets the ‘good’ or ‘bad’ ending. Plasmids act as magic spells to complement the variety of guns in the player’s arsenal. Tonics, on the other hand, act as passive bonuses that provide a wide range of incredibly useful (or incredibly useless) perks. I always found it far more useful to invest my Adam in tonic slots and tonics than in plasmids, as switching plasmids in battle is still rather cumbersome and most of them just aren’t that spectacular. Why use a whole bunch of different plasmids when two (Bees and Decoy) will win every fight?
The shooting in “BioShock 2” is also nearly identical to that in “BioShock,” despite the fact that, as a Big Daddy, our hero uses a variety of huge industrial tools as weapons… which don’t ultimately do any more damage than their standard counterparts. This is unfortunate, as the shooting in both games is rather sloppy, with huge targeting reticules that force a lot of ammo wasting and make any kind of stealthy takedowns or precision damage more difficult than it should be. However, there are a couple of new weapons that I really liked. The speargun is quite a lot of fun, especially with the rocket spear special ammo that causes enemies to turn into rocket-powered ragdolls that fly around the room for a few seconds. Likewise, the Hacking Dart Launcher has the ability to deploy temporary mini-turrets with one of its special ammos. However, the best weapon in the game, and the weapon that proves the ‘BioShock’ devs are actually capable of creating a game with solid shooting mechanics, is the welding laser… that is only found in the “Minerva’s Den” DLC story. This laser is the only weapon in “BioShock 2” that actually hits what the player aims at without fail. It also has a large ammo reserve and its ammo is super cheap at vendors. It’s almost criminal that the laser wasn’t added to the base game… and back-ported into the original “BioShock.” These weapons can all be upgraded up to three times at single-use upgrade stations, with the first two upgrades acting as traditional “BioShock” style nerf removals and the third (which is only available to weapons with the first two upgrades applied) providing a really impressive boost (in “Minerva’s Den,” there are no upgrade machines – the player simply finds pre-upgraded weapons to replace the generic versions they might already possess).
Overall, though, the remaining shooting mechanics are too cumbersome to be enjoyable. Instead of selecting 2-4 weapons to be in a loadout, players have access to all weapons at all times, which can make cycling through them in the heat of combat a massive liability. The research camera also returns, this time as a movie camera, which essentially forces the player to run around with the camera equipped to start every fight before switching to an actual weapon once hostilities commence. (And once again, the ‘bonuses’ to damage provided by research feel more like ‘mandatories.’) At least the devs caught up to modern shooters in the realm of melee mechanics. Any weapon can now be used to smack an enemy, but there is also a dedicated melee weapon – the Big Daddy’s iconic drill – that can perform a special charging melee strike… which I never used outside of the one obstacle that must be cleared using this attack. The final change to the shooting mechanics is that the player’s vision no longer becomes completely obscured when shot. While this is largely an improvement, as it makes it much easier to return fire accurately, it’s also a bit of a liability, as there is almost too little indication that the player is taking damage.
Overall
“BioShock 2” is an as-expected successor to an inexplicably popular original. The writing is still quite good, but misses the opportunity to be amazing until the stand-alone DLC story, while the shooting mechanics are still cumbersome and unpleasant… until the stand-alone DLC story. In sum, if the whole of “BioShock 2” had been as good as the “Minerva’s Den” DLC, it would have been a fantastic game. As it is, it’s an average FPS with a few above-average aspects. Anyone who loves “BioShock” and is looking for MORE “BioShock” would be well-served by this sequel.
Presentation: 3.5/5
Story:
Base Game: 4/5
Minerva’s Den: 5/5
Gameplay: 3.5/5
Overall (not an average): 3.5/5
