BioShock 2 – The MMOMFG Review

BioShock 2

Roughly two years after our first visit, we venture back to Rapture: once a utopia full of the world’s brightest thinkers, scientists, and engineers, now a dystopia ruled by gene-spliced nutters, always underwater. Freed from the flesh and bone trappings of BioShock’s human hero, BioShock 2 puts the player in the helmet of a prototype Big Daddy, Subject Delta.  Is this change of perspective enough to recapture the magic of 2kGames 2007 blockbuster? Or will the franchise fizzle without the leadership of the original title’s mastermind, Ken Levine?

---

What’s Good

Look Mom, both hands! – The ability to dual-wield plasmids and weapons is the single most significant improvement from the first BioShock to BioShock 2. Gone is the hassle of switching between weapons and plasmids with every battle. Here is the joy of freezing a splicer with a Winter Blast plasmid and immediately smashing him to pieces with Delta’s drill.

Rapture’s lively social scene – The next key addition to BioShock 2 is its multiplayer component, a well built and feature rich game mode. Weilding both gun and plasmid makes for a unique and fun multiplayer experience. Combined with a well done upgrade system, smart method of re-upping on ammo and EVE, and a clever research system that harkens back to the original, this mode is definitely a winner.

Like an ex who lost some weight – Rapture still looks great. The setting has received little more than a polish between games, but it still gets me going. I went into BioShock 2 thinking that 2k would need to do something new to keep the surroundings fresh, but it turns out that Rapture needs little improvement.

I could get used to this – Playing as a Big Daddy is, in a word, badass. His every step echoing in the halls of Rapture, the new character gives the player a feeling of invincibility. In fact, this changed the way I played the game.  Whereas in the original BioShock I found myself rescuing every Little Sister I came across, I had no problems in harvesting most of them while playing as Delta in BioShock 2. I find it incredibly interesting that playing as a Big Daddy made me act less like a Big Daddy.

---

What’s Bad

But you promised – Access to the sea floor outside of Rapture was mentioned as a key addition to BioShock 2 in the marketing run-up to the game’s release. I have to call shenanigans on this: this feature is quite insignificant. The time spent outside Rapture’s wall is brief, of little use, and comes far too seldom.

What’s my motivation here? – The story in BioShock 2 takes a couple hours to really gain a foothold.  It does pick up, and turns to an interesting and dives deep  into the origins of some of Rapture’s most deranged inhabitants. The memory remains, however, of playing through the first level or two confused as to why I was doing what I was doing.

Didn’t I just do this? – The levels and missions of BioShock 2 get very repetitive. It seems that each neighborhood or section of the city you come to acts as a dungeon where the process is the same as the last. It goes something like this: train pulls into station, cue plot event that prevents train from progressing further, Delta ventures into neighborhood to obtain key to progressing further, picks up a few Little Sisters on the way, battles a Big Sister, returns to train and moves on. This was the most disappointing aspect of the game for me, devolving the title into a linear shooter.

---

Worth Remembering

Big Sisters are scary bitches. Seriously, they are much creepier and harder to put down than their male counterpart Big Daddies. There’s something about their spry agility mixed with their mangled mechanic design that has truly given me a few nightmares this past week. Strangely, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

---

Worth Forgetting

If a Vita-Chamber can clone and reconstitute Subject Delta, why can’t it autosave his progress? Take my advice: save, and save often in BioShock 2. While dying in the middle of a level will take you back to the last Vita-Chamber you passed, turning off your console in the middle of a level will set you back to the very beginning of the level.

---

The first BioShock was a highly conceptualized shooter with RPG elements that spun an intriguing story in a setting the likes of which had never been rendered onto a disc before. I’ve spoken with gamers who say that BioShock changed the way they view video games and convinced them that the medium could be construed as art. The task of building on such an impactful and masterful work could not have been an easy one for 2kGames. With one major change (plasmid and weapon dual-wielding) and an entirely new game mode (multiplayer), BioShock 2 brings a more rounded FPS mechanic and a broader experience than its predecessor. But build on its success it does not. While the gameplay is fun and the story once again intrigues, the franchise has not moved forward as much as it has sidestepped. A good game in its own right, I can’t help but feel that BioShock 2 suffers simply because of what it is trying to follow up.

*This title was purchased for review on the XBox 360 console. All images are property of 2kGames.

Got a news tip? Send it to press@mmomfg.com and we'll shower you with love!