In 2007 a little game called Bioshock came along and melted everyone's faces with its gorgeous environments, fantastic story, and mostly fun gameplay. While it wasn't a perfect game, it was a lot of fun to play and had decent replay value. I lost count of how many times I'd just stop progressing through the level and stand in front of a giant window, staring at the underwater city of Rapture and getting pissed every time a Splicer would jump out at me, forcing me to look away.
Cut that shit out.
Bioshock 2 returns us to Rapture, only this time we're playing as a prototype Big Daddy, the armored protectors of the endlessly horrifying Little Sisters--little girls who have been genetically modified to jab enormous needles into dead people to extract a genetic material called "Adam." Being a Big Daddy, while an awesome concept, means that you'll get even less time to admire the scenery, because 2K Marin, the game's designers, decided that the best way to even the score would be to have swarms of enemies attack you every time you fart. I'm all for challenging gameplay, but the fact is that the Bioshock games are easy. Even with the difficulty set to "Hard," I had no trouble fighting off the waves of enemies Rapture was throwing at me, which made them more annoying than challenging.
The gameplay in Bioshock 2 has fixed most of the things that annoyed me about the first game. The ability to dual-wield plasmids and weapons makes combat feel a lot more natural, although having everything pause while I brought up the radial menu to switch weapons or plasmids yanked me back to reality and disrupted the immersion of the game. As I said, the fact that you are an armored Big Daddy means that not only will you face larger numbers of enemies, but you will be fighting new ones as well. The Brute Splicer, Alpha Series Big Daddy, and Rumbler Series Big Daddy are a few of the tougher enemies that make appearances in this game, and if there's one thing that says "Leave Me Alone" it's having a giant goddamn cannon on your shoulder.
I'll just be on my way then.
The unbelievably annoying hacking mini-game from Bioshock is gone too, so you won't be playing Pipe Dreams while floating in midair with three enemies kindly waiting for you to finish. The replacement is equally stupid when considering how hacking actually works (and no, I have no idea how hacking actually works), but at least it doesn't pause the game and make you spend time arranging pipes so that water can flow through and some how convert this machine to your side.
The main issue with Bioshock 2 is that, despite the fact that its campaign mode is something like 10 hours long, it feels more like a big expansion pack for Bioshock than an entirely new game. The story is more streamlined, but when inevitably compared to that of the first game, it's impossible for it to measure up. Bioshock's story felt epic; you were taking on the two most powerful men in Rapture, and you were crossing an entire city to do it. Bioshock 2 has a psychiatrist who spouts her community mantra at you over the loudspeakers throughout the game as its antagonist, and she just doesn't feel as imposing or dangerous as Andrew Ryan or Frank Fontaine, the villains from the first game. She also comes out of nowhere. Throughout the game you find traces of some sort of epic rivalry between Sofia Lamb and Andrew Ryan, but apparently no one noticed that this was happening in the first game (despite the apparent public rallies and debates that they had).
Sofia Who?
Overall the game feels smaller. Rapture is no longer new and exciting. It's still great to look at, but it's no longer overwhelming. There were very few places in which I could look out of a window and see the same imposing views that were in the first game, and even in the sections of the game where I was allowed to walk outside, there was so much plant life that you didn't really see any of Rapture itself.
Did anyone bring a Weed-Wacker?
The fact that you can't revisit areas that you've left is irritating, especially since you could do that in the first game. The inability to go back is set up by the storyline, but it still felt lazy on the part of the developers. There are also a number of plot holes that, while not ruining the game, definitely took me out of it and left me wondering about them at the end of the game.
Finally, the much-praised "moral choice system" from the first game is back, and "improved." Unfortunately, the improvement doesn't really change the outcome at all. You're still limited to either rescuing the Little Sisters or killing and harvesting them for more Adam. The difference is that now you can Adopt the Little Sisters temporarily, and take them around to gather even more Adam. The main problem I have with this system is that there's virtually no incentive to take the "good" route. I haven't done the math, but it seems like you end up with the same amount of Adam in the long run; it's just that if you rescue the Little Sisters, you have to wait for it. It doesn't feel like a moral choice at all; it's just deciding whether you want to get your ass kicked for a little longer in order to see the "good" ending. Granted, your actions have a far more poignant impact on the outcome of the game, but I found myself harvesting those creepy kids left and right without a second thought. It'd be nice to see a game with a moral choice system that allowed some middle ground between a saint whose only goal is to save children, and Hitler.
Despite its flaws, Bioshock 2 is still a fantastic game. The gameplay is a lot of fun, the story is still decent, and Rapture is still beautiful, if a bit more dilapidated and a bit less awe-inspiring. If you liked the first one, you're going to like the second one. If you didn't, you're wrong.
