Bioshock 2

[Diogo Ribeiro]

What I found was the art, sound and overall feel was pretty much the same as B1 so - it's a plus, but also a prop that worked well and is used again. Same location of course, so it makes sense, but on one hand it's less mesmerizing this time although no fault of the sequel itself (I suspect people who never played the first may appreciate discovering it); on the other, there's also the feeling there's not much verve on the level design as a whole (later levels, for instance) or that the team didn't risk enough.

 

Also, the Big Sisters come after you regardless of you rescuing or harvesting the girls, and IIRC, they attack every time you clear a level of Little Sisters.

[Morgoth]

It certainly wasn't the same feel of astonishment and discovery anymore with BS2. But I'm such a sucker for looting and tracking down audio logs, it just doesn't get old.

 

Either way, I rescued all Little sisters,

let Grace and Stan alive, killed that fish-tank dude because he asked me to

and got the good ending.

It would be kinda cool if you play Eleanor in BS3. And there's also unfinished business with Tenenbaum (why did she disappear so quickly?).

 

[Purkake]

This shouldn't really be a surprise to anyone, but people on the official boards(thread titles contain spoilers) are outraged over the game.

 

I feel for 2K's community manager, this happened back in 2007 as well.

[WILL THE ALMIGHTY]

Outraged about what? I want to avoid spoilers, you know.

Edited February 15, 2010 by WILL THE ALMIGHTY

[Purkake]

Mostly because Bioshock 2 didn't descend from the heavens and lead them to the promised land. It's pretty sad, to be honest.

[jaguars4ever]

The whole re-spawn thing is pretty much the deal breaker for me on this one. If it is not too intrusive (say like System Shock 2) then that's not a problem.

 

Nice read on that review.

Felt the same way about Bio1, Jaesun. Totally broke my willful suspension of disbelief, which is probably why I didn't finish it.. Worse, the enemies remained wounded, so when you respawned you'd simply finish them off. That's virtually no penalty for failure.

 

If Bio2 has the respawn thing going on, then I'll have to give it a miss. Don't cry Bioshock. We'll always have Rapture.

[Pop]

The Vita-Chambers are optional, there's a toggle for them in the options menu.

[Matthew Rorie]

I'm enjoying it so far. At first I thought controlling the Big Daddy was a bit laborious but I'm getting used to it. I still miss wrenching dudes like I did all the time in Bio1, but I guess I can make do with the drill.

[Pop]

The shooter aspect of the game is spruced up a bit but I have two gripes with the game. One is that it kind of mangles the storytelling of the first game. For one, the audio diaries are now mostly one-offs, instead of series that tell stories of people in Rapture. Most of the time they're meant to be functional - surly blue-collar mechanic woman pops up twice for the sole purpose of indirectly telling the player character what to do. The game also starts off badly, with the opening sequence being essentially a warmed-over retread of the climactic Bioshock 1 sequence, and then with the Little Sister who walks up to you and tells you "Eleanor misses you and you should go look for her". Blatant case of tell over show.

 

The worst part of the game, however, is the thematic disconnect. Despite the whinging of so many chuckle****s here and elsewhere, Bioshock 1 was really brilliantly realized - The story of the game was really the story of Andrew Ryan, who created a would-be Objectivist paradise. Every time you picked up a new audio diary, every time you entered a new area, you gained a bit more insight into not only how Rapture collapsed, but the promise of the place, and why people would flock to it. The gameworld reflected the core themes of the game very well. The ruined art-deco style was a nod to Ayn Rand's masturbatory novels. Everything in the game can be bought. The splicers exist as the inevitable end result of Ryan's individualist philosophy. Andrew Ryan himself was about as good a character as you could write if all your characters spoke entirely in monologue.

 

Contrast that with Bioshock 2. The theme are vaguely defined and they don't gel with the gameworld. Sofia Lamb is haphazardly retconned into the setting, and the inversion of politics from Objectivism to Collectivism doesn't even sound good on paper. It seems to have been implemented more out of a spirit of fair play than any coherent ideas of implementation. There's nothing in the game that tells us anything about why Collectivism is untenable or insane, aside from the fact that Lamb won't stop talking about it. The splicers (who again, are more or less living symbols of Ryan's Objectivism) are now part of a cult for some reason. We never get a sense of why Lamb is doing what she's doing. She's not half as interesting as Ryan was.

 

The gameplay IS improved, though. They added just a little more variety and better AI to splicers, which is a nice. However they didn't really add enough - Rapture is really just the same as it was in Bioshock 1, and without the spooky thematic journey (for lack of a better term) it's not a very interesting place to revisit. Maybe if 2K wasn't so intent on quickie sequels to improve their share value (around the time Bioshock 1 came out the only things that kept them from going under were Bioshock and I think GTA4) they could really build upon what made Bioshock 1 such a success. But they didn't. This game was a pretty major dissapointment for me. I give it a C+.

Edited February 16, 2010 by Pop

[Purkake]

Do they actually explain why everything went to hell exactly at the 1959 New Year's Eve party? I think I missed that part in Bioshock 1.

Edited February 16, 2010 by Purkake

[Pop]

I seem to remember it being a bombing by Atlas.

[Zoraptor]

Contrast that with Bioshock 2. The theme are vaguely defined and they don't gel with the gameworld. Sofia Lamb is haphazardly retconned into the setting, and the inversion of politics from Objectivism to Collectivism doesn't even sound good on paper. It seems to have been implemented more out of a spirit of fair play than any coherent ideas of implementation. There's nothing in the game that tells us anything about why Collectivism is untenable or insane, aside from the fact that Lamb won't stop talking about it. The splicers (who again, are more or less living symbols of Ryan's Objectivism) are now part of a cult for some reason. We never get a sense of why Lamb is doing what she's doing. She's not half as interesting as Ryan was.

Frankly I'd regard that as a symptom of no Levine. The three main story driven games he's written for are Thief: TDP, System Shock 2 and Bioshock and each has (a) main antagonist(s) which you can identify with a 'big' ideology- The Trickster in Thief is Anarchist, The Many in SS2 is collectivist, Shodan is fascist, Ryan and Fontlas both in their own way are capitalists (one idealist/objectivist, the other realist/nihilist). Along with plot twists executed in a manner that Bioware has been trying to ape with little success since BG2 it's perhaps his greatest signature.

 

Jordan Thomas just ain't as good as carrying it off as Levine.