As time goes on, sequels are becoming more and more frequent and recently 2k have jumped on the lucrative band wagon that is the art of "expanding" on existing material, this time in the form of the original Bioshock game. Now, I am all for giving every game a chance, however I have a certain reserved scepticism for sequels. Most games nowadays will either leave terrible cliff hanger endings on 8-10 hour long games which could have included the obvious incoming expansion for our £40 we spend on the game. OR! the other extreme, create sequels that pretty much have nothing to do with the original at all. Of course there are some fantastic exceptions, but Bioshock 2 taps into the latter of these two extremes.
The events take place 8 years after the original Bioshock and you play as "Subject Delta", a prototype Big-Daddy turned against the system in a series of predictably unfortunate events. Our setting is Rapture, once again laden with splicers, the remaining residents of the run down underwater city. Rapture has been taken over by Sophia Lamb, who's ideals and beliefs are a strong contrast to those of Andrew Ryan in the original game, the city's founder. Subject Delta fights his way through Rapture using a combination of Weapons, Plasmids and tonics in order to power yourself up passively and actively. Plasmids and tonics rewire Delta's characters genetic coding, granting him powers such as telekinesis or the ability to call insect swarms that seek out hidden enemies.
The game opens with a cinematic which quickly tells us that our Little-sister is in fact the daughter of Sofia Lamb, and shortly after, we've shot ourselves in the head by order of Lamb herself, a pleasant start to any game. 10 years down the line Subject Delta is revived at a Vita-chamber and the game beings. Upon starting to move around within Rapture you'll notice that not much has changed from the original. Dilapidated-ruins-of-a-once-proud-city have just become prettier-dilapidated-ruins-of-a-once-proud-city through the miracles of game design and graphic advancement. The tutorial of the game, all be it small and basic, is nicely weaved into the game-play so as not to cause major disruption to general flow. We're once again introduced to the splicers, their back story and their psychotic tendencies. When all of a sudden, a new challenger appears! The Big-sister makes her first appearance by swiftly kidnapping a Little-sister and causing some major structural damage to Rapture itself in a rather fancy display of acrobatic skill. These rather menacing foes, are the iron hand of Lamb's arsenal against you, and will attack you throughout the game depending on where you are and the choices you make (morality test incoming). Yes the game features the ever popular good and bad persona's system which will give you a different ending depending on the basic moral choices you make throughout the game. I chose to pursue the bad path and ran through every moral choice by either killing or maiming anyone that stood in my way, because its more fun than being nice.
As for changes and developments since the original game there are quite a few to keep new and existing fans entertained. One majorly fantastic change is that you are now able to use both Plasmids and Weapons in a duel-wield fashion, which relieves the frustration I had with the first game. The weapons attainable are pretty much the weapons we saw Big-Daddies carrying around in the first game, however with the implementation of multiple ammo choices, it adds an extra diversity to splicer killing than previously seen. The multiplayer feature of the game also offers an interesting civil war story amongst the splicers, which provides renamed classic FPS multi-user scenarios for you to play through. One feature I enjoyed about the multiplayer was the spawning of a Big-Daddy suit randomly in the level. If your able to find it, you have the option of becoming a Big-Daddy for increased damage and endurance. This is featured in all but one multiplayer mode. The way in which the story is told throughout the game is brilliantly done, as was the first games, utilizing multiple mediums in order to convey the atmosphere within Rapture, as well as advancement in the plot.
Now, time to protest a bit. What I shall never understand, and its becoming more so in FPS games nowadays, is why do the developers of these games give you the best and most useful gun at the start? I found for pretty much the entire game I was using my rivet gun a lot more than any alternative, especially when I acquired different ammo for it. Also whilst hacking isn't a big part of the game, I don't enjoy the way 2k hides this quick-time-event and plays it off as a "mini-game". I avoided this pointless exercise by carrying as many auto-hack darts as possible at all times. Crouch could have quite easily been bound to the conventional "Ctrl" as opposed to "C" (PC version obviously) and switching between Plasmids could have been attached to the mouse wheel to keep everything in the same place. I'm not fond of the way your always taking shots and damage, there should be some mechanics to at least try to avoid the incoming hailstorm of bullets. Finally, why when given the option to harvest or adopt a Little-sister, does a Big-sister only attack you if you adopt them? You go to so much trouble to collect ADAM and then take them to the vent, and then you have to fight off the hardest enemy in game. Your alternative is to just rip the ADAM out of the little-sister, hence my "bad" moral choices throughout.
Overall, regardless of if you played the first game or not, Bioshock 2 is an enjoyable 5-6 hours spent which enthralls the player in the world of Rapture. I'm rather irritated that these games are getting shorter and shorter, yet Bioshock 2 seemed just right nevertheless.
P.S. Those spider splicers shook me up!
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