It’s been quite a while since Bioshock 2 came out, but I was skeptical about the game and didn’t want to get it for it’s full price. I couldn’t imagine that the game would even be nearly as good as it’s predecessor, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.
I downloaded the game at a lan party (yes, I know, that’s illegal) and started playing the game. At first I wasn’t impressed at all. Bioshock 2 looks exactly the same as it’s predecessor and it also feels exactly the same at the start. The enemies are the same, the sounds are the same, the little sisters are the same… Everything just feels exactly the same as in Bioshock. But after the first hour of gameplay, things start to get interesting. You’ll get more plasmids and more guns and a handful of new enemies is presented. There is a new type of Big Daddy (the Rumbler) and a new type of splicer (the Brute Splicer) and there is the Big Sister. Especially the Big Sister is an interesting enemy. She uses plasmids and powerful melee attacks to destroy you and she can be quite challenging to defeat without getting killed yourself. Which also brings me to an important flaw that was present in Bioshock and is still present in Bioshock 2: you can’t really die. When you die, you will be instantly revived at a Vita Chamber with no significant death penalty. You will simply respawn with a slightly degraded health and Eve meter. And you have to find your way back to the battle ground where you simply continue the fight. The enemy will still be there and the fight doesn’t start over. If he was already near death, he will still be near death. This takes away any of the potential challenge that this game could have had and that is quite a shame. On the other hand, it also makes sure that the game doesn’t get frustratingly difficult.
The biggest gameplay difference that Bioshock 2 has compared to Bioshock is that you no longer have to choose between plasmids or guns in a battle. In Bioshock you could either hold a gun and fire or equip a plasmid and fire and you had to switch between guns and plasmids all the time. In Bioshock 2 you will always have a gun and a plasmid equipped which provides for some wicked combos. Like freezing and enemie and instantly blast him apart with the shotgun. Some other things have changed as well. The hacking mini game is no longer a pipe dream clone, but instead it’s much simpler. Just watch the pin and make sure it hits a green or blue area when you click the button. A green area is ok and a blue area will give you an extra bonus. An uncolored area will fail the hack attempt and a red area will sound the alarm.
Upgrading weapons has also changed. You no longer need to collect tons of garbage to create upgrades. Instead you can choose which upgrade to apply and then the upgrade machine will be destroyed. It’s not a very sophisticated manner of upgrading, but it’s effective and much less annoying then the old way of upgrading. Downside of this system is that it’s never possible to fully upgrade all of your weapons. So it’s important to choose carefully.
Since you are the first succesfull prototype of a Big Daddy instead of just a normal human means that you are not limited to the Rapture interior. At some points of the game you actually wander outside the city walls into the open ocean. This either be through an airlock or through a hole that is being blasted into a wall while you’re standing there. As a Big Daddy you are extremely heavy, so don’t worry about swimming. Instead you simply walk on the bottom of the ocean slightly slower than inside Rapture. While outside in the water you can’t use any plasmids or guns, but there aren’t any enemies to fight anyway. There are, however, things to pick up, so it’s still important to keep your eyes open while wandering outside.
As a Big Daddy you can also use the Little Sisters to gather Adam for you. Whenever you destroy a Big Daddy, the Little Sister will stand and cry at his body. At this point you can choose to either adopt or harvest her. When you harvest her, you gain a lot of Adam, but the Little Sister will die in the proces. When you adopt her, she can lead you to special Adam corpses that a scattered throughout the levels and she can gather the Adam that is left in them. While she is gathering, enemies will attack from all directions and you have to defend the Little Sister untill she is done. When she’s done you can again choose to pick her up or harvest her. Any little sister can gather Adam from 2 corpses for you before she is exhausted. When she’s exhausted you have to bring her to a vent and then you can choose the rescue or harvest her. Harvesting gives you more Adam, but rescuing (like in Bioshock) will get you rewards over time. These rewards include gene tonics, large amounts of Adam and ammo. When you die while you little sister is gathering, the gathering will be interrupted and she will be waiting for you at the vita chamber. This is about the greatest death penalty the game has to offer. When you die, you will have to restart the gathering process.
As for the guns and plasmids in the game. They are pretty much the same as in the original except for the size of the guns. The Tommy Gun was replaced by a large gatling cannon and the pump action shotgun made way for a double barreled shotgun. And for anyone who was as frustrated as I was in Bioshock for not being able to pick up and use the Rivet Gun from the Rosie Big Daddies, Bioshock 2 presents this big heavy gun as your first firearm. Unfortunately it’s not the powerful gun that I hoped it to be, but it’s cool nonetheless. Every gun still features 3 different ammo types like anti personnel rounds, anti armor rounds or electric buck. Since there are only 2 new guns, there are also only 6 new ammo types. The Rivet gun has Rivets, Heavy Rivets and Trap Rivets. The Trap Rivets are especially interesting as they can be use to lay traps as the name says. These traps can be of great help while protecting a Little Sister. The other new gun is the Spear Gun. This one fires spears as the name implies. Spears can nail enemies to walls and can be recovered from the bodies after a battle. The other ammo types are Rocket Spears which explode after a few seconds after impact and Trap Spears which can be used as electrocution trip wires. The first weapon you get however is that huge drill that the Big Daddies of Bioshock carry around. “Hey, but you said that there are only 2 new guns!”, well yeah, the drill isn’t a gun. It’s the most gruesome fall back weapon I’ve ever encountered in a first person shooter. When it runs out of fuel it’s reduced to a swinging bat though reducing it’s effectiveness dramatically.
The last new thing is the multiplayer part. This also features some new weapons that aren’t available in the single player campaign, but I haven’t played with this yet. I don’t think I’ll be spending much time with the multiplayer part anyway as it features a ranking system similar to games like Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 which is pretty horrible. When you start out at rank 1 you only have the basic abilities. When you rank up, you’ll get more abilities and weapons. This mostly means that a n00b is nothing more than moving cannon fodder. Old fashioned multiplayer like Unreal Tournament where every player is 100% equal is much better in my books.
Anyway, that’s enough about the game. If you liked/loved Bioshock, you shouldn’t miss out on this one. The first hour of the game feels a little lame, but after that the great Bioshock premise is picked up and you get a very cool and atmospheric shooter.
A special edition wouldn’t be a special edition without cool stuff. Well, this special edition is the best special edition I have so far. I mean, it has a vinyl record in the box! A VINYL RECORD! I don’t have a record player, so I can’t play it, but I mean… IT’S A VINYL RECORD! Besides the VINYL RECORD there is an artwork book and 3 posters that appear in game and a music CD as well. Here are some pics.
While playing I didn’t take any screenshots though…
