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It seems that 2010 is the year of sequels and 2K Games Bioshock 2 is certainly one of the more anticipated follow-ups. Now of course I love shooters and RPGs, but the combination of these elements with the survival horror series puts me in unfamiliar territory. I never played Bioshock so I really had no idea what to expect when I started this game. 2K Games was kind enough to give me a copy of the game to review for you and I’d like to thank them for that because this game was amazing. The story is very dark and creepy. I’m not going to lie, with my headphones on and the volume cranked up, there were many times where I jumped out of my chair while playing through this. I’ve got tons of great game-play footage in blazing HD on my other channel, ZeitgeistOther, and make sure to follow me on Twitter to stay up to date with all the latest gaming news, so let’s not waste anymore time. Released on February 9th for the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3, here’s Bioshock 2.
Bioshock 2 takes place eight years following the events that occurred in the first title. The city of Rapture is now under the control of psychologist, Sophia Lamb, whose ideals for the city are the opposite of that the cities founder Andrew Ryan. As opposed to showing the genius of the individual, Lamb believes in the rebirth of the civilization as a collective whole. This time around, you play as Subject Delta, the fourth Big Daddy ever created and the first one to successfully bonded with a Little Sister. The game opens in 1958 with you protecting your Little Sister when you run into Sophia Lamb who commands you to kill yourself, as she reveals that the Little Sister that you’d been bound to ended up being her kidnapped daughter. You are revived 10 years later and find that the city is in shambles, the Little Sisters have grown up, and you have a psychic connection with your Little Sister, Eleanor Lamb. The rest of the game is much of a mystery as you find out what has happened, why you were revived, what is to become of you and Eleanor, and why Sophia has been using the Little Sisters to harvest the genetic modifying ADAM.
Now, I never played the original Bioshock so I really had no idea what the heck was going on initially. Luckily, the game explains much of the back-story to you as you play to get you up to speed. This game is scary as hell and it’s so sinister. The final scene in the game also clearly lays the foundation for a third game in the series which is great, because I can’t wait to see how the rest of this story is going to unfold!
Bioshock 2 took me something like 12 hours to complete on the medium difficulty and that was for the most part exploring every nook and cranny that I could find. The story for the most part is told through over 100 scattered audio logs, so much of my time was spent looking for these and listening to them. The levels start out rather straight forward and not too complex, but once you get a little bit into the game they start getting massive with multiple floors and secret passages all over the place giving you simply a ton to do besides your primary objectives.
Something really cool to the series is the addition of multiplayer matches. You are presented with several different game types consisting of capture the flag (or little sister), free for all, team death-match, last man standing, hold onto the sister the longest, and a territories game. You play as one of several customizable pre-defined multiplayer characters and have the ability to choose your load-out and plasmids. What makes the game-play unique is that scattered in most of the levels is a big daddy suit making it’s finder a juggernaut until they are killed.
Playing as the Big Daddy in the campaign is not what I expected. With all that armor, you still take a ton of damage from even the most trivial enemies, which force you to be creative. There are 7 different weapons that you’ll gain throughout the game, each with 3 different ammo types. Combine that with the large number of upgradable plasmids and stat-buffing gene tonics and you’ve got a plethora of ways to take down your foes. You will also get your hands on a camera that can be used to research your enemies as you kill them, revealing their vulnerabilities and unlocking new buffs and moves for you to utilize. Some of your weapons and plasmids may be used as traps, which is very important if you plan on utilizing the captured Little Sisters to harvest ADAM. Being that the game’s primary enemies, the Splicers, are so addicted to the stuff, they swarm in masses on the Little Sister the second you set her down. To me, protecting the Little Sister while she gathered ADAM was the most fun aspect of the game-play.
After your Little Sister gathers 2 sets of ADAM, you have the option to kill her and harvest the ADAM from her, or convert her back to a human and set her free and your decisions will trigger one of two possible endings. You’ll also have to deal with hacking robots, electronics and vending machines to make them work for you. I didn’t really care for this aspect of the game as it was too error prone and if you mess up, waves of robots come swarming at your destroying your health. Luckily getting your hands on additional health packs is not to hard to do.
The graphics in Bioshock 2 actually aren’t all that impressive. The textures seem very low res. Taking a look at the whole picture looks pretty good, but if you focus on any single detail and zoom in, it looks rather bland, which is really surprising considering it’s using the Unreal Engine 3.5. Nonetheless, the environments that you’ll travel through are very detailed and beautiful, even if they a broken down flooding city under the ocean.
The voice acting in the game is great, though it’s primarily handled through telepathy, loudspeakers and audio recordings. But the real star of the audio show is the 1950s music, the intense background music played during action scenes and most importantly, the sound effects. It’s not a survival horror game without some loud screeching sound effects to scare the shit out of you at the least opportune moments!
To put it simply, Bioshock 2 is just a ton’o’fun. It’s fun to be scared, and you get a healthy does of fear as you play through this great adventure. While the graphics aren’t top notch in my opinion, the design and game-play of the game greatly outweigh its graphical downfall. Setting traps and protecting the Little Sisters is intense, upgrading and selecting the proper plasmids and gene tonics gives you a lot to think about, and the story is very immersive, drawing you in from the very beginning. Combine all that with the great multiplayer games and the replay value to try to max out different plasmids and gene tonics and you’ve got hours upon hours of great game-play ahead of you. Is Bioshock 2 a game you should pick up? Absolutely! Don’t forget to check out my great HD game-play footage and subscribe to my other channel, ZeitgeistOther, and follow me on Twitter! Make sure to leave your questions and comments below!
