Bioshock 2 Review

   Now it's time to be serious, the original Bioshock was a masterpiece on too many levels, It didn't need multiplayer, modern gameplay elements like a rebounding health system, or a realistic weapon swapping system, it was a clearly half life inspired entirely story experience, but does the sequel with Marin over the original's Boston bring back that wow factor? The original's ending made it pretty damn hard to make a sequel for the lack of a enemy the player would love to hate. Fans of Bioshock may treat the original as just a standalone experience that should not be added to, but the way I've been hearing the developers treating the story, I became excited, however as many may have expected it is bumpy, bittersweet road, but a fun one at that.

  The new story begins ten years after the original, putting you in the role of Big Daddy searching for your former little sister, that and there's a new main enemy, Sofia Lamb who replaces Andrew Ryan. To say the least it is no where near as strong as the original and feels like a side story instead of a sequel. The concept i feel is attractive, and the opening cinematic has a shock factor, but the rest feels more like finish this mission, go to the next area, repeat. This is mainly because in the original, the 110% perfectly executed character Atlas drove you threw the story and made you emotionally attached to finishing the game, but in the sequel after spending the first half hour or so with returning Bridgette Tenenbaum, she hands the radio over to Sinclair, he is a very average character. As a businessman, I could understand his role of advisor by treating the Little Sisters as large ADAM sources instead of children, but even at that I would have liked to hear Sinclair and Tenenbaum arguing about the morality of the player's choices. He isn't a very good commentator, he just gives objectives. That and the patented Bioshock plot twist just isn't as powerful and feels more oh, rather than mindbending.

  At least the original gameplay is as fun as ever, you have the perfectly simplistic gunplay, plasmids, and a healthy dose of irrational freaks to test them on. The gameplay feels the same but the additions like the ability to dual wield a gun and plasmids, oh and believe it or not, and actual quick reacting melee attack. Hacking is one of my favorite improvements because in the original I enjoyed practically owning an area by going around hacking security cameras and turrets which at times did the work for me, but the mini game involved in the hacking became tiresome and took me out of the action, it never felt right being in combat and immediately going into the mini game. Now its governed by a golf swing meeter reminiscent of Gears of War reloading, it's balanced and doesn't take you out the action while still allowing you to rule a certain area. Its all fun fun but something about all the big daddy gear is cool but the big daddy versions of certain toys feel like cosmetic upgrades rather than a bump in functionality; the rivet gun is essentially the pistol, and the heavy machine gun is basically thee tommy gun. The main differences from last games armory are the hack tool and the drill, the hack tool is great, using the new hacking mechanic after firing a dart at a machine while the gatling gun isn't exactly a replacement for the wrench because of the halo style melee, so it's deadly but requires searching around for drill fuel which becomes nagging with regular use.

   The original Bioshock was a strictly single player singleplayer experience, so it sounds odd for the new installment to have multiplayer but the multiplayer is fun. It feels like the original but with some streamlining, which is very welcome and I enjoyed running around Rapture throwing fire at enemies and finishing them off with a machine gun clip. What I really enjoyed about it was how it just can't be frustrating, it doesn't require much experience, matches rarely came out with one player or team dominating others, and just kept me playing. It's also cool how there's some story elements by unlocking audio logs for your character but the limited amount of characters to play is annoying and the masks don't disguise the fact that there are multiple players using the same skin on one map. What also bugs me that for the first few levels, you won't be seeing many players using very similar loadouts, usually involving the machine gun and incinerate. As long as there are going to be people playing for a while, this could be enough to get players getting enough matches to max out the call of duty style leveling system, Its very worthy of Bioshock fans.

   Bioshock 2 is an awkward release, without the impact of the story, it feels like the gameplay trys to overcome it though it doesn't negate a dry "lets just finish this" campaign. Its fun, but as a game its not average in the least but  in comparison to the original its nothing more than fan material.

4.25