My Review on: Bioshock 2.

[DarkBlade325]

To anyone who has been paying even a cent of attention to the Video Game board will know that I have been shitting bricks over the release of Bioshock 2. I have gotten a chance to play it, and I have beaten it twice now. So I believe I have a good grasp on how the game works now.

Depending on your mindset when entering this game, your thoughts about the game will either be 'awesome' or 'meh'. If you go in thinking it's going to be a TOTAL refresh of the original Bioshock formula, you'd be wrong. There are a couple of changes such as hacking being different (in the first game, you went into a puzzle where you arranged pipes in a certain order to get a liquid to flow to a point. This paused the game, and usually took about 10-30 seconds. In this game, hacking is much simpler and only takes about 5-10 seconds at most. Plus, the game doesn't pause.) Along with hacking, the research camera has been edited as well. Instead of taking a photo of an enemy in a good position, it's now instead a recording camera of sorts. Basically you fire the camera, and you go into a brief 'scoring' stage. Basically you hit an enemy with different types of attacks- melee, plasmids, bullets, explosives, ect. The more variety of attacks, the higher your score goes. When your score goes high enough, you get either a damage/defense/movement speed upgrade, or a new tonic/plasmid.

Little Sisters also work differently. You can either eat them after you kill their Big Daddy (eat = harvest to you guys reading. I like to refer to it as eatting. Nom nom nom, Little Sister sandwich.), or you can adopt them, which basically you carry her around on your shoulders and place her down on Adam filled bodies to get about 80+ Adam from each gather. You fend off a horde of splicers for about 2-3 minutes, then pick her back up then do it once more. After that's done, you can guide her to a vent and either rescue her, or eat her to get the maximum Adam count.

But besides all that, not much in combat has changed. Plasmids feel the same but with slight upgrades. I can't remember, but I don't think there is one new plasmid besides the one you get towards the end of the game from a certain someone. Some of the plasmids get upgrades, but that's about it. It's not a bad thing for the game, still fun to play. But I feel that the developers didn't take enough risk jumps into the idea pool. Sure there's a chance of landing on a bitter spike at the bottom, but there's also a chance to land on a pillow of excellence. I mean hell they tried alot of new things for the original Bioshock to separate it from the rest of the FPS crowd, why not this one? I think it's because they didn't want to disappoint the fans, which is understandable.

The story is still pretty great and easy to follow.

=====SPOILER ALERT FOR BOTH BIOSHOCK AND BIOSHOCK 2 FOLLOWS! DO NOT HIGHLIGHT THE EMPTY AREA BELOW IF YOU DONT WANT TO BE SPOILED!===

Something I really like about it is how the developers threw a curve ball at you. Know how in the first game Atlas was actually Fontaine who betrayed you near the end of the game? Well there's a character just like Atlas in this game. You know, dude who is giving you directions and help? Yeah well Bioshock 2 has Augustus Sinclair, a southern-accented, business man, promising you that once you escape rapture, you and him are "going places", who you never see put himself in harms way. When I first saw this dude, I screamed in my head "okay, when is this dude going to "stick a shiv in my belly"? But towards the end of the game he gets controlled by Lamb and is holding a certain key, thus you have to kill him. He still had control of his vocals and constantly kept urging you to kill him and get a key for your sake. He even thanks Delta for killing him. I gotta say, I felt like a douche, and a retard for thinking he'd at some point in the story betray me after what Atlas did to me 2 years ago in Bioshock. Crafty, crafty developers.
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Alright enough of the spoiler space. Anyways the story is pretty good as said before. One thing I wanna know is: Where the !@#$ did Tenenbaum go off to? She's in the game for like 10-30 minutes, then she just !@#$s off for the rest of the game. Then we're presented with Sinclair. What happened to her? When I saw the Hunting the Big Sister video, I assumed she'd be the one helping you through the game. Was there not enough time to voice act? Is it some plot point to be put into a sequel? I have no idea. Oh yes, and before you say, yes there are going to be more sequels to Bioshock. I think they have planned up to 5 games.

One of the major flaws I had with the game is depending on what plasmids you want to use or how you're building your playstyle, you can finish the build, but only have like 20-30 minutes of game time left. I was primarily building a melee damager. The final plasmid I needed to complete this was Telekinesis 3. Basically it allows you to pick up live splicers and throw them. Along with a couple of tonics I had, I could bring a splicer to me, drill into him to gain some health and eve, then throw his body at someone or use it as a shield to get close to another splicer. It was a great combo. Unfortunately for me...You get Telekinesis 3 in a G.G in the last 20-40 minutes of playtime. I didn't have my full burst of fun with it in that time.

I wish that the developers would have put in a mode where you could play the game again but with all the plasmids and upgrades you unlocked, but with stronger enemies. Kinda like Prototype. Instead all you can do is start a fresh new game once it's over. But that's the glory of the PC version. People will make trainers for the game that let yah unlock all the plasmids with just a push of a key.

Another thing is that this game doesn't have an end boss. Sorry to those still playing through, might have crippled your wishes somewhat. It actually ends kinda/sorta abruptly. But it's nothing major.

Well, anyways. I have the habit of getting off track real easily, so I'll end this by saying that this is a !@#$ing awesome game. Sure they didn't take many risks like I hoped they would, but it's !@#$ing BIOSHOCK. If you liked the original, you'll love the second one. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to play a little more of this other game I may review later in the future.

[ARTgames]

We have a Bioshock 2 topic that you made. You could have edited your first post and bump the topic back with your review.

[DarkBlade325]

We have a Bioshock 2 topic that you made. You could have edited your first post and bump the topic back with your review.

I keep my reviews separate from other topics to avoid confusion and to keep the previous topic on track. I don't want the topic to shift from the game, to how ass my review is.

[God-I-Suck]

You should review the multiplayer.

[Torch]

I took a break from MW2 to play this over the Canadian long weekend (4 days for me) and so far, it is fantastic. Combat is quite a bit better than it was in Bioshock 1 and the drill is much cooler than the wrench. My only complaint so far is that I absolutely detest missions in games that require you to defend an NPC and with defending the little sisters, I seem to be doing a lot of that.

Also where the !@#$ DID Tenenbaum go?

[DarkBlade325]

You should review the multiplayer.

It's a bit meh to be honest. To me it feels like one of those games that should just stick with singleplayer. But that's just me.

Also: A LITTLE BOOST IS ALL YOU NEED, AVERAGE JOE TO HERCULES!

[venuse]

i havent played 2, but if i remember right the person that designed the first, ken Levine, had nothing to do with the sequel. so if their isnt alot of improvement on the old setup that might be why because simply they were just making a sequel for some quick cash, not a true sequel with the original designer who would know what best fit,worked, and be original. frankly im not sure if i want to get the sequel since their are other games i want to get.

[Lingus]

i havent played 2, but if i remember right the person that designed the first, ken Levine, had nothing to do with the sequel. so if their isnt alot of improvement on the old setup that might be why because simply they were just making a sequel for some quick cash, not a true sequel with the original designer who would know what best fit,worked, and be original. frankly im not sure if i want to get the sequel since their are other games i want to get.

Somehow I doubt this to be the truth. I have a feeling Bioshock 2 is going to be quite awesome.

[Jake]

i havent played 2, but if i remember right the person that designed the first, ken Levine, had nothing to do with the sequel. so if their isnt alot of improvement on the old setup that might be why because simply they were just making a sequel for some quick cash, not a true sequel with the original designer who would know what best fit,worked, and be original. frankly im not sure if i want to get the sequel since their are other games i want to get.

It may not be what it could have been if the original designer was still working on it, but that doesn't mean it's a quick cash in. The developers spent a lot of time and energy to make Bioshock 2 a great experience. Is it revolutionary like the first one? No, but it does a lot of things right, and improves on the original in more than one way.