Reviewed by Daniel Rutledge
In 2007 BioShock really shook up my gaming life.
Not only was it a first-person shooter where I actually cared about the storyline, the whole feel of it, the setting, themes and especially the characters, were all some of the most original and interesting I’d ever experienced in any sort of game.
Deservedly, it was named Game of the Year on a number of different websites, including the major ones that seem to make the industry refer to it as the Game of the Year. The inevitable sequel has been one of the more exciting prospects for gamers over the last couple of years and now it’s out and in a lot of our consoles already.
So, does it live up to the hype? Mostly. It’s a worthy sequel, everything we loved about the first game we can also love about this one, but it is not improved enough to get anywhere near the ‘wow’ factor of the original.
That’s not to say there aren’t any improvements – on the contrary, it improves the game in most aspects. The cutscenes are amazing, and the wacky and disturbing Splicers are just as brilliant as in the first game. I wish more games had characters as original as these!
It’s set ten years after the events of the first game. The original protagonist is done away with and instead you play as a Big Daddy, which is great. The movement feels very heavy and appropriate and there are a lot of things about the Big Daddy that are incredibly fun and interesting.
Your relationship with the Little Sister characters as a Big Daddy is much more involved than your character is in the first game. Instead of just harvesting or rescuing the small, creepy-but-innocent girls, you can adopt them. This means carrying them about on your shoulder and protecting them from Splicer group attacks as they harvest from corpses.
The moral choices you make with the Little Sisters also have a much bigger and more satisfying effect on gameplay than in the original.
The ways you can improve your plasmids and weapons are larger in scope, giving you the chance to have a much more powerful killing ability than in the original game. This comes in handy for the more difficult characters you have to defeat in battle.
So the biggest new aspect of the sequel is multiplayer mode. After a stylish and fun prologue in which you customise your character and your plasmid / weapon loadouts, you choose between seven game types. There’s your standard deathmatch and team deathmatch options, and a few versions of Capture the Flag or Sabotage style modes that involve Little Sisters and other BioShock elements.
There is a Modern Warfare style reward system where you are unlocking new weapons, plasmids and upgrades as you rack up kills in the multiplayer mode, which is also nice. I am pretty concerned though that you have to pay extra cash - in addition to the price of the game itself - in order to download multiplayer upgrades. This creates in-game benefits for the multiplayer gamers that want to spend the most money, which is pretty crappy for those of us who struggle to pay just the standard $120 or so price tag.
The multiplayer mode is quite enjoyable, but for me it’s more of a novelty that wears off after a while. There are shooters out there that are far superior to BioShock in terms of the way the actual shooting works. This game’s strengths lie not so much in the actual shooting itself, but in everything else the game has to offer. I actually would have preferred if all the resources spent on the multiplayer mode had instead been used towards expanding the single player campaign. But it’s still a nice addition.
Ultimately, BioShock 2 is a brilliant game, but it fails to improve upon the amazing original enough to be as innovative as that one was. I highly recommend it, but if you haven’t played the original yet for some crazy reason, I suggest you get that first.
Bioshock 2
:: Publisher: 2K Games
:: Developer: 2K Marin
:: Format reviewed: Xbox 360
:: Rating: M