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REVIEW: BIOSHOCK 2

Reviewed on Xbox 360. Also on: PC, PS3 Developed by 2K Marin, Digital Extremes (multiplayer), Irrational Games, 2K China, Arkane Studios. Published by 2k Games

The sequel no-one wanted to a decent-selling but critically-loved game, Bioshock 2 shouldn’t work as well as it does. The original’s story wasn’t shouting out for continued adventures; the original studio wasn’t involved (apart from the crew who developed the PC version of the original); multiple dev studios all served to engender the sequel with a “it should fail” aura. But here we are, the game is out, has sold well enough and the game itself doesn’t actually suck. It’s quite good without feeling like a mere expansion.

In BS2, you are a Big Daddy named Delta, stuck in Rapture several years after the death of Andrew Ryan. Dr Sofia Lamb, one of Ryan’s former advisors/rivals, has her own plans for Rapture, plans which you aren’t a part of. Melding her interest for controlling others for their own good and social experimentation, Lamb’s own daughter is the Little Sister to your Big Daddy. The story is a simple, yet unusual for a game, tale of family, megalomania and the recovery of humanity, though without the dramatic plot twists of the original game, nor the iconic philosophy of Andrew Ryan (though his sayings do occasionally crop up in some of the audio diaries).

The game itself is very heavily based on the design of the original with a few crucial changes. You can’t customise weapons in BS2 though upgrades are still available. If you choose to rescue a Little Sister, you need to hunt down corpses from which your ward will extract precious ADAM you miss out on due to altruism. Of course, this is more or less an escort mission since you have to keep the hordes of enemies away from your charge. You still have a large variety of plasmids and gene tonics to alter your character’s abilities but its’ still a case of “red M&M’s, blue M&M’s, they all end up the same colour in the end.”

So if you rescue the little sisters, you then have to guard them while they extract ADAM since you get less of the stuff this way than if you just harvested them. In BS2, once you’re accounted for all of the Little Sisters in a level, you then have to face off against a Big Sister, who are faster and more agile than Big Daddies, but still pack a mean punch.

One criticism of the first game was that many found the way the Vita Chamber/ Checkpoints worked made the game feel a bit easy, something that was made optional in a post-release patch. Here they work much the same way, retaining the option to turn them off. But, if you happen to die whilst protecting a Little Sister during an extraction, you will return to the last Vita Chamber and have to restart the extraction process. However, all the ammo you may have expended in unsuccessfully defending her is gone and you may find yourself having to fend off splicers with no ammo and no money to buy more.

So it feels like a sequel to Bioshock and feels new enough to be worthwhile. The texture work seems a bit hit and miss compared to the original and the sounds aren’t always as crisp as other games. But they do set the mood very well. The actual art and sound work is still top notch. There’s even effective lip sync here.  The script is excellent even without the massive twist the first game managed so well. The shocking parts here aren’t quite as shocking but it’s an interesting story and Sofia Lamb’s philosophy provide and interesting counterpoint to that of Andrew Ryan.

There is apparently some multiplayer, which I have not tested. By all accounts it’s competent but not worth buying the game for.

A good game, worth playing if you’re after a good single player FPS. It’s as different from Call of Duty, Killzone, Halo and Battlefield as you’re likely to get yet is a better shooter than Mass Effect 2 or Fallout 3 or Borderlands.

Controller1.com rating  2/3

(3/3 if you think you’re entitled to the sweat on your brow)