http://gryphonosiris.blogspot.com/2010/02/bioshock-2-good-bad-and-splicer.htmlBioshock 2: The Good, the Bad, and the Splicer
Ok, so, like I said last post, it has been the year so far for the sequels. This time the review is for Bioshock 2, and in my case, specifically for the PC since I prefer this platform over a console. So, after an extended period of messing around with the game’s multiplayer I sit down with “La Mer” playing in the background to write up my review of Bioshock 2. Does it live up to the first game? The answer may surprise you.
SYNOPSIS
It’s been nearly 10 years since Jack freed the failed underwater capitalist Utopia from the clutches of Andrew Ryan and Frank Fontaine. Unexpectedly young girls have been abducted from coastal areas by strange diving suit clad individuals. Perhaps Rapture isn’t quite as dead as we thought; and perhaps your character, a Big Daddy prototype dubbed ‘Delta’ is linked to this mystery down to his very genes.
THE GOOD
Like with the first game Bioshock 2 is an odd mixture of classic art-deco and underwater decay. The city that was once a shinning, hidden jewel of the North Atlantic Ridge has suffered greatly at the expense of the gene civil war, and at the cold, merciless waters of the ocean itself. Where Rapture in the first game was slightly leaky and in need of a really good janitor crew this time around it is on the verges of falling apart at the seams. Whole sections are flooded, and as a Big Daddy you have several chances to explore the parts that the ocean has reclaimed, along with areas outside on the ocean floor itself. Along with this decay of the city the physical decay of the bodies of the splicers is reflected as well. Last time they were slightly deformed in the face, now they have rewritten their genes so much that many are losing their human features and becoming more monstrous.
As a Big Daddy you have access to weapons that before were normally only dreaded as a normal human. Besides the iconic drill and rivet gun Delta can use a 3 barrel .50 cal machine gun, a double barrel elephant gun, the harpoon launcher, and the grenade gun. Since you are also a Big Daddy you are strong enough to heft all weapons in your right hand, leaving the left free for plasmids that can now be charged for more devastating effects. Also gone is the hacking game of Piperunner, but instead a real time hacking tool that allows to remote hack turrets and devices without pausing the action. You are also given small remote turrets which can be set to protect your flanks in combat against other Big Daddies or Splicer hordes. Instead of the single shot camera used to research enemies in the first game you have a movie camera that gives you greater bonuses for using more varied attacks against your targets, which grants you more experience and upgrades.
As a Big Daddy you also can collect Little Sisters and use them to collect Adam. Like last time around you can choose whether to save or harvest them, saving them resulting in you getting bonus items and plasmids, harvesting resulting in a huge Adam bonus. However when you have your Little Sister collect Adam from corpses you must defend them from the mob of Splicers who wish to get the Adam they are collecting, like drug addicts jonesing for a fix. This means setting up a strategic perimeter of traps, sentries, proximity bombs and yourself in a position with a clear field of fire. These fights can get rather tense as the Splicers sometimes don’t come from the direction you expect, meaning you need to think on your feet. Once all the Little Sisters have been dealt with in an area you then have to contend with a Big Sister. Suited up like a Big Daddy, Big Sister is a feral, highly aggressive enemy who uses acrobatics and plasmids against you, and is probably one of the few enemies in Rapture who can go toe to toe with Delta in a down and dirty fight.
The plotline of the game picks up with your waking up after nearly ten years after apparently being hypnotized into shooting yourself in the head on New Year’s Eve 1959; the date Rapture descended into civil war. Dr. Tanenbaum of the first game explains to you that someone has restarted the Little Sister program and has been kidnapping girls from the outside world. Leadership of Rapture is now in the hands of a woman who believes that the individual owes everything to the whole; in contrasts to Andrew Ryan’s idea that the individual keeps what they earn. While not as strong as the plotline of the first game, it is told well.
One of the new features is an online multiplayer system told as the civil war of Rapture. You have an apartment where you can keep track of your plasmids, gene tonics, and weapons, but also unlocked audio logs of the different characters in the Multiplayer scenario. The game types are pretty standard with CTF, Territories, Slayer, Team Slayer, and an oddball clone involving a Little sister. During game play in random locations a Big Daddy suit will appear, allowing a player to become a rivet gun wielding juggernaut. While you cannot use plasmids in this form you can toss out proximity bomb and do an area affect stomp. As you level up new plasmids, weapons, and weapon mods become available to you to change how you fight. As an added perk you can sabotage ammo dispensers so they drop a power explosive when the enemy tries using it. No matter how many times it happens I still chuckle a little when someone falls for it.
THE BAD
Sadly, the game just isn’t as good as the first, nor did it really improve on anything. The visuals remain pretty much the same on the surface, and gameplay is nearly identical with the exception of the drill arm and the hacking mechanic. You are also trapped in a linear path with little room for free exploration. Where Bioshock allowed you to roam Rapture once an area was cleared Bioshock 2 forces you only to continue forward without the ability to go back to earlier areas. Something in to me feels that as a Big Daddy you should feel like a nearly unstoppable hulk, however two or three good hits with a pistol are enough to bring your health down to dangerous levels. Even against the other Big Daddies your weapons are hard hitters, but it feels like you have a glass jaw to their attacks.
The story is also not as strong as the first game, feeling like it was put together to try to fit within the world in order for them to make a new game. It’s not horrible, but it feels like it can’t get out of the enormous shadow of the first game. The Big Sister battles also only happen once all of the Little Sisters in an area have been dealt with, so you know when it will happen. If they were random they would be more terrifying knowing that she may attack when you least expect it, but most of the time you are well prepared for the encounter and normally have already set up a trap for her when she arrives.
My biggest complaint deals with the multiplayer of the game. While the multiplayer combat is solid and fun, it uses Windows Live Match Making for the PC version of the game. For those who don’t know what this may mean (all two of you, one being my mother), it means that the match is set up with a local host rather than a dedicated server, like on Xbox Live for the 360. If the person hosting has a bad net connection everyone else gets terrible latency, or if they leave early the game will shut down completely (thought you do keep the Adam you collected in the match, thankfully). Live Match making works well enough for console gamers, but most PC gamers are used to, if not expecting dedicated servers. To add insult to this injury the netcode sometimes causes an unbearable latency issue that gives the appearance of your connection having a ping of over 2000m/s. Oddly, hitting alt-tab to leave and re-enter the game sometimes corrects this, but not all the time because it sometimes might very well be someone on a slow internet connection.
THE UGLY
Well, besides the Splicers really upping the bar for hideous and ugly there is the moral dilemma or harvesting or adopting the Little Sisters, as Harvesting kills them. In one section there are bodies stapled to walls and messages written in blood, along with the multitude of dead bodies found throughout the game. You also are given the choice in several places whether to kill or forgive the lackeys of the main villain. In the case of two of these people that are normal (looking) humans, one even begs for his life when you get near him. In comparison the foul language seems tame when compared with that.
CONCLUSION
Gameplay is solid, but nothing we haven’t seen already. Visuals still impress, however too similar to the first game. Plotline required a little more suspension of disbelief than the first game, but was entertaining. Multiplayer is fun; however the use of Live Matchmaking over dedicated servers for PC players and the net code issues bring it down dramatically.
The game is fun, however, too many issues for me to give a solid recommendation on this one.
