Do You Choose Rapture? A Bioshock 2 Review
Luke Earhart
March 4, 2010
Filed under A & E
2K Games is back with another venture under the sea. Their first Bioshock was a sleeper hit, and even won game of the year back in ’07. A while back they began a very effective viral marketing campaign called “There’s Something Under the Sea.” This internet based campaign had a website that was filled with pictures about the big mystery of little girls from around the world being kidnapped by some sort of robotic creature. It focused on a journal of a specific person, dedicated to discovering just what was going on. It basically revealed one of the main enemies of Bioshock 2. People thought that it was a new type of Big Daddy, a thin one that was very fast. However, soon we found that it was a new enemy called a Big Sister (more on this later.) Does this new addition live up to the original’s fame, or does it sink to the depths of briny desolation?
This time you don’t play as a regular Jack like in the first game. Instead, you play as the first Big Daddy ever successfully bonded to a Little Sister. The Big Daddy’s name is Subject Delta and his Little Sister’s name is Eleanor Lamb. The plot kicks off in the still-crumbling underwater city of Rapture. Eight years after the plot of the first Bioshock, Subject Delta is suddenly revived for an unknown reason and sets off on a quest to find Eleanor. Her real mother, Sophia Lamb, is now the ruler of the “Rapture Family” and attempts to prevent you from reaching your adopted daughter. She has plenty of deterrents for you, such as her various “Lieutenants” like Grace Holloway. Many of the sequences in the game include a sort of moral choice; will you be a savior or a monster? This can be a plot changing device such as killing a person, or a regular game mechanic like harvesting a Little Sister as opposed to rescuing them.
There are a few twists and turns in the plot, but most of them are predictable. The real fun comes with the vast amount of ways that you can kill the Splicers of Rapture. Many new weapons fill Subject Delta’s arsenal, such as the rivet gun and a drill like the Big Daddy’s from the first game. You can upgrade these guns as you please at the various Power To The People machines that are scattered around the decrepit city. Besides all these weapons, you can also use powers called Plasmids. These powers include shooting electricity, fire, telekinesis, and a variety of other special ones, many which are new.
The gameplay itself can be very exciting and heart racing. However, for some odd reason, even though you have an armored suit, you seem to take more damage than you did in the first game, when you just had a shirt on. You’ll be popping first aid kits like none other this time around. Another thing that has changed is how you hack security bots. It’s no longer the stressful pipe connecting mini-game, instead, it take place in real time, and has a tick that moves back and forth. Just press the A button (on the 360) when the tick is on a green space or blue space and you hack it successfully. However if you land on white, you get shocked, and if you land on red, the alarm goes off and you gets attacked by security bots.
Overall, Bioshock 2′s newer changes outweigh the more questionable ones. The new multiplayer seems like a quick add-on and is almost too fast paced, reminiscent of Unreal Tournament. It has ranks like Call of Duty, but the gameplay doesn’t feel balanced at all when you’re up against higher ranked people. Still, the single-player is a really fun experience, and the scripted events are top-notch. Even though some parts are predictable, the game does keep you guessing as to what specifically happens. Bioshock 2 doesn’t give the same shock as the first, but I would definitely recommend it to Bioshock veterans or newbies alike.
