BioShock 2 Review

08 Feb 2010 at 17:01:00 by Tim McDonald
Systems used to review this title: (PC)

BioShock 2 was always going to have a lot to live up to. It's a sequel, created by a different team, to one of the most ground-breaking games of recent years. BioShock dripped with atmosphere, and had more believable characters and a more cohesive environment than most games we see. This was all tied together neatly by gripping combat, horrific enemies, and some perfect level design.

You'll be glad to hear that 2K Marin, the team behind the majority of the development, has done itself proud with BioShock 2. It's a worthy sequel in every sense of the word, its only major shortcomings a direct cause of it being a sequel to such a fine game.

BioShock 2 is set roughly ten years after the first game. After a marvellous scene-setter, showing you as a prototype Big Daddy bonded to a Little Sister of your very own and your execution-cum-suicide at the hands of the Little Sister's mother, Sofia Lamb, you awaken ten years later amidst the ruins of Rapture.

The driving force behind the game is, largely, to reach the adolescent Eleanor (your Little Sister, and Sofia's daughter), to find out why she's so important to Lamb's collective, the Rapture Family, and to find out why you suddenly awakened in the first place, although fans of the original and sharp-eyed newcomers will likely have additional questions of their own, all of which will be answered as the game goes on. Throughout, you're helped and hindered by a colourful variety of allies and enemies, all of whom have their own distinct personalities, quirks, and goals, leaving you frequently unsure as to whether or not you can trust the person telling you what to do.

So, yes, you're a Big Daddy, but as a prototype you're not as big or as mean as those you'll encounter wandering the waterlogged halls of Rapture. Nonetheless, as a hulk in a diving suit, your weapons aren't the little pistols and Tommy guns used by the Splicers; you have rivet guns, giant .50cal machine guns, huge grenade launchers, and the wonderful, wonderful drill, which is one of the most obscenely violent weapons I've ever seen in a game. While a fair few of the differences with weapons are cosmetic – in terms of feel, BioShock 2's huge machine gun and the little one from BioShock are similar – the drill is gaming's new chainsaw, as far as I'm concerned. While you can batter people about the head with it, if you've got a supply of drill fuel, you can rev it up and go through a Splicer's chest with all of the blood and gore you'd expect. Better still, partway through the game you get access to a drill charge attack, letting you lunge at a splicer and inflict massive damage on their weak spot. Or their head.

There are also the expected upgrades to Plasmids. Again, many are similar to their BioShock incarnations with Winter Blast, Incinerate!, and Electro Bolt all making welcome returns, but it's their upgraded forms that really give them a new feel. Rather than simply upping the damage, spending your hard-earned ADAM on upgraded Plasmids grants you new and improved abilities. Electro Bolt, for instance, starts off by hitting and stunning one enemy. Once upgraded, it can be charged up to launch chain lightning instead, hitting both the target and all enemies nearby. Upgraded to level three, you become Star Wars' Emperor Palpatine, flinging a continuous stream of electric megadeath from your fingertips until you need to “reload” your EVE.

It's the upgrades to the other Plasmids that provide the most entertainment, however. Security Command – a revamped version of the first game's Security Bullseye Plasmid – starts off by directing all turrets and bots nearby, hostile or otherwise, to attack a target of your choice. As it's upgraded, it gets the ability to summon friendly bots of increasing power for you, with the most powerful bots amusingly coming complete with names. I was a sad man after the battle that killed Josh and Maude, I tell you.

As a Big Daddy, when you find a Little Sister (and by “find” I mean “murder her protecting Big Daddy”) you don't just have the first game's options of Harvest or Rescue – you can actually Adopt the Little Sister and take her around to drain ADAM for you out of specially marked corpses before making the choice to either rescue her, or gut her for a bigger ADAM Boost. This is where your new Plasmid abilities shine: setting her down near a corpse triggers waves of enemy Splicers until she's finished draining the corpse, meaning that you have to defend her.

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