[360] Bioshock 2 (8.3/10)

So, to be fair, Bioshock is one of my all-time favorite video games; even before I had played Bioshock, it had become one of my favorite video games. I can't promise you that this review is totally objective, but I will try not to allow my fondness of the original to color my judgment. ...yeah.

The events of Bioshock 2 take place in a city on the ocean floor called, Rapture, ten years after the resolution of Bioshock; but the game actually begins a year or so before the events of the original. You are the very first -successful- Big Daddy. However, you are killed while defending a Little Sister and left to rot beneath the city. Eleven years later you are brought back to life by a doctor trying to atone for her sins. You, of course, are her only hope to accomplish this goal. The doctor tells you that young girls have been abducted recently from the surface and, when she investigated, she discovered her suspicions were correct: Someone has rebuilt Rapture and restarted the Little Sister program. Rapture is now lead by the once respected psychologist/sociologist Sophia Lamb. Lamb preaches over the loud speaker doctrines of familial communism and combats her predecessors Rand/Nietzsche inspired brainwashing with very anti-Objectivism heavy propaganda. Your mission is to remove her as an influence and prevent her from kidnapping any more young girls.

The story is good so far. It's not as impacting -to me- as the first, but it is still mostly impressive. There is a lot more about Andrew Ryan in this installment which excited me. The first full level you get to explore is Ryan Amusements, a theme park and museum dedicated to Ryan's genius. The characters and story line are compelling enough, but they seem to lack some of the charm and grip of the originals. Maybe I just don't like the southern accent, but the character guiding me through the game right now, Sinclair, is just annoying. Atlas had a family he made you care about and he did it in an Irish accent, which everyone knows is the greatest English speaking dialect... ever. This guy just spouts nonsense in a thick southern drawl that makes me want to plug my ears, except then I would miss all the cool ambient noises and sounds. He actually isn't quite as bad as all that, but Atlas's voice was soothing as you dredged through the dead city in the first game and Sinclair makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

This game seems to have somehow regressed as far as the quality of visuals. I am still blown away by the visuals and imagery when I play Bioshock, but the graffiti isn't as unsettling or disturbing and the resolution doesn't seem to be quite as good. I guess the problem is that I feel at home in Rapture this time. I suppose that is what was intended since you play a Big Daddy, but it diminishes the creepiness and scariness. There's no more weird ominous messages desperately scrawled on the walls or floors in thick pools of blood. That has been replaced by candle lit alters to images of angel silhouettes, with semi-religious proclamations above or beside the image. It's just not the same. That doesn't mean it's not good, or even great, it simply isn't make you want to sleep with your light on, pray to God for forgiveness for the the rest of your life, without ceasing, mind-blowingly amazing.

Outside of that my only real complaints are:

1) Spicers. the splicers are not only not easier now that you're a Big Daddy, I think they're even harder. There is no reason why one, lousy, thuggish splicer should be able to kill you in this game. In the first game it was understandable, you had no weapons or armor except for a wrench. This game you're a Big Daddy. A BIG DADDY! If they want to make sure the game is difficult then do it in a way that is consistent with the world you are working in; maybe make it so that you get attacked by large groups of splicers. I don't know, I just don't like the fact that a splicer can kill me with two or three hits of his pipe. I'm a BIG DADDY, they should be afraid of me! Anyway...

2) Difficulty. the other thing I have a problem with is that the difficulty of the game is inconsistent. I began the game on hard foolishly thinking that I would get gameplay that was above average in difficulty. What I actually got was incredibly easy gameplay until I tried to harvest a corpse for ADAM, then it became insanely, nightmarishly hard. This is a real problem. I was given no indication that the difficulty would fluctuate from what I experienced for the first several hours. If it does fluctuate it shouldn't be a bi-polar transition. I almost stopped playing the game because it wasn't fun. But then I figured out how to get through the stupidity and all was well again. In Bioshock, there are many ways to defeat a Big Daddy, but I seem to have fewer options in Bioshock 2 when planning to defend against waves of splicers.

All in all, it's a wonderful game. It's not Bioshock, but it's still better than most of what's out there.

I haven't finished the game yet, so this might change, but right now I say:

8.3/10