BioShock 2 Review

Welcome back to Rapture, the under water oasis home to some of the worlds friendliest and most innocent children on Earth. But, beneath this thin veil of deception lays a heavily guarded secret and a more sinister existence. It's your job, Daddy, to find out just what it is and how you can fix it.

Story

As with the original game, story is a heavy hitter and major selling point to the game and it is genuinely inredibly difficult to describe what's going on without spoiling it for you along the way.

You play the game as one of the "Big Daddy" characters, whose job is to guard and protect the Little Sisters. Little sisters are known for being removed from the concious world by a chemical injection which rewrites the bio-chemistry, labelled "Adam". This Adam is harvested by the Little Sisters and is in demand by the brain washed inhabitants hell bent on stopping the Sister's in the process, hence your role as protector.

Your story is a little different, as your Sister has been separated from you and it's your task to locate and find her by befriending residents involved with the project in order to gain access to her captor, and to ultimately rescue and close down the operation for good.

Gameplay

To aid you on your journey, BioShock 2 utilises the same core gameplay as the original whereby you must pair a weapon (be it melee weapon or some sort of gun) and a special power ability fueled by something called "Eve". Eve hypo's fuel whichever power up you've selected at the time and range from hurling fire on your enemies, to freezing them (allowing you to charge in for an insta-kill smash) or zapping them with a chain electro-bolt, especially satisfying when being shot by a host of enemies, nice placed in a puddle.

Weapon combinations and correct use of the Eve power ups is ultimately relevant to how much enjoyment you get out of the game. Use the gun alone and you're defeating the object and purpose of the game. Experiment a little, if there's a group of enemies cowering over a deceased corpse, rather than going in all guns blazing, fire your hypnosis on one of them so he takes the others out, then freeze that sucker ready for a single takedown. Likewise, when you reach the dark depths of the game where the magic disappearing residents start throwing fireballs at you, fry their asses to freeze them, then turn their flaming grenades back on them with telekenises.

On top of this mechanic come the Little Sisters whom I touched on earlier. During the game, you will encounter other Big Daddy's and their paired Sisters who you will have to fight in order to adopt or harvest the sisters to receive more adam. Adam is a sort of currency, which you may exchange in special vending machines for bio upgrades for full customisation of your character. Once you've adopted the Sister, pressing and holding the X button brings up a creepy outline directing you to a body holding the precious Adam which only the Little Sister's can retrieve. Whilst she's busy removing the Adam with the biggest needle seen in gaming and the pin point accuracy injections that any school nurse would be proud of, you have to fight and fend off any enemies who come in to sabotage the retrieval.

Controls are standard stuff where movement is allocated to the left and right anologue sticks and weapon firing to the right trigger (as normal). Left trigger controls the Eve power ups and right/left bumpers allow fast changing of each weapon/power up combo respectively. Due to the game's setting and general feel, it's not uncommon to experience headaches, dizzyness or even faint nausea, I experienced the former, so it's something to watch out for.

Graphics

If you've played and enjoyed the orginal game, these locations will be familiar. This appears to have rattled a few cages by people who wanted more, and new locations. The way I see it, taking the setting to anywhere other than Rapture would've only been a cash in on the name.

This is a genuinely stunning location with massive attention to detail, fantastic level design with a truly atmospheric underwater eutopia feeling gone bad. Decaying walls, flickering lights, staggered graffiti and leaky rooves all indicate that this place is about to sink further into disripute.

Enemies are suitably attired and kitted out, complete with freakish garments familiar to the decade in which the game is set, and fire, water and electric effects are all believable and genuinely beautiful to behold.

Sound

Being set in the late 50's, the music in this game is of its time and very fitting with the placement and setting of the game. From the classic grammerphone style crackle in the loading screen to the radio frequency high pitched whine as the signal comes and goes via your radio communicator, everything has a satisfyingly classic, Deco feeling.

Voice overs are well acted and believable, fairly frequent but never being intrusive as the game's makers have opted to overlay the story telling into the gameplay via radio chats and pre-recorded voice notes dotted around the environments rather than supplementing the gameplay for several in game movie sequences.

From the Big Daddy's footsteps being heard when you begin to approach one, and the "come on Mr B, we'll miss the angel's dancing" voice overs from the Little Sister's is satisfyingly creepy and terrifying. One last feature I loved was the first time I jumped on my seat when I walked underneath a  rather large drip of water and the metallic *thud, thud, thud* on the helmet was a massive shock.

Multiplayer

Okay, this is a sore point and one the fans of the original game were not happy about to say the least. I can report however that the multiplayer is absolutely nothing to fear whatsoever.

The game's multiplayer is set in the same locations that you explore in the singleplayer, each character is customisable and you're able to pack a combination of power ups and weaponry just like the singleplayer game. There's a few balancing issues where pistols are stronger than shotguns at both distance and close range, but I expect these will be ironed out soon enough.

There's standard multiplayer game modes with a BioShock twist including deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the Little Sister (a'la Cap the flag) etc. all of which are fun in short bursts. There's a ranking system (as all multiplayer games now feature) on 1-50, with each rank, new weapons etc. are unlocked.

It's good fun, but don't look at this as some Left 4 Dead or Call of Duty replacement and take it for what it is, an extra way to boost play time on one of your new favourite games with others. It'll never take off and it will likely die a death soon due to inactivity but that's not due to poor design and boring gameplay, it'll just suffer like all single player games with tact on multiplayer with people moving on to the next franchise.

Summary

How to summarise this then, it's a toughy. To keep the game fresh, surprising and fun to the end I've had to completely avoid the story and plotline and to be honest, that's the game's star feature.

With hours of play time, fantasticly atmospheric surroundings, more of the same from BioShock and multiplayer which is surprisingly decent to boot this is one not to miss package and is a fitting and fully complimentary sequel to the critically acclaimed original.

Treat this as what it is, an alternative look on the downfall of Rapture and not exactly a true sequel which relies on "more" and "better" of everything and their won't be a single disappointment. Go buy, now.