BioShock 2



Game Info               

Publisher: 2K Games               
Developer: 2K Marin - 2K Australia - Digital Extremes               
Genre(s): First-Person Shooter
Platform:  PS3               
Players: 8               
ESRB Rating: M (Mature)               
Release Date: February 9, 2010

Intro:
BioShock 2 is a big install, requiring 5011 MB of hard drive space.  It took a half hour to make room on my hard drive and another 10 minutes to install it.  Even with this huge install, the load screens are very long, but there are relatively few of them.  Once you finally get into the game intro, we find ourselves in Rapture in 1958.  The world is already destroyed and we have a first person view as a Big Daddy with a Little Sister.  We see a little bit of what Big Daddy is capable of and what happens with mind control.  Waking up 10 years later, BioShock 2 finally gets going.

Getting Going:
The tools and controls will be familiar to BioShock players, except now, they are bigger and have the addition of the drill.  For a Big Daddy, “Delta” is very human, with the subsequent hand agility.  Delta is too heavy to jump up on things, but Jack, the protagonist in BioShock, couldn’t really do it, either.  

Fun:
BioShock 2 is immediately shocking and immersive.  Once again we find ourselves surrounded by a rich foreign environment that begs to be explored like a museum or amusement park while fending off splicers and enduring the taunts of antagonists who have a story to tell.  

Visuals:
Most of the time the player will be unaware that they are a Big Daddy from the first person viewpoint alone.  While most of the splicers seemed to leave the Big Daddy and Little Sisters alone in BioShock, they come out of the woodwork to attack when you have a Little Sister in BioShock 2.  One of the things that makes BioShock 2 so amazing are the visuals.  Everything in the environment works together to tell the story.  Actually, all of the elements of the game work in tandem to create the rich environment.  Water pours in from the ceiling.  Ice builds up in some areas.  Corpses float in the water.  Sharks swim by outside the windows.  The plant life floats with the currents.  Splicers reel and fall against attacks.  Spears hit their targets and anchor the splicer into the nearest wall.  Players can also get a feel for Delta’s weight as they drop down from small heights; the controller, and the scene, vibrate.  

Sound:
2K has been careful to include everything here.  As was the case with BioShock, BioShock 2 makes full use of the surround sound.  While playing through a room, you can get a bearing on where some of the enemies are.  Water pours down to your left while footsteps approach on the right.  Your plasmids crackle in your hand in front of you.  The voice acting on the communicator is clear and succinct.  You can listen to tapes left around the environment and those tapes continue to play while you do other things, including searching your menus.  They can also be re-played.  My only complaint with the sound is the variations in levels.  If you are playing at midnight it is extremely noticeable.  Battle sounds are incredibly loud while the voice acting is very quiet by comparison.  I found myself keeping the sound remote in my lap and continually having to adjust the sound during play.

Intelligence:
It would be almost impossible to avoid a fight with a nearby splicer.  They are very aware of your presence.  In fact, if you have a Little Sister, the splicers seem to come out of no where.  If you’re collecting Adam, they do come from everywhere.  In fact, they come from places you didn’t know they could come from, getting behind you when you think you’re semi-protected.  Things in the environment can be used very effectively to your advantage.  For instance, turrets and spy cameras, once hacked, will attack every splicer that comes your way.  Setting yourself up by a pool of water allows you to electrocute several at once.  Splicers are intelligent enough, however, to take cover or to avoid that pool of water when they see others electrocuted.  Some things do require some suspension of disbelief.  Are there currents that deep in the ocean?  If there is so much water pouring in, where does it go?  Why isn’t the whole place flooded?  Why does Rapture have the ability to flood an entire area and then drain it?  What could that possibly be used for?  How does Big Daddy shoot a shot gun or use a hacking device with those huge hands?  BioShock 2 is so engaging, however, that the answers to those questions seem unimportant.

Rewards and Punishments:
Death is not permanent and doesn’t cause any noticeable loss.  Delta is returned to the nearest VitaChamber.  If he had a Little Sister with him, she is waiting for him outside of it.  If he was fighting a Big Daddy or Big Sister, they are still waiting for him, with the same amount of health they had when Delta died.  In other words, if you had Big Sister one hit shy of death, she will still be only one hit shy of death when you get out of the VitaChamber.  There are plenty of shiny objects in the environment to pick up.  The story unfolds in tapes left around the environment, the conversations on the communicator, and the items left on the walls.  It is up to the player to control how rewarding and informative their time in Rapture is.  Hacking can be both rewarding and punishing.  If you are good at it, hacked machines save you money and ammo.  They take care of splicers for you.  If you are bad, however, you lose health.  Of course, there are many trophies to be obtained, as well.

Cameras:
There were times when Delta didn’t seem to swing around as quickly as I would have liked.  An on-screen prompt shows you that you are being attacked from the right, but you can’t seem to find your attacker.  For the most part, however, the cameras and first person view work very well together to immerse the player in the environment as Delta.

Controls:
The controls will be completely familiar to BioShock players, but are easily learned by new players.  Plasmids are on your left, weapons are on your right.  Since this matches your onscreen view of your hands, this is easy to remember.  The game can be saved in the Start menu, which is important to remember.  Failure to save the game before exiting will take you back to the beginning of the level during your next play session.  Many games now save automatically, so this can be easy to forget.  BioShock 2 does auto save, but only at the beginning of levels.  

Ideas:
I can’t say I took anything new from BioShock 2.  I believe the BioShock franchise is one of the top examples of truly immersive gaming because of it’s use of environment and the way it uses the antagonists to tell the story.  If anything, I guess I’ve learned that players want to be able to explore an environment like that.  There are no limits to the kind of virtual experiences that we can offer players if we give them a first person viewpoint and a truly involved environment.

Memory:
I loved BioShock.  It’s one of my favorite games.  But, BioShock 2 upped the difficulty suddenly about half way through the game.  Machines became harder to hack.  There were many more machines that required hacking.  Splicers destroyed the health stations instead of using them.  There wasn’t enough money, ammo, or health in the environment to sustain play.  With resources suddenly so scarce, I opted to quit the game, never to return.