[SPOILERS BELOW]
- (P) Positives
- (N) Negatives
- (?) Other points/Neither positive or negative
- (P) Feels like a massive expansion pack for the first BioShock; brings over many of the same elements including (understandably) a number of game assets - particularly, the plasmid ads that you can watch are taken wholesale from the original game (but, after all, it wouldn't make sense for them to be different considering we're still in Rapture less than a decade after the events of the first game).
- (P) The characters are insanely intriguing and well-written with different ideals and morals, as well as all being splendidly voice acted; Sofia Lamb, the leader of the "Rapture Family", a religious group used by Lamb as a means to her own twisted end; Augustus Sinclair, a less-than-scrupulous businessman who was instrumental in Rapture's scientific community and is now guiding you towards Lamb to save your surrogate daughter, Eleanor etc. (However, the story is a bit of a rehash of BioShock; SEE BELOW).
- (P) Fun gameplay which, in many areas, is a marked improvement over BioShock even if the changes are mostly QoL improvements; no longer is there so-so combat as guns and weapons feel punchier with the Drill Dash in particular being satisfying to use - a weapon which rewards good aiming and determining the future location of an enemy with lots of damage. Although, much like the first game, you will find yourself using the electric plasmid for the majority of your playthrough to stun enemies which can get pretty repetitive - even though the game does encourage you to change your weapons and plasmids regularly with varying enemy types and scenarios; the game rewards exploration with materials as well as audio logs which enrich the world; the remote hacking idea is cool and provides players with a way to hack machines from a distance instead of just spamming Electro Bolt, running up to the zapped machine and hoping for the best; the use of Little Sisters has also been expanded upon from the first game as, since the player character is a Big Daddy (the huge armoured protectors of the Little Sisters), it is your responsibility to protect your Little Sister while they are harvesting ADAM, a powerful substance than can be used to give your character permanent upgrades. The ADAM system also ties into the morality choices of the game - do you harvest the Little Sister, killing them in the process, but receiving a huge amount of ADAM or do you rescue them from their ADAM-induced madness and restore them to their normal selves, but only receiving a small amount of ADAM? I, being the n i c e g u y that I am, always rescued them and thus, got the good ending.
- (P) Gorgeous environmental design with water pouring through the ceiling; barnacles and sea moss coating the walls; dimly lit and collapsed hallways with decaying wallpaper barely clinging to them; underwater areas with an innumerable amount of simple-but-effective particle effects simulating the minuscule debris in the water as well as the bubbles; marine life swimming around you as you slowly walk across the beautifully realised seafloor etc. In terms of sheer detail, BioShock 2 is masterful.
- (P) The various audio logs peppered around the game help to expand the lore and add flavour to Rapture; furthermore, the expansion upon the world-building and previous ideas from the first game is done in such a way where it is accessible to both new players and people who have played BioShock beforehand i.e. the game manages to avoid retreading old familiar ground with previous themes (as the game is set in parts of Rapture separate from the first game), but also doesn't confuse new players and still provides a valid enough entry point into understanding the BioShock universe.
- (N) Sound design, while mostly excellent, can occasionally bug out with intense battle music cutting off abruptly, ambient audio not playing correctly etc. Most likely, a result of the PC porting process.
- (N) Requires an edit to an .ini file in order to not have a motion-sickness-inducing field-of-view.
- (N) The physics objects render at only 30FPS which can be pretty immersion-breaking and, considering this game's foundation is in atmosphere and immersion, that can be a pretty severe if rather nitpick-y flaw.
- (N) There's only one major negative with the game other than the issues with the sound design and the PC port - but it's a biggie. The story and gameplay, even with the QoL improvements to the gameplay mechanics, still seems to hit many of the same beats as BioShock and feels like a rehash. Here are just a few examples with the story: the various characters you meet along your journey feel far too similar to those in the first. Gil Alexander for example is like Sander Cohen - gone insane, mad and you have to travel around his area picking up various objects, Augustus Sinclair is a far friendlier Altas/Frank Fontaine, but in all fairness is actually trying to help you instead, and is guiding you throughout the game; at the end, you have to pick up pieces to a Big Sister suit so that Eleanor can escape - much like the first game where you have to get pieces to a Big Daddy suit etc. The gameplay can also feel very same-old, same-old to people who have played BioShock before, with many mechanics being largely the same from the first (even if they are improved) e.g. the plasmid system with the "ole whack-and-zap" method being just as "OP" as it was in BioShock, the Gatherer's Garden/ADAM upgrade system, the camera detection system with bots and shutdown panels, taking down Big Daddies, following the glowing yellow arrow to your next objective etc. Again, it's understandable from a lore perspective why there hasn't been a significant amount of change to these mechanics - but it would have been nice to see more than what is there. I also felt the morality system, in terms of the story, lacked nuance as one way is blatantly evil and cruel (i.e. killing the Little Sister for their ADAM), and the other is merciful and kind (although this morality pitfall is far from unique to just BioShock 2 - hell, it's the same problem BioShock had). In total, the game is almost too faithful to the original insofar as the story and gameplay hasn't managed to really differentiate itself from the first in any meaningful way.
Overall: "Two steps forward, and two steps back". Despite all of its achievements, BioShock 2 didn't really have as much
of an impact on me as the first game - even though the
gameplay mechanics are a substantial upgrade from BioShock. It's the far superior game, but the first BioShock has the far inferior story.
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