Bioshock 2 Gameplay Review
So over Spring break (which was about two weeks ago), I played and beat Bioshock 2 (PC). I figured I might as well review it whenever I had the chance.
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SPOILER ALERT!! THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SOME ->MINOR<- SPOILERS. Nothing major from the main plot line will be ruined.
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Anyways, on to the review.
The breakdown:
Background:
This game picks up eight to ten years after the events of the first Bioshock. You are thrown into the game as a Big Daddy, named Subject Delta, and throughout the game, you’re essentially looking for your little sister/daughter. While on this quest, you come to realize that Sofia Lamb, Rapture’s new ruler, is completely bonkers, and will ruin the city unless you take care of her. (Side question: How do you ruin a city that’s already overrun by drug addicts, mass murdering killing machines, and little girls that love to stick massive syringes into people’s corpses?) It then becomes your job to try to salvage Rapture and save the little sisters.
Music:
The music in this game is really phenomenal. Since it’s set in the 1950s/1960s, there’s a lot of older music that a lot of people will recognize or at least find familiar. Frank Sinatra, Patti Page, Billie Holliday, and many more, along with other original pieces completely composed by Garry Schyman. The music really immerses you into the game, allowing you to get the full experience out of the gameplay. I would’ve liked to hear the original music a little more, though. It just seems the licensed tracks were a lot more present in the game than the original compositions by Mr. Schyman. 9/10
Art:
The graphics in this game are really outstanding. Even for me, who was playing this game on a DirectX 9 video card, really enjoyed the graphics this game had to offer, especially the underwater parts. The coral reef areas were beautifully rendered, and the buildings and cityscape underwater were so cool. The Little Sisters and Big Daddies didn’t undergo any graphical overalls since the first game (aside from the “new” Big Daddies), but I noticed a few new splicer models, and the Big Sisters, Lamb, and Eleanor were all gorgeously rendered into the game. 10/10
Battle System:
The battle system in this game is not exactly the standard, run of the mill FPS shooter system. Compared to the first Bioshock, there’s completely new guns (including the Big Daddy’s drill!), however most of the plasmids will look very familiar. Every gun has different types of ammo you can use for it (normal ammo, trap ammo, anti-personnel [more damage against humans], anti-armor [more damage against armored enemies], etc.) In addition, plasmids also add an interesting twist to everything. Whether your taste is to shock your enemies and paralyze them while you gun them down, or light them on fire while a couple rounds go into their head, or even just freezing them and attacking ’till they shatter into thousands of little pieces, or something else that’s completely random from traps to letting security cameras gun them down for you, the plasmid system of this game really adds a lot to the overall enjoyment I had with this. 10/10
Storyline:
The storyline to this game is rather intense, and it had me at the edge of my seat for pretty much the game’s entirety. The introduction of the new Big Sisters, along with the unfolding of the whole Lamb vs. Ryan ordeals, really introduces a new extension to the stories. One of my favorite parts of this game (and also the first game) was the Audio Diaries. This allows so many possibilities with the storyline, and the definitely used it to their advantage, especially when it came to connecting the events from the first game with the second. The only thing I missed, compared to the first game, was that there wasn’t the massive thought-provoking plot twist at the end. Now, I understand that a game company can only come up with only so many unique and original plot twists, but it still was missed. 9.5/10
Replay value:
Like I said in my review of Chrono Cross, I’m really not one to typically replay games. However, I really think this game has some replay value. On my first run-through of the game, I collected probably 90% of the little sisters (skipped the ones in the last level because I wanted to finish the game, haha) and beat the game in 13 hours on Normal difficulty. You can replay the game on a higher difficulty, collect all the little sisters, have good (save the little sisters) and bad (harvest them) files, choose to purchase and upgrade different plasmids, choose to upgrade different weapons (or choose different upgrades), etc. There’s really a decent number of outcomes you can choose from. However, there aren’t really any decisions that will change the overall outcome of the game. What I mean by that is, there’s not multiple games in one. For instance, Fallout 3, while I didn’t really care for it, had a lot of extra things you can do, and each decision you made effected the game in some way. There’s a lot more games that’re coming out that also use this method, and it would’ve been nice to see some attempt at this in Bioshock. Now, the other thing that Bioshock 2 has to offer is it’s multiplayer. I haven’t really given it a fair shot since I haven’t had time, but from the little I’ve played, I honestly don’t think it’s anything to really write home about. Plasmids with guns in a multiplayer environment really seems clunky, but maybe I just wasn’t used to it when I gave it a shot. I’ll definitely play it when I have a chance and give it another go, but yeah. 7.5/10
The overall score of this game came out to average 9.2/10. I don’t believe the replay value should affect the score that negatively, because it still is a great game in my opinion. I thoroughly enjoyed it and didn’t have any regrets spending my Spring Break playing it over other games I could have played. Definitely recommend buying it, or at least renting it if you prefer playing on a console.
