Bioshock 2 review (Xbox 360, PS3)
Deja Vu but still a beautiful, disturbing and wonderous return to Rapture.
When the city of Rapture was unveiled in the first Bioshock, it was an underwater dystopia ravaged by civil war and self-destruction.
This weird and strangely wonderful world left us in awe and the game itself shot right into the upper echelons of the all-time gaming greats.
Set nearly a decade after the events of its predecessor, BioShock 2's Rapture is just as haunting and atmospheric the second time around (and perhaps even more so), but the sunken tomb of Rapture has lost much of the mystery that made it so memorable and jaw-dropping.
Everything seems a bit too familiar, and the story that accompanies your journey is not as impressive or shocking as the original. Despite this, BioShock 2 has not rested on its laurels entirely and has been given a number of important enhancements.
This time around the most important change is the fact, like Grand Theft Auto before it, you are faced with a set of moral dilemmas throughout.
Throw in improved shooter mechanics, and a surprisingly fun and engaging multiplayer mode and there's enough there to reward any gamers loyalty to 2K's latest release.
Whether or not you've experienced Rapture before, BioShock 2 is an all at once beautiful, disturbing, and thought-provoking experience that stays with you after you've turned your console off.
Ten years have passed since the surprising events of BioShock 2's opening cinematic, and you're a man with a mission: to find your Little Sister. As Subject Delta, one of the original Big Daddy protectors first introduced in BioShock, you were pair-bonded with a Little Sister named Eleanor Lamb through a love that could literally kill you.
Your mutual desire is to be reunited, but Eleanor is now being held captive by her mother, Sofia Lamb, the new master of Rapture. As an altruist and collectivist, Lamb is the complete opposite of Andrew Ryan, the wealthy industrialist who founded Rapture as a place where mankind could be unfettered by petty morals, the hand of government, or the word of God.
Standing between you and your Little Sister is The Family, Lamb's fanatical cult of splicers, or former residents of Rapture whose years of abusing a genetically enhancing drug called ADAM has granted them superhuman powers - all for the small price of one thing...their sanity.
The years have not been kind to the splicers, who are far more warped and disfigured than ever before. They're also more dangerous now, having spent the last ten years honing and refining their predatory skills and abilities.
Much like its predecessor, BioShock 2 is slower and more methodical than your average shooter, but combat feels much more natural and effective than it ever did before. Most noticeably, you can now duel-wield plasmids and guns, which allows you to dish out damage using both simultaneously or keep up an active defence with one hand and an offense with the other - it sounds complicated but actually it enhances the experience greatly (although dual wield has been present in games for a long, long time).
Though setting traps was a useful tactic in BioShock, there are more compelling reasons to do so now because many more high-profile encounters are player initiated. Setting down an adopted Little Sister to get a fix of ADAM, for example, summons a horde of splicers looking for their own fix, and fortifying your position with proximity mines or trap rivets can take you a long way toward weathering the storm.
In online play (a feature I only played a small number of times before writing this review) it seems a gamer's rank determines what weapons, plasmids, and gene tonics are accessible, and you organise these into one of three 'loadouts' you can select before a match begins or between respawns.
Loadouts can and should be customised for different situations, much like in the barracks section of Call of Duty Modern Warfare, and while you're dead, it's possible to check out what combinations the other players are using. Reaching certain ranks also earns you new voice recordings left by the multiplayer characters themselves, which provide their intriguing insights into the civil war and their downfall into madness.
The backbone of BioShock 2 is the fact it is precisely down to your to decide what you do and how you do it. This will not be to the liking of some gamers who like a more methodical and rigid gameplay experience but offers much more flexibility than Bioshock 1.
Rapture may not be as mysterious and intriguing the second time around, but it is nonetheless host to a powerful and moving tale that allows you to do things your way, whatever that may be and at your own discretion.
Bioshock 2 doesn't quite hit the heights of its predecessor but it was a tough act to follow given the restrictions of an underwater world. Nonetheless this is still a serious game and 2010 is all the richer for its release - thoroughly recommended.
bucksherald.co.uk rating: 8.5/10
Version reviewed: Xbox 360
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