Negative Gamer Review: BioShock 2 (Xbox 360)

BioShock was a fantastic game. Atmosphere, plot and gameplay all worked together to create one of gaming’s all-time greats. When a sequel was announced that wasn’t being produced by the original team, many people became instant cynics. Lightning doesn’t strike twice after all.

BioShock 2 brings you back to Rapture as a Big Daddy, one of the lumbering and iconic enemies from the original. The setting continues from the first game, though the similarity stops there. With some subtle (and some not-so-subtle) improvements on the original mechanics, the game accepts what it follows and takes several logical steps in the right direction. The first-person shooting sees new toys and hacking gets itself an upgrade. The game also comes with a whole new multiplayer aspect, expanding both the fiction and your time in the city.

I bought myself the PS3 Special Edition which came with enough fan-service inside that even without the disc it might be worth it. (Though probably only to me; the original game is easily one of my favourites.) For this review I  played Xbox 360 version of the game (that Chelsea bought).

It’s the same, but different

It just can’t be done. The reason BioShock was good is because it was BioShock. BioShock 2, as you may have noticed, is not BioShock. It’s not new, it’s not fresh and it’s not needed.

I’ve tried repeating those statements over and over but I still can’t find myself agreeing. BioShock 2 only adds to my experience with the underwater utopia-gone-wrong. The first game was not built to have a sequel, obviously, but the seams you expect to find where the plots overlap are almost unnoticeable. For a while I assumed there were gaps but on closer looking (in the form of exploring each area to find as many of the audio diaries as I could) everything matches up.Whilst echoes of the past inevitably run through from time to time, the ideas and characters are almost all thankfully new.

I found this same-but-different feel comes to the gameplay too. You’re no longer just a guy with plasmids and guns; now you’re a Big Daddy. The weapons you use, the relative strength of your enemies and the tools at your disposal have all been altered to suit your new persona. More often than not I found myself using short-range weapons and melee attacks to deal with most foes. The tonics (of which there are far too many) let you customise your load-out, but by design they seem geared towards the close-combat action you would expect from a Big Daddy.

Something sadly unchanged from the original game is the difficulty. BioShock 2 is not a hard game by any stretch. Whilst the amount of stuff you can carry seems small, the abundance of items laying around for you to use is almost comical. Towards the end of the game I was using my better weapons wastefully, simply because there was so much ammo laying around. The Vita-Chambers are also still there to revive you if you die, though (after learning from the first game) deactivating them was one of the first things I did.

Bugs and Bees. BEEES!

Even with its delayed launch there are a number of noticeable, game-stopping bugs in BioShock 2. Some of these bugs are simply inconvenient whilst others make the game borderline unplayable unless you load an older save (if you’ve been reusing the same save file, you’re a bit screwed). In such a high-profile game as this, the bugs you come across in standard playing are inexcusable.

A few of the bugs I experienced myself include: wide-screen is not wide-screen, it’s just cropped 4:3, Big Sister music (horrible screeching violins) being stuck playing until you exit the level, auto-hacking a device and pressing ‘œhack’ at the same time leaves the hacking mini-game on-screen until something else is hacked, plasmids unable to be changed until a previous save is loaded, the left trigger (used for firing a plasmid) stops responding until a previous save is loaded.

The game suffers from occasional graphical slow-downs when some menus are being loaded or maps are being looked at. The texture pop-in from the first game also makes a reappearance. If these hadn’t been bugs and issues also found in the first game I’d probably be more forgiving, but these are known issues.

Still, you get the Insect Swarm plasmid so it’s not all doom and gloom. Waiting for the textures to pop-in or re-playing a section after a save breaks gives you a good opportunity to think up your own ‘œThe Bee Plasmid is Great’ song. For those who aren’t very musical you either have to save frequently (making sure to use many different save slots), or hold off buying the game until it’s patched.

Choose your mask, then be beaten by somebody with an advantage

I enjoy the BioShock 2 multiplayer (if not, I probably wouldn’t have pumped quite so many hours in). I enjoy it because it’s fun. When you’re a team of splicers in a civil war with another group of splicers, things are borderline silly. It’s this silliness which lets me mentally excuse the huge number of problems the multiplayer has. Losing doesn’t feel like a serious problem (you also get XP or in this case ADAM either way).

Whilst having a progression system where you unlock weapons, upgrades, aesthetics etc. as you get better is nice to keep you interested, it’s rife with trouble. Firstly you will find yourself, at least early on in your multiplayer life, completely out-gunned. Your competitors will have better guns, plasmids and upgrades and it feels very unfair. The matchmaking system doesn’t help the issue. Four against two as starting lineups or questionable team balancing is common.

The multiplayer also doesn’t come with the tools you might expect. There’s no way to see who is in a party together, or even who is playing as a group. Worse, there’s no way to kick other players out the game. Expect to find team members AFK, team killing or being generally useless all too frequently.

You can also expect to find people in the ADAM Grab game type (every player for themselves in a bid to hold onto the Little Sister for the longest amount of time) working together to power level. Granted, it means in other game modes you often find people with better weapons who are far worse than you, but it’s also a drag to struggle to find games of people who just want to play.

Some of the weapon and plasmid combinations feel a touch unbalanced. For just one example; charging up the electro-bolt plasmid lets you stun an opponent, so when combined with the Elephant Gun (only obtained when you reach a relatively high experience level) which is a one-shot kill if aimed accurately, you can find some very frustrating opponents.

The game also suffers from a lack of dedicated hosts and host-migration. In most of the games I have played, almost everyone has terrible lag (there’s no ping indicators in-game to check). Annoyingly, but thankfully not that frequently, you will also find the host rage-quitting and dumping everyone back into the lobby.

A few other things worth mentioning:

• The Special Edition is awesome.
• You won’t hear ‘œWelcome to the circus of values’ in the hallways of Rapture. This made me sad.
• I played like a bastard in my first play-through (which was on Normal difficulty). I watched Chelsea play ‘œgood’.
• As it was her copy of the game we played in parallel, taking it in turns to progress on our own saves.
• DLC has been announced for the game. The impact this will have on things like the single-player story and the multiplayer balancing is unknown.

For what I wanted from the game, it succeeded. I got to step back into Rapture and see a whole new story unfold. The detail has not been lost from the original and the improvements are noticeable and appreciated. As with the first game the story is there, though you may have to work to get that same level of satisfaction.

BioShock 2 is held back by a number of unfortunate and almost unavoidable bugs that can really ruin the moment. With the delays the game had, these are a disappointment to find. The multiplayer is solid, if lacking several expected features, and looks to be getting paid-for content before any kind of serious patch.

You should play this game if…

… you enjoyed the first game or simply want something different with your shooters.

Final Score:

Technical issues are plentiful in this enjoyable return to a tuned-up Rapture.

(What does this score mean?)