Follow-up to BioShock, 2K Games' analytically acclaimed and commercially successful 2007 relief, BioShock 2 is a first-person shooter set in the fictional undersea city of Ecstasy. As in the first game, BioShock 2 features a blend of quick-paced action, exploration and puzzle-solving as players follow varying paths through the overarching storyline based on the decisions that they are forced to make at various points in the game. In addition to a further fleshing out of the franchise's well loved storyline, players can look forward to new characters, game technicalities, weapons, locations and a series first, multiplayer game options. 
The new power in Ecstasy.
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Duel wield plasmids & weapons.
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New choices as Mr. B.
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Franchise first multiplayer options.
View larger. | The Tale
Set approximately 10 years after the events of the first BioShock, the halls of Ecstasy once again echo with sins of the past. Along the Atlantic coastline, a monster somehow familiar, yet still quite different from anything ever seen has been snatching small girls and bringing them back to the undersea city. It is a Huge Sister, new denizens of Ecstasy who were once one of the forgotten small girls known as Small Sisters, known to inhabit the city's dank halls. No longer a pawn used to harvest ADAM, the dangerously powerful gene-changing lifeblood of Ecstasy, from the bodies of others and in turn run the risk of being harvested herself, the Huge Sister is now the fastest and most powerful thing in Ecstasy. You, on the other hand are the very first Huge Daddy, in fact the prototype, that for some reason has reactivated. You are similar to the Huge Daddies familiar from the first BioShock, but also very different in that you possess free will and no memory of the events of the past ten years. The question is, as you travel through the dilapidated and gorgeous fallen city beneath the waves, hunting for answers and the solution to your own survival, are you really the hunter, or the hunted? Gameplay and Multiplayer
In BioShock 2 players will take on the role of the first Huge Daddy, not that of game one central character, Jack. As a Huge Daddy you will have access to all the strengths and weapons of a standard Huge Daddy, counting the drill and rivet gun. More importantly you also possess free will and the skill to use plasmids and gene tonics genetic modifications allowed for through ADAM, a stem cell harvested from conquered enemies, or sea slugs outside the Ecstasy air lock, and powered by the in-game injectable serum known as EVE, which can be found, captured or bought. Plasmids and gene tonics grant a wide range of aggressive and passive abilities which can be upgraded and arranged for quick use. The skill to use plasmids and tonics gives you a chose edge over other Huge Daddies and most other denizens of Ecstasy, excluding the powerful Huge Sisters. In addition, due to their role as a Huge Daddy, players will experience a new family member to the Small Sisters. Upon defeating standard Huge Daddys you are given the familiar choice as to whether to harvest or adopt them. Harvesting gains you ADAM immediately, but could alter your path through the game, while adopting makes you reliable for Small Sisters, who then accompany you through Ecstasy, but also grant aid and notification in times of danger. Additional gameplay features include: new plasmids, weapons and the skill to combine these two. The game also features the anticipated multiplayer modes. Several of these are team-based, allowing up to 10 players. Within these players are provided with a rich prequel experience that expands the origins of the BioShock fiction, and allows you to play as one of several characters pulled from Ecstasy's history before the events of the first game. Key Features - The Huge Sister - No longer just a touch to be harvested or not, the Huge Sister is the most powerful inhabitant in Ecstasy.
- You Are the Huge Daddy - Take power with the first prototype Huge Daddy, and experience the power and raw strength of Ecstasy’s most feared denizens as you battle powerful new enemies.
- New Plasmids - New plasmids such as "Aero Dash" allowing for bursts of speed over small distances, and "Geyser Trap" a stream of water used as a jump pad and electrical conductor, join the ample list of Plasmids from the first game.
- New Game Technicalities - BioShock 2 contains many new gameplay technicalities. Just a few of these are: the skill to wield plasmids and weapons at once; flashback missions detailing how you became the Huge Daddy; the skill to walk outside the airlocks of Ecstasy to learn new play areas, and many more.
- New Locations - Just a few of the locations and environments debuting in BioShock 2 are Fontaine Futuristics, headquarters of Fontaine's affair empire and the Kashmir Restaurant.
- Evolution of the Genetically Enhanced Shooter - Innovative advances bring new depth and dimension to each encounter, allowing players to make exciting combinations to fit their style of gameplay.
- Return to Ecstasy - Set approximately 10 years after the events of the first BioShock, the tale continues with an epic, more intense journey through one of the most captivating and terrifying fictional worlds ever made.
- Genetically Enhanced Multiplayer - Earn experience points during gameplay to earn access to new weapons, plasmids and tonics that can be used to make hundreds of different combinations.
- Experience Ecstasy’s Civil War - Players will step into the shoes of Ecstasy's citizens and take direct part in the civil war that tore Ecstasy apart.
- See Ecstasy Before the Fall - Experience Ecstasy before it was cultivated by the ocean and engage in combat over iconic environments in locations such as Kashmir Restaurant and Mercury Suites, all of which have been reworked from the ground up for multiplayer.
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 Why are people so disappointed? |
| Review Date: June 23, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Devendra S. Mistry, San Diego, CA USA |
I did not buy this game on the day of its relief, as so many people were argumentative Bioshock series lost its magic in Bioshock 2. The Ecstasy city doesn't feel as novel any longer. But now that I have played through with it TWICE, I have to say these folks were dead incorrect. Yes, the city, some of the villians and gameplay are similar, but that is why this game is labeled Bioshock 2 and not a new IP. Either way below are the pros and cons for the Bioshock2
PROS:
-CHOICES, CHOICES, CHOICES: One of the aspects, gamers loved about the first is how you have to make choices in terms of litter sister throughout the game and how it affects the ending. In this one, they have taken a step further and improved this choice system. Not only for small sisters, but also for some other things you will have to make choices. This choices will affect the tale (dialogues, cut scenes and ending) to a fantastic degree and add decent replayability to the single player mode.
-Inexplicable Tale: The tale is suspenseful. It is not as excellent as the first one, but is still pretty excellent and will really drive you forward in the game. If you played Bioshock 1, it is surely a plus; but, surely not a condition. Even if you did not play the first, you will be able to know most of it.
-Incredible Undersea VISUAL ANG GRAPHICS: The city looks as stunning if not better as Bioshock 1. Better yet in this one you get to play Undersea. While it may not sound as thrilling it truly adds fantastic deal of feeling to the gameplay experience.
-Before a live audience AS Huge DADDY: Initially you will be somewhat confused, but this gets to be real fun. You can still use plasmids as in the first, but you get access to heavy duty weapons as you are before a live audience as huge daddy. I won't spoil much for you but YOU WILL Like THE SPEAR GUN :)
-NEW WEAPONS, PLASMIDS and TONICS: In this game, you get access to all the cool plasmids from the first, but you also get to use some new inexplicable plasmids and tonics. Expecially, if you choose to go for excellent ending, you will get some really cool plasmids. As for weapons, you will just like the huge guns. Trust me on it.
-NEW ENEMIES and BOSSES: I don't want to spoil it so I will just say huge sisters will make you wet your pants.
-FOUR Every second ENDINGS: Again refer to choices section
-EPIC MULTIPLAYER: This game offers a very unique multiplayer. It was a wonderful break from games like Modern Warfare 2. The modes such as capture the small sisters can be fun. Just wait till you play as a Huge Daddy. The power you get will truly be enthralling. Oh did I bring up you can use very different plasmids than single player in multiplayer mode.
My only nag for this one was as a replacement for of focusing on multiplayer, they should have just focused on single player and made it longer. Don't get me incorrect , it will still take you a while to go through it (8-12hrs depending on how much you choose to collect).
In synopsis, to me, Bioshock 2 lived up to the standards. It was enjoyable and has fantastic replay value. |
This game is a fantastic game
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| Review Date: April 30, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Greg Shoemaker, |
| I've heard a lot of complaints about this game being just more of the same, and its just not right. The major gripe is that its not first enough. I reckon they are gone the point, anyone who played the first game doubtless loved the tale as much as the game. But there in lies the problem once the cats out of the bag you can't place it back in. So why nag about originality when this is so obviously a sequel. Its like saying spiderman shouldn't have been the hero in Spiderman 2. What were people expecting an all new ecstasy on the moon. I loved the tale from the second one and I thought it was pretty excellent. Don't listen to the ney-sayers as they rumor has it that have never pondered the thought that the first one already existed and that there is no way to ever go home again, it was time to go on and they did. The multiplayer is excellent but not fantastic, it is competitive, but the servers do need some help. Overall I would give this game a 9.5 out of 10, if you loved the first one chances are you will delight in this one as well. I guess you just can't please every person. |
Ecstasy rises in a spectacular sequel
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| Review Date: February 27, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Kevin, USA |
Initially, I wasn't wowed by Bioshock 2 as I was by the initiation of Bioshock. Bioshock surely makes a much better first impression with the awe-inspiring descent into Ecstasy, and initiation to the objectivist ideals that underlie the city. And as the game progressed, I was surprised to find that the graphics of Bioshock 2 are in fact a bit worse in some regards. Reputation models somehow don't look as meticulous when scrutinized by zooming in with the sniping weapon (the speargun or in Bioshock, the crossbow).
Also, the integration of the tale within each place is generally less seamless and appealing than it was in Bioshock. Fort Frolic, for example, was a mall constituency of the first game that was packed with incredible fine points and landmarks, and was presided over by a reputation who commented on your events, and felt frankly caught up in the plot. The atrium, with the staircase covered in water leaking in from the cracked ceiling, and a spotlight that inexplicably follows your every go, was a fantastic centerpiece of the action in the level. And the objectives, which required you to terminate and photograph Sander Cohen's disciples, were appropriately disturbing. The area was a high mark in Bioshock that Bioshock 2 never matches.
The narrative of Bioshock is also more appealing overall, since it contains so much clarification about the foundation of Ecstasy, and its decline. The tale of Bioshock 2 is not always as thought provoking and novel as Bioshock, to a degree because Bioshock was so successful in developing a credible world. The plot in this sequel revolves around a devious child Child psychiatrist, Sofia Lamb, who makes a collectivist the upper classes within Ecstasy, intending to forge a truly self-sacrificing human through DNA splicing, and has small girls from the surface kidnapped and forced to continue the ADAM gathering administer. Contrary to Bioshock, which drags to an unceremonious end, it gets better as it goes along, then ends on a high note. The audio diaries, which may be even more abundant than those in Bioshock, continue to grant clarification into the lives of Rapturians during the city's descent, and occasionally take the form of continuous mini tales that might have been emotional if I wasn't stoic and heartless. Also, the player is forced to make decisions that are morally perplexing, and certainly more enthralling than the dilemma of choosing to save or harvest Small Sisters in Bioshock.
On the other hand, the gameplay of Bioshock 2 is by and large much more entertaining than that of Bioshock. In Bioshock, you play as a human who can be disposed of by Huge Daddies, the most incredible enemies in the game, in two shots or less. This left the player to use more indirect, clever methods to defeat the metal behemoths. Namely, it forced you to lay down a bunch of traps, and incite them into butchery themselves. Whenever I deviated from this means of butchery Huge Daddies, I was either defeated, or found the encounters vastly more hard.
Either way, it felt that the game dejected you from varying the way you approached situations. If you used traps, you easily overcame obstacles, but there was hardly any challenge caught up, but if you didn't use many traps, the game was incredibly hard. Opportunely, Bioshock 2 in fact rewards varying the plasmids and weapons used hostile to enemies. The camera system, which upgrades the main reputation's abilities, progresses more promptly when different types of attacks are used. Much like how a skateboarding game might give lower scores when the same trick is used repeatedly, the camera system in Bioshock 2 diminishes returns on using the same attacks over and over again.
Furthermore, a few new breeds of enemies branch out the gameplay. Rumblers deploy mini-turrets and fire rockets, Brute Splicers are an evolved form of Splicer that prefers fighting up close and private, and Huge Sisters, the most treacherous foe in the game, are fleet of foot, acrobatic, and use telekinesis to toss objects at the player.
These ostensibly simple improvements in Bioshock 2 serve to make for a rationalized game that is more enjoyable to replay than the first Bioshock. The value in Bioshock lies primarily in its storyline, which is brilliant, but never as magnificent after the first time you've played it. Bioshock 2 has a also compelling narrative, but it is also far more fun to play, in any case of tale. |
I in fact like it as much as the first!
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| Review Date: April 14, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Laura Lambert, |
| I have to agree with before reviews: This could very well have been an expansion pack. Granted, a very large expasion pack, but one nonetheless. But, I have no complaints about that. If you loved the first game then you will like this game since it's so similar. There were several new areas to explore, tons of items, cool new plasmids, the skill to wield plasmids and weapons at the same time, and a fantastic new storyline. It was still eerie, the music was still excellent, the tale was still disturbing and appealing, the audio files were still excellent enough to listen to, and the enemies were still sometimes shocking and freaky. It was a bit shorter than the first game but not so much that it really matters...I am absolutely pleased with this game! It is very fun and captivating; I'd never want to stop before a live audience and only would when I'd get tired cause exploring new areas can get exhausting at times. Fantastic game! |
Fantastic
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| Review Date: April 2, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Damian S., |
| This game is incredible. But it really is more for the gameplay, and multiplayer. The tale is not anything compared to the first but is still a pretty excellent tale. The gameplay but is fantastic, and the multiplayer is incredible in my attitude because its so different then just your predictable shooter. Half of my friends seem to like it and half of them seem to despise it so i guess the multiplayer is liked by people or despised. I on one hand loved it. |
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