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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 Ecstasy rises in a spectacular sequel |
| 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'd really like to meet the person who THINKS of this stuff - on the secod thought, maybe not!
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| Review Date: February 22, 2010 |
| Reviewer: B. J. Ruddock, Montville, NJ |
This is one seriously demented game. You walk around a dilapidated undersea city, adopting small toddlers with glowing zombie eyes (small sisters) who call you their "huge daddy" and repeatedly say other cute small girl phrases. You then lead the small sisters to dead bodies, let them off your shoulder, and watch them repeatedly stab a needle into the corpses and drink their blood, while protecting them from the zombie-like splicers who come after her.
Alrighty then, so obviously you will want to deliberate skipping this game if a) you are married and hope to stay that way b) if you have family mainly around the age of the small sister girls or c) if you have inlaws and you wish to have them continue to respect you :)
That being said, it's a ton of fun, a fantastic first person shooter, and a fantastic sequel to the first Bioshock game. If you want a quick taste before buying it, go ahead and download the first Bioshock game demo unfilled for free, or I don't know buy the first Bioshock game unfilled online for around $20. Either should give you a excellent flavor for what Bioshock 2 is all about.
Creepy huge band music, creepy 1950s art-deco theme, explosions, blood, and carnage - that pretty much sums it up but what makes it mainly bizarre are the small sisters.
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Doesn't Reinvent the Wheel, Just Tightens the Spokes
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| Review Date: February 25, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Lord Schitsdain, Arizona, USA |
When Bioshock 2 was in development, I heard it would have you before a live audience as a huge daddy and you would have to care for the small sisters while they harvested adam. This sounds like an entire game of the proving grounds level of Bioshock, which I absolutely despised, so I feared they would ruin B2. As it turns out, my fears were unfounded as this huge daddy doesn't suffer from the obscured vision of the suit in Bioshock, and you only harvest adam 2 or 3 times a level. The game is set in new areas of Ecstasy and features the familiar splicers, art deco stylings, and period music like the first game. In addition to the ancient splicers, they have added the alpha huge daddy, brute splicer and the huge sister to make the battles more of a challenge. This game isn't as dark as the first game, and doesn't have as much of the survival horror vibe, but they turned up the FPS action a few notches. When you do enter a dark area, a headlamp on your suit automatically snaps on so you don't have to fumble around in the dark like the first game.
While the tale in Bioshock felt like "shock and awe", this installment is more of an figurative child custody battle between Sofia Lamb and Delta. It plays more on the emotional elements rather than gut punching you with a further plot twist like the first game. It may not be on the level of B1, but it's still alot more tale than most games out there and deals with the father/daughter bond and people in quest of redemption. The audio diaries return to help flesh out backstory and side plots.
The gameplay is the largest area of enhancement as they fixed a few of the flaws in the first game. The dual wield is a vast enhancement over the first. Your Eve auto refills this time around, and in order to manually refill, you push the right bumper in addition to the X button. I must've wasted a couple dozen Eve hypos in the first game by striking the X button to hack a turret, and end up injecting Eve as a replacement for. The research camera is now a video camera, so you just start recording and it automatically switches you to your last weapon and a counter comes up to show how much you are scoring with your attacks. There is a research section in the menu that shows how far you have progressed, and what the ultimate rewards in hurt bonuses and tonics will be. This in fact made research fun and is a excellent way to get tonics lacking costs Adam. One thing that I do miss from the first game is the U-Invent stations where you could make ammo and auto hack tools from misc. items.
I've played this game 7 times now, and replayed B1 twice for evaluation. This game plays smoother and feels about the same length. I'm sure I'm getting 10-12 hours out of it, but I hack all and flush all the toilets. :) I have only had one honest glitch where one of the "Eyes lacking a face" flashbacks started to play and hung up, and my weapon hand disappeared. I had to reload the autosave. A couple times I had Bots stick in midair and had to fling a corpse into them to get them moving again. Natural suppression seems kind of spotty too. I also had an audio diary freeze up near the end of one game, which also knocked out the radio, but none of the intercom or other game sounds. One real glitch in 7 playthroughs is pretty excellent I guess.
This game gets belittled for not having a plot twist, but let's face it, a twist is only a twist once, and any replay value after that early surprise has to come from the rest of the gameplay. If all it took to look excellent success was a excellent plot twist, then M. Night Shamalamadingdong wouldn't be guilty of foisting so many crapfests on the public. The developers gave us more of what we loved about Ecstasy and tightened up the technicalities. There are new areas to explore and creatures to fight, and we get to be a Huge Daddy. There is not anything like having a lead head splicer flapping his yapper as he empties his tommy gun into your backside, only to have you silence his pie hole permanently with a brutal drill dash. Excellent times.
I only play single player campaigns, so I can't note on the multiplayer. |
Essentially Bioshock 1 with a new tale, but still fantastic
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| Review Date: February 11, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Samer A, Texas,USA |
I have been waiting for Bioshock 2 to come out ever since they leaked that it was in production. I absolutely loved the first game--and was hoping the second would give up a similar experience.
As other reviewers have pointed out, it is essentially the same. I just don't really see why that's the worst thing ever. Look at the Call of Duty series--They are all essentially the same, quick paced shooters with the same technicalities but different settings or tales. It's basically the ancient saying "don't fix what ain't broke"...and I really don't see Bioshock as "broken."
Similar to the 1st Bioshock, the ambiance they make is incredibly engaging and really draws you into the background. It's basically the same creepy dystopia that Bioshock 1 was based in. The sounds are brilliant, the graphics are on par with the 1st (which are pretty excellent) and the technicalities are pretty much the same as well.
What I still like about this game, as I did in the 1st one, is that they really work to make sure you feel like you are exploring a city, and not just a series of hallways that have another way arranged pots and plants. I highly recommend taking the time to traverse every inch of what is unfilled, because they place in a lot of effort with fine points. I like the graffiti, the diaries you pick up (and I do recommend you listen to every one) and I like the all-purpose feeling of being deep under the ocean. As I said before, they really did the same brilliant job of immersing you in the background and making you feel like you are the reputation.
From what I have played of the tale so far, I like. It has me drawn in and keen to find out more. You play as one of the "Huge daddys" in this game, which is appealing. It's the same type of struggle and gameplay though, which is that most of your time butchery baddies will be those crazed, tweaked people who come at you with guns and wrenches, etc.
You also still have access to the genetic powers yourself and for better or worse, you have access to those vita chambers that restart you near by, which kinda trivializes strategy in some fights.
Other than those real minor issues I take with the game, I will still happily award this game 5 stars and play it and like it. If you liked Bioshock 1, and have the money to buy this one, I don't reckon you will be disappointed at all. Reckon of it as a further installment in the game franchise (surely there will be more to come), as a replacement for of some revolutionary new game, and you'll doubtless delight in it a lot more. |
Bioshock is Perfection
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| Review Date: February 14, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Shawn Hamilton, St. Pete, FL |
| There is not much that needs to be said about this game except that so far it's perfect, I've played through the first one copious time and it remains on my shelf. It is enjoyably unrivalled (in my attitude) and keeps me coming back. As the sequel, this game adds multiplayer and a new level of incorporated problem as you chaperone "small sisters" through their actions. There are a myraid of different games unfilled for buy right now, new and ancient, but Bioshock 2 is the FIRST game you should pick up. Had it been released before last year's Modern Warfare 2(also fantastic), I doubt I would have uneasy to pick that one up, it's that excellent. Stop reading, BUY IT! |
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