The rusting ruins of a dead underwater paradise, built on the desperate dreams of a madman; the survivors, drugged into insanity; the decaying corpses of those who hung themselves rather than live another day in Rapture.
Ah, BioShock’s watery hell remains just as I remember it. You can go home again, after all.
That nightmarish setting was the star of acclaimed 2007 shooter BioShock. Without the fascinating, highly detailed underwater city of Rapture to give players a profound sense of place, the plot and characters wouldn’t have been nearly as intriguing. BioShock 2, available Tuesday for Xbox 360 (reviewed), PlayStation 3 and PC, takes us back to Rapture for another twisted tale.
At first, you might get a sense of been-there-played-that as you search for clues in the familiar wreckage. But don’t let the superficial similarities fool you: Under the surface, BioShock 2 is a very different game from its predecessor, likely because it was developed by a new team based at 2K Games studio in Novato, California.
(Caution: BioShock 2 spoilers follow.)
Irrational Games’ Ken Levine, the acclaimed creative director of the original, passed his duties on to level designer Jordan Thomas, who made BioShock 2 his baby, taking a step away from the themes of the original and creating a more elaborate game of moral choices: The things you do throughout the game determine what your character becomes and how the finale plays out.
The only real problem with this is that dozens of lesser games, from Infamous to The Force Unleashed, have been built around this same idea. The fact that BioShock 2 does it significantly better doesn’t entirely excuse the fact that it is stamping on well-trod ground. BioShock is memorable for the way that it subverted and shattered videogame tropes; BioShock 2 embraces them with all the fervor of a Big Daddy clutching his Little Sister.
The trouble with me is you
The relationship between the Little Sisters (mind-controlled little girls that gather the precious gene-splicing resource Adam from corpses) and Big Daddies (hulking, metal-suited monsters that protect the girls while they go about their duties) was one of the most original, intriguing parts of BioShock, but it didn’t really figure in to the plot. Daddies were just monsters for you to fight; Sisters were merely the device by which the game evaluated your morality: Do you kill them for extra Adam, or let them go free?
BioShock 2 explores these characters more fully. To that end, you play as a Big Daddy, motivated to find your lost Little Sister at all costs. Complicating matters somewhat is that Eleanor, the little one to whom you’ve been bonded, is actually the daughter of Sophia Lamb, who is as strident a communist as the last game’s antagonist was a Randian objectivist. And she’s set her entire collectivist cult against you.
During its development, BioShock 2’s plot seems to have gone through several overhauls. About a year ago, director Thomas said that Jack, protagonist of the first game, would be revered as a messianic figure by characters in the sequel. In the finished game, he is barely referenced; instead, Rapture’s inhabitants worship Eleanor. The sequel originally centered on Big Sister, a mysterious antagonist. In the final game, there are several Big Sisters, who are just monsters with no story role.
All this shifting, in retrospect, foreshadowed a game where the answer to the big question — who are these people and what are they planning? — is less important than the enjoyment of getting there. I found that the moments in the middle of BioShock 2 tended to be more intriguing than the big reveal at the end, which wasn’t so big after all.
You’ll use an array of Plasmids and weapons to take down your fellow Big Daddies in BioShock 2.
Images courtesy 2K Games
Carried my friends out for a good time
For all its serious drama, BioShock 2 is at heart a blazing-fast, run-and-gun first-person shooter. Drugged-up splicers zoom about the game’s levels, turning the shopping centers and health spas of the capitalist paradise into fiery battlegrounds.
Like your enemies, you can juice yourself up with Plasmids, consumer-level genetic modifying tonics that let you throw fire, electrify things, release swarms of insects and give you all sorts of other helpful powers. You’ve got deadly weapons — you start with your Big Daddy drill-arm and add machine guns, grenade launchers, etc.
If BioShock 2’s gameplay has a serious issue, it’s that you’re loaded down with way too much stuff. You get new weapons and additional ammo types regularly, and you’re constantly buying more Plasmids. There are so many genetic upgrades in the game that you can’t even afford to buy them all. Earning a new power can be a huge motivator for a player, but when they’re dumped on you in mass quantities, it’s far less exciting.
Once I found a combination or two that I liked (for me, it was the Incinerate power and the trusty machine gun), I tended to just stick with it. The dual-wielding nature of the Plasmid/weapon system is a lot of fun — softening splicers up with some fireballs from a distance, then shooting them with antipersonnel rounds while they’re running around screaming their junkie heads off, for example.
BioShock 2’s levels are much less linear than the original’s, and exploration is rewarded. Pick up all the audio diaries of long-dead Rapture residents and you’ll get clues to hidden stashes of treasure, weapons upgrades and the like. The diaries themselves frequently prove reward enough — they deliver well-acted, intriguing snippets of story that play off the game’s detailed, gorgeous environments. Exploring these new areas of Rapture is as much a joy as it was in the first game, as the designers have again secreted all kinds of little messages and details into the elaborate set pieces.
Another bit of window dressing that BioShock did well was the use of period songs from the ’30s and ’40s to set the mood. BioShock 2 takes this even further, utilizing songs that are thematically related to the game’s levels. For example, in a level that revolves around a singer who found herself on the outs in Rapture, the song that plays is the old Prohibition blues standard “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.” I wish these songs had been used during the gameplay — instead, they’re played during the (lengthy) loading screens that precede each level. Still, this was the first time I’ve ever lingered on a loading screen for minutes on end.
This singer, and a few other characters like her, are the loci of BioShock 2’s moral-choices gameplay mechanic. While you’re still deciding whether to save the Little Sisters, key moments make you choose how to deal with the game’s characters, and this affects what happens later.
I decided to play through as a good guy. I was surprised to find that it wasn’t so easy. About halfway through the game, I interacted with a character that I’d learned had done something pretty horrible. He’d been hoping to use me, of all people, to cover it up. He didn’t count on me figuring it out. And there he was, defenseless. One of my allies was in my earpiece telling me to kill him. He was whimpering and pleading. He was morally bankrupt, evil, utterly worthless. I wanted absolutely nothing more than to shove my drill down his mouth.
I turned around and walked out. I continued with the game. My choice was made; I couldn’t take it back. For the next few minutes, I second-guessed myself, upset that I hadn’t done it. BioShock 2 had worked its magic.
The relationships between Big Daddies and Little Sisters form the core of BioShock 2’s story.
Images courtesy 2K Games
Like angels that sing a heavenly thing
While you do have to decide whether to kill or save the Little Sisters, you can also adopt them for a time. If there’s anything more fun than filling a roomful of people with lead, it’s doing this while a tiny girl rides on your shoulder and cheers you on: “Nobody messes with my Daddy!” She’ll lead you to Adam-filled corpses and you’ll set up a perimeter, then protect her from the Splicers who will try to steal the dope she’s harvesting.
Many of the locations and story moments in BioShock 2 flesh out the origins of the Big Daddies and Little Sisters, all serving to underline the sadness of the whole situation. Without giving too much away, I can say that the penultimate level throws it all into relief: It’s a genuinely pathetic sequence that makes you reflect on just how horrible a society would have to be that it would abuse and pervert its most innocent inhabitants.
A great deal of the events in the finale actually change based on what you do during the game. At least I assume they do — I’ve only played as a kind-hearted servant, but if I’d played as a monster, the last levels would have been rather incongruous. It’s good to see a payoff that’s more substantial than just a different ending video after the credits.
BioShock 2 has a multiplayer mode that I tried for a few hours. By definition, this was never going to be as compelling as the solo game — it’s the same fun of the Plasmids/guns mechanic, but with none of the exploration or story. But I enjoyed it. The weapons and powers are based on the single-player game’s, but they’re not identical.
Of the many multiplayer modes, most of which are simple concepts of the standard deathmatch/turf war variety, I liked Capture the Little Sister best, for its fidelity to the source material and its gameplay mechanics; one team tries to capture the Sister and carry her to an air vent while the other team defends.
The very existence of multiplayer in BioShock 2 reinforces my belief that the decision to make a sequel was purely driven by marketing; the first game was a big hit so a sequel, with more features, had to happen even if the creative director had already fulfilled his vision.
Put in a difficult situation, 2K Marin did a great job. It chose elements of the first game that presented opportunities to be expanded upon, created new environments and characters that fit neatly into the universe and orchestrated a few surprising, engaging moments.
But it’s hard to escape the fact that the original BioShock pre-emptively put the lie to the theme of its own sequel. “Free will” in a videogame is ultimately a false choice, said Irrational Games; the game designer is the puppet master and in the end you will do whatever he says. BioShock 2 may be a clever spin on the are-you-good-or-evil convention, but it falls short of its predecessor by not breaking free of it.
WIRED Beautiful environments, voices, music. Inventive twist on shooter gameplay. Intriguing plot.
TIRED Doesn’t match up to original’s power.
$60, 2K Games
Rating: 
Read Game|Life’s game ratings guide.
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It may seem at this point that we’re kicking an already downed and plenty insulted victim here, but we couldn’t help but note the shockingly low price of a Tony Hawk: Ride bundle — complete with board, unopened — discovered by Gamertell at an Arlington Heights, Il. Goodwill store. Two Wii versions of the game were on sale for just $74.99 (down from $119.99 MSRP) — a Goodwill employee said the game’s presence could be explained by donations from local retailers, listing Kohls, Sears, Borders, and Target as potential donators. Alright, alright, we’ll admit it — the price drop isn’t that steep, but a near $50 difference on a barely four-month-old game sounds pretty decent to us.
Discounted: Brand new Tony Hawk Ride at … Goodwill? originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 09 Feb 2010 01:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
($15).
