BioShock 2

Grimhound said:
Yeah, it's a bit more difficult. I still have a gift copy on Steam I'm looking to sell for $35.
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Wait, you can sell your Steam games? HOW??
 
maximaz said:
Wait, you can sell your Steam games? HOW??
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By having people give you money and then gifting them the game?

Also, writing a review for this game made me realise how much I dislike it. Write-up on story (1st draft):
BioShock 2's story is a mess, plain and simple. The basic premise, in which you play a Big Daddy looking for his Little Sister – both because you need her to survive and because of your personal relationship with her – is solid enough and certainly more personable than BioShock's story.

In the main plot, everything that happened since BioShock sounds somewhat interesting, but it happened without you there, as if the game is taunting you with all these big events you could not be part of. Forgiving it that, 2K Marin seems to have essentially looked at Andrew Ryan from the first and decided to make a bizarro version in Sophia Lamb, whose soft personality and communist ideals are the exact opposite of Andrew Ryan. And the exactness of that opposition – the mirror image it is – just hammers home how derivative she is, and how badly in need of inspiration or originality the plot is.

What doesn't help the cause is some of the worst writing I have seen in a videogame since Fallout 3. Don't get me wrong, they get the tone right, bombastic statements delivered through radio, so it all sounds impressive. But if you stop for even one second and actually listen, it comes apart at the seams. A good example is this bit of radio taunting, from near the end, as Sophia Lamb speaks to you:
Your body begins to tear itself apart; the compulsion to find Eleanor will drive you to madness or coma. You have no claim on her -- your design was amongst Rapture's greatest sins -- and yet you persist. Why?
Why is she talking about my body tearing itself apart when there is no gameplay equivalent of this? What does my design being amongst Rapture's greatest flaws have to do with negating my claim on Eleanor? And – worst of all – why is she asking me why I'm persisting after just telling me the need to find her is driving me insane? BioShock 2 is full of little nonsensical speeches like these, and the overall philosophical consistency over all the rants is even worse. In the end, this makes the whole game feel as if the writing is just a bunch of strung together phrases that sound cool or awe-inspiring or epic, without due consideration to consistent writing.

BioShock was widely praised for its philosophical undertones. I thought this point was a bit overdrawn, as BioShock's hammy delivery of Ayn Rand's already unimpressive philosophical views was hardly enlightening, but even this low plateau BioShock 2 does not even approach. In fact, it ruins quite a bit of the philosophical tone of BioShock in its approach. One of the points of BioShock was about the inevitability of the fall of Andrew Ryan's city. A grand experiment, but you get the sense its doom was inevitable, as the underlying world-view simply did not match reality. Sophia Lamb, however, gives the failure agency, it turns it into two competing world-views fighting and ruining each other through competition. That pretty much negates the earlier point made of inherent fallacies, making Sophia Lamb and her philosophy not just derivative, but detrimental to the game's setting.

The last insult the game flings at us are the endings. It learned from its predecessor's mistakes by expanding the “Hitler or Mother Theresa” into four endings; bad, somewhat bad, sad and good. The different ending configurations are reached by your choices on saving the Little Sisters, as well as three key NPCs you can either leave alive or kill during your travels. Structurally, this is a massive step forward from BioShock, but considering my preceding notes on the writing, it won't surprise you to hear the endings are badly delivered and overly dramatic pieces of tripe, built on two nonsensical deus ex machinas that shortly precede the final conclusion.
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Brother None said:
BioShock 2 kind of screws the pooch. I think I figured out why. More when I finish my review.
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Its a pity really, because some of it did quite well. The part which shows you where you were bonded was fantastic in my opinion and there was a few other standout moments. I also enjoyed listening to the tapes about the big daddy's as well as getting more backstory behind them.

@ Grin - I do. I winded up using a combination of about 3 plasmids in total because using anymore was cumbersome and wasted a lot of time.
 
Finally got around to finishing Bioshock 2, and I must agree that it does not live up.

Aside from shortcomings on content level as mentioned by BN, there were also several annoyances in gameplay mechanics and level design.

On gameplay level, I was quite annoyed by things like the research camera thing... While I find it interesting to get a bonus for nice combinations and so on, it is also rather extremely annoying to have to run around with the camera equiped, photograph, get fighting. Especially since the camera's 'aim' blurs some of the image... Not to mention that according to the story, you already have a camera, through which Tenebaum could track you at the start? Giving a bonus for special feats aint bad an sich, but requiring an annoying game element like the camera just plain sucks.

Level design was severely lacking in some places. Not only because it was rather uninteresting in many places, but also because it often coupled heavily scripted events to mediocre design. I had inadvertedly bypassed some scripted events by simply jumping down at one point, but game progression was halted, until I returned to fight a fight I had just bypassed before another scripted event fired allowing me to 'escape'. Very annoying when that happens. I'm not 'against' scripted events, but it always relies on a combination of writing & correct level design.

I also felt no real connection to the characters, except perhaps a little to Eleanor & the little sisters. Lamb was so extremely black & white that it became an awefully uninteresting figure. Sinclair was just annoying overall.

Then there were also little annoyances with the weapons. Don't get me wrong, I quite enjoyed the relatively cliché but well implemented weapons such as the gatling (which is horribly underpowered at the beginning? wtf) and the spear gun. However, things like the fact the gatling shares ammo with the thompson miniguns (.45ACP in the real world, which is a mere few centimeters long with the case, look at how wide the in game mag is) while the ammo boxes you find for the gatling are .50 cal and well over a decimeter long (probably .50 BMG irl).
Then there's naming & explanations... No, a double barreled shotgun does not use 'clips', and the upgrade added cylinders, not 'clip size'... It also seems hard to understand for game designers that a shorter sawn off barrel does not increase damage, it decreases it. It however increases pellet spread (so area of effect). Can't be too hard to at least get that kind of stuff right?

That said, I did enjoy quite a bit of the game, so it surely wasn't 'all bad'.
 
If I were in charge of Bioshock 1's story and writing I would have changed the second half of the game completely. My favorite part in the first was when the submarine exploded, superb atmosphere, voice acting, writing and sound design.

I beat Bioshock 2 like a week ago and I wasn't as impressed with it as I was with the first, although more bioshock isnt really a bad thing.
 
I've played, I've finished and I've deleted.

What a a shame, is not even worth the title "Bioshock 2", it will be more honest calling it "Bioshock 1.5" or "the new expansion pack". :?

At least I've been able to sell the game to a friend of mine...wich is cursing my last three family generations, BTW.
And I did tell him that the game was horrible, before he pays for it!

Sorry mate, business are business.

[ ]'s
 
I quite liked it, but then I welcome any return to Rapture. But yeah it is just more of the same, it would of been more fun to play as the Big Sister though I suppose they are saving that for Bioshock 3.
 
I've never played the original but I was told #2 was really good and was thinking of buying. Maybe I won't now. lol.
 
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