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Bioshock 2 Review – “An Underwater Return”

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Bioshock 2 Review

So Bioshock 2 has hit us but have we been pleasantly shocked into submission with utter gaming glee or spliced into genetic goo with disappointment?

The Sequel to 2K Games ‘Bioshock’ has been highly anticipated and hopes to bring the same amount of unrivalled immersive atmosphere, spooky goings on and compelling storyline and even match or surpass the amazing graphics from the first, Lets find out.

Story – 7

Welcome back to Rapture, in a way. Set 8 years after the first Bioshock you play the first ever Big Daddy to be paired with a little sister, Subject Delta, unfortunately the little sister you were paired with in the first place is Raptures new proprietor Sophia Lambs daughter Eleanor, and she wanted her back. Clearly this doesn’t go down well with you and due to the psychological conditioning your character had undertaken, Sophia Lamb pretty succeeds in making you kill yourself.

Your summoned back to life via those nifty Vita Chambers to save your little sister and to stop Lamb with the help of every little girls favourite doctor, Dr Brigid Tenenbaum. The catch being you must save Eleanor before you grow to far apart hence the pairing of you both. Basically your tied together and if Lamb gets away with her you die. Your mission is to travel across Rapture, visiting new locations such as a Andrew Ryan amusement park and save the day.

To bury you deeper in the story you will come across audio logs that tell you about the politics of Rapture and how things became how they are. Unfortunately it sometimes feel as though your being dragging along a simple linear storyline.

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Gameplay – 8

This game plays just like any FPS shoot does, there isn’t much difference from the first game, apart from a load of weapons exclusively for you're the Big Daddy, you can chew your enemies out with your handy Drill which is sometimes a pain due to the majority of the baddies have guns and prefer to attack you from a distance. As the first Bioshock you can also upgrade your weapons with mods such as extended ammo and increase damaged. Nifty feature is that most of the weapons come with a variety of ammo types, such as armour piecing bullets, anti personnel and trap rounds.

In addition to your weapons your also reintroduced to the Plasmids, this kinky tonic, fuelled by newly discovered ADAM, alters your DNA structure to suit your needs, whether you need to ignite a splicer’s clothes at a click of your fingers or give a damaged control panel a quick jolt with a flick of your wrist. As with the first game you will encounter Little Sisters who do their usual thing by draining ADAM from dead corpses, the change being that the Little Sisters are your only way to obtain ADAM, you can either Harvest it from them, killing them in the process or Adopt them, this way they can sniff out ADAM in the dead bodies and drain it for your use, each time you do this it seems to alert a horde of splicer’s and you just play the defence until your Little Sister finishes her liquid lunch. With the collected ADAM you can buy additional Plasmids and Tonics that give you passive abilities. As with any new game, there must be a few more new elements, what you should start to look out for is the Big Sisters, these are grown up little sisters and they are a handful.

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Multiplayer – 6

Multiplayer is a story driven mode of its own, set during the Rapture civil war before all the stink that happens. there are 7 modes to choose from:

  • Survival of the Fittest: A ‘free-for-all’ mode where each player gets points for killing each of the other players. Whichever player has the most kills or 20 kills at the end of the match wins.
  • Civil War: Similar to ‘Survival of the Fittest,’ but in this mode players are divided into two teams and the team with the most collective kills at the end of the match wins.
  • Last Splicer Standing: A variation of ‘Civil War’ in which players do not respawn after being killed. Each match consists of several rounds in which players attempt to outlive the players on the enemy team.
  • Capture the Sister: A ‘Capture the Flag’ style mode where players are divided into two teams. One team has to protect a Little Sister while the other team tries to steal her and place her in a vent on the other side of the map. After a pre-determined amount of time, the teams switch roles. Whichever team has the most captures at the end of the match wins.
  • ADAM Grab: In this mode there is one Little Sister on the map and the player must seek her out and maintain possession of her as long as possible. The first person to hold onto the Little Sister for 3 minutes wins.
  • Team ADAM Grab: A variant of ‘ADAM Grab’ where players are divided into two teams. The objective is the same, but victory is determined by a collective score rather than individual scores, and the first team to hold the little sister for 5 minutes wins.
  • Turf War: Players are split into two teams and each team must reach pre-determined points on the map to capture that point. The team with the most control points over the longest time wins.

Great thing about this taking place before the Bioshock, your sponsored by a Plasmid manufacturer, Sinclair Solutions, to test out their weapons. As you progress you receive ‘consumer rewards’ such as plasmids and tonics. But I feel the multiplayer doesn’t live up to what people expect from other games, I’m afraid there’s too many better multiplayer games which cast to bigger a shadow over this.

Audio & Visuals – 8

Again as expected the graphics are amazing, very detailed, from the decor around Rapture to the small things like posters and adverts dotted around the world. These do extremely well in burying you deep in Rapture. The soundtrack is another addition that just bashes you over the head with realism. The ambient sound is utter genius and the classical feel really fits where it should, even the little things such as walking under some dripping water and hearing it pitter patter on your helmet with the proper acoustics. These things really make the game worth playing which will obvious from the game play video above.

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Details

Category: First Person Shooter
Age: BBFC rated 18 Years and above
Publisher: Take 2

Gene-o-Licious

  1. Nice incite into Bioshock Lore & History
  2. Great graphics and chilling audio
  3. Combat more intense and mechanics have slightly improved
  4. New moral dilemmas which have more impact than the original

Failed Science Experiment

  1. Multiplayer isn’t up to scratch
  2. Character doesn’t feel like a Big Daddy
  3. Story didn’t have the same impact as Bioshock the original
  4. Will feel like Bioshock 1.5 to many gamers who are familiar with the first

Overal Then

Bioshock 2 is a good solid game that many fans will enjoy. However 2K were faced with a monumental task of improving or matching the success of the original Bioshock which won countless awards and is without doubt one of the best multi platform titles, sadly they failed. This game simply doesn’t have the same impact as its predecessor the story isn’t as immersive which it needed to be if not more. As many gamers had already visited rapture was there really any reason to return?

Written and Reviewed by Dave Burns

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