| 26 February 2010
When Bioshock first released in 2007, it was an incredibly ambitious game that practically re-wrote the rule book for game design. Developer Irrational Games took the time to ensure that every aspect of the game was original or innovative in some way - the setting, the characters, the plasmid abilities, the story - all of it was conceived with ingenuity in mind, with the simple goal of creating a unique, autonomous ecosystem. Like all of the best ideas, Bioshock was designed to be a singular, self-contained entity; a once-in-a-lifetime adventure. By definition then, any attempt at a sequel would only ever serve to dilute the franchise – which Bioshock 2 definitely does.
With this in mind, the biggest problem that plagues Bioshock 2 is that very little of it feels new or inventive. All of the innovation from the first game has been irrevocably lost, and replaced instead by something far more workmanlike. Worse still is the fact that the game feels like it was developed by a talented team, but one who felt that the game was just as unnecessary as most consumers did. It's a pity too, as amidst the myriad of retreaded ideas, there are some legitimate, albeit brief, touches of brilliance.
For the most part, however, Bioshock 2 is a hugely conflicting game, with most of the newly implemented features ending up being largely disappointing; great care has been taken to ensure that the new environments have their own distinct look, yet many play like re-worked areas from the original; the combat has been re-designed to be used more fluidly, yet you'll occasionally end up getting confused when things start to get hectic; upgrades to plasmid powers introduce some useful, not to mention fun, ways to play the game, yet the developers haven't even tried to introduce any new plasmid types. It seems that every attempt made by the developers to innovate fails, due to features either being half-finished, or just poorly implemented.
In addition to this, Bioshock 2 also fails to address the flaws of the first game, such as the games over-reliance on Vita-Chambers to help players bypass some of the harder sections of the game rather than balancing the difficulty appropriately. In fact, the game actually compounds some of these issues, and will regularly throw a near-infinite amount of enemies at you on far too regular a basis. As well as this, the game has been made incredibly linear, and once you leave an area, you can no longer return to it. This not only betrays the idea of the living world introduced in the original, it makes the game feel a little stale. While the new underwater sequences initially seem to be the answer to this, they essentially end up just being extremely pretty corridors to link sections of the game together, and very much feel like a missed opportunity to add some variety to the gameplay on offer.
The multiplayer component of the game admittedly feels fairly fleshed out, and well presented, though it relies heavily on recycled assets (the environments, for example) from the original game. Whilst everything initially feels more loose than you'd like, there are some neat features which add at least some replayability to it; the ability to hack turrets, the damage bonuses gained from photographing the corpses of your enemies, or the ability to jump inside a Big Daddy suit and litter the environment with proximity mines. Whilst it'll never threaten to strip Modern Warfare 2 of its crown, there's enough to grab your attention for a short while.
At its core, the game is still Bioshock at heart, and if you loved Rapture the first time around, then you'll likely get a lot of enjoyment out of the sequel. As previously mentioned there are some brief glimpses of brilliance here, and the final third of the game is especially good – provided you make it through the middle section of the game without giving up. Given the quality of some of the sequels we've been treated to lately though, there really is no excuse for just how similar this game is to its predecessor – especially as the developers have made no attempt to resolve any of the flaws from the original. As it stands, there just aren't enough reasons to recommend this game. If you really want to try this game, rent it, or pick it up at bargain price later in the year.
Score:
71/100
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