GAME REVIEW”Bioshock 2″System: PS3 (reviewed), Xbox 360, PCGraphics: B-Sound: AGameplay: A-Replay value: BFinal Grade: B
It may have only been three years since gamers first explored the leaky hallways of Rapture in the original “Bioshock,” but time hasn’t been entirely kind to Irrational Games’ underwater dystopia.
The sequel picks up Rapture’s story about 10 years after the original with players donning the armored dive suit of Delta, one of the series’ notorious Big Daddies. Like all Big Daddies, Delta is charged with protecting the Little Sisters, children who harvest Adam, a currency used to purchase plasmids, genetic steroids that confer powers when injected.
When the game opens, a woman forces Delta to commit suicide while a wide-eyed Little Sister looks on. Since ending here would make for a short game, Delta is subsequently revived with no memories, only the haunting voice of Eleanor, a woman claiming to be “his” Little Sister asking him to rescue her.
The game continues for 15-20 hours to one of six endings based on players’ moral choices made during pivotal moments. Along the way, they’ll unravel Delta’s past, Eleanor’s significance and meet Rapture’s new power players.
For the most part, the plot delivers thrills on par with the original, even if the sense of wonder is diminished. In the first game, Rapture was a character unto itself, treacherous and dynamic. After a dozen hours in Rapture the first time around, though, players may expect greater environmental diversity in the sequel.
You’ll explore a ruined theme park and a research facility managed by a deranged security bot, among others, but all those leaky hallways eventually look awfully similar. The game also includes a few jaunts on the ocean floor outside the city, but with no action, these end up feeling like interactive load screens.
“Bioshock 2” maintains the same foreboding, slightly demented atmosphere of the original, but the game’s flag ship feature, becoming a Big Daddy, is spottily implemented. In the original, Big Daddies served as tough-as-nails mini-bosses. Unlike regular Big Daddies, however, you’re an earlier model, so you’re not as powerful or resilient.
You can use plasmids, which other Big Daddies can’t, but even hours into the game, grunts you face by the dozens can still put you down with little effort. As you upgrade your stats and abilities, the tide eventually turns, but you’ll feel weak as a kitten early on.
“Bioshock 2” introduces an even less-welcome mechanic in the form of babysitting. In the original, you needed to defeat a Big Daddy to gain Adam from its Little Sister, either by saving them (good) or ripping their insides out (bad). You still do that, but the game encourages taking the girl with you to harvest more Adam from corpses.
The sisters ride on your shoulder and nag you incessantly to do this, which gets annoying very quickly. Once you do put a sister down, however, you’re set upon by wave after wave of enemies until she finishes harvesting. This is excruciatingly formulaic — each of the 15-odd sisters can harvest twice — but it’s the only way to gather Adam in sufficient quantities to purchase upgrades you’ll need.
Graphically, the game feels like a step back from the original. Some textures, on the PS3, at lest, are downright ugly, low resolution and muddy. There’s also noticeable texture pop-in and, on occasion, graphical stuttering. The series’ twisted art deco aesthetic remains striking, though.
So does the sound, particularly the voice acting. Just as in the original, the player is unvoiced, but the rest of the cast’s performance is delivered like a finely tuned ’40s radio drama. It’s a shame the lip synching is so terrible.
The sequel offers a full-featured, story-driven multiplayer mode (a series’ first), with an upgrade system akin to “Call of Duty.” Players choose a side in the civil war that ruined Rapture prior to the first game. Matches in seven team- and single-combat game modes take place across 10 maps. The modes are “Bioshock”-themed variations on existing modes (“Capture the Little Sister,” etc.), but the pacing is much faster than the campaign, and the persistent character growth is a nice carrot to chase.
Despite its technical issues and a general sense of over-familiarity, “Bioschock 2’s” story is its bread and butter. The second trip Rapture is more than engaging enough to maintain your interest, and once it gets its hooks in, you’ll be happy you came back.