BioShock 2 (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)
You love video games. But video games, at least right away, don’t always love you back. They’ll bore you with remedial tutorials and dinky pistols, only dazzling hours later when the plot and levels start adding up. Don’t have the cash or clock to spare on a late-bloomer? Looking for a quality quick fix? NBN’s here to assess the Fun:Time ratio of a video game’s First Five Hours.
Three years ago, deep in the Atlantic Ocean, gamers discovered the underwater majesty of BioShock. The city of Rapture, an Art Deco dystopia, arrived as a virtual Second Coming for the first-person shooter. Years into the “next-generation” of games, a 1960s world of DIY firearms and Randian philosophy distinguished BioShock from everything else on the market.
Developer 2K Games has created a sequel to BioShock, aptly named BioShock 2. You play as Subject Delta, one of many hulking dive suits nicknamed “Big Daddy” by the Little Sisters they protect.
Initially, the size seems significant. Steel bulk and a fishbowl helmet limit your speed and vision. But soon an upgrade augments your agility, and the helmet view disappears. Your only vestige of inhumanity is a giant drill arm — outmoded 10 minutes into the game by an industrial rivet gun.
Like its predecessor, BioShock 2 begins dramatically, complete with jagged graffiti and radio voices handing out marching orders. Rapture’s newest coo belongs to Sofia Lamb, municipal psychologist and psychopath (think bookish Emma Frost). Lamb rejected Rapture’s laissez-faire credo of self-reliance and instead preaches visions of rebirth and a collective Family.
As a means to this end, she’s holding hostage her genetically unique daughter Eleanor. It wouldn’t really matter, except Eleanor is your Little Sister, and she’s crying for help in your head.
If you played the original, you’ll recognize Brigid Tenenbaum, den mother to the Little Sisters who reap gene-enhancing ADAM from corpses. Tenenbaum also wants to save Eleanor, as long as you protect her Little Sisters on the way. Lawyer Augustus Sinclair would rather you harvest the girls for ADAM, so you can access extra Plasmids (telekinesis, lightning, etc.) and expedite whatever he’s planning. This chorus sounds off at your back, egging you toward a final confrontation with Lamb.
These characters vivify Rapture, the best part of the original game. As before, radio diaries guide you through an ecosystem of ADAM junkie Splicers, cannibal Little Sisters and guardian Big Daddies. Hackable turrets, mix-and-match Plasmids and specialty ammunition create a moody, real-time puzzle of life and death.
Improvements to the gameplay are negligible: a few set pieces require sea floor exploration and developers mercifully simplified the hacking mini-game to a “stop the moving dial” affair. In the way of new foes, Big Sisters leap like lithe metal frogs (BioShock 3: Rise of the Little Brothers?), and as time ran out I caught sight of a beefier Splicer.
Disappointingly, the sandbox freedom of BioShock is no more. Once you leave an area, you can’t return. The most significant addition may be the multiplayer, which I regrettably did not test, instead spending all five hours clearing my way toward the Incinerate Plasmid.
Sometimes, the tweaks do work. Religious allusions and Lamb’s Marxism-lite prove compelling angles on the capitalist tension that first ruined Rapture. And the villainess’ butterfly glasses and pastel hues clash beautifully with the bronze and blue of Rapture.
Ultimately though, BioShock 2 suffers from a lack of novelty. First timers, would you kindly go and buy a cheap, used copy of BioShock? The Rapture aesthetic and narrative merit the trip. Return for the sequel if you’re okay with submarena variations — still satisfying, no longer breathtaking.
