 "Photo: Photo courtesy of www.bioshock2game.com")
Parents can be tough to live with sometimes. They can be bossy, embarrassing and, at times, completely overbearing. But ask yourself, what if your dad was an 8-foot-tall tin can that hung out with little girls?
That’s right. “Bioshock 2” will forever change the way you look at your parents.
Developed by 2K Marin and published by 2K Games, “Bioshock 2” places you in the twisted underwater city of Rapture once again. The game takes place 10 years after its predecessor and gives you control of Subject Delta. Think underwater suit on steroids.
Delta is a Big Daddy. In Rapture, Big Daddies are walking behemoths that are created simply to protect their own Little Sister, small little girls who roam the city harvesting the gene-altering drug, ADAM, from dead bodies.
Delta is an older model Big Daddy and has lost touch with his now-grown Little Sister, Eleanor. This is where the player must step in to find Eleanor and bring down the new evil facing Rapture, Dr. Sofia Lamb.
The first thing to note is that this is still very much the “Bioshock” we have come to know and love. “Bioshock 2” takes the amazing graphics, beautiful water effects and ever-changing gameplay and simply slaps it into a new storyline.
This would normally be a bad thing, but the team at 2K Marin took the liberty of making everything work much more efficiently.
No longer do you need to stop the gameplay to switch between your weapons and your plasmids or take time off to hack a vending machine.
With the new button configuration, everything is done on the go in this underwater open-world city.
Openness to the player is another key concept of “Bioshock 2.” This is not your typical linear first-person shooter. The design and layout of Rapture is built for exploring.
Corridors are not just meant to get you to your destination, but also act as a way to step. For “Bioshock” veterans, much of this is not new territory. Aside from the new controller layout, there is not much to truly shock you.
The story is beautifully written and, while not as quite of a roller coaster as the first, certainly pays you back in the last two levels. To emphasize, these are some of the most intriguing final levels of any game out there.
A new addition for "Bioshock 2" is an online multiplayer mode. This is an extremely clever idea as it introduces to the player what actually happened to contribute to the fall of Rapture.
You play as Splicers, the citizens of the city who have been completely ravaged by the overuse of ADAM, and you literally play out the civil war that occurred a couple decades before. In a way, this multiplayer component acts as a prequel to the first game.
The multiplayer is quite robust, with a lot of options always being unlocked for use. While it is an interesting idea, after a few matches, it is easy to see that it is not quite enough to stand up against some of the heavy-hitters in the multiplayer scene. It is just a bit too generic.
What “Bioshock 2” does, however, is show that not everyone necessarily needs to have a sophomore slump.
For veterans, this game will make you feel right at home. For the newcomers, this is most definitely a journey you should take. Dive on in. The water's warm.
Be the first to comment on this article!