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Second Verse, Not Quite as Good as the First
The original Bioshock still stands out to me as one of the greatest games I have ever played. The wonderfully realized world of Rapture as well as the brilliant characters of the game almost made me forget about the horrible problems I had getting the PC version to run on my machine. Still, once you got it to work, it was one of the best games of the last decade, hands down.
However, this isn't a review of the original, its a review of the sequel, Bioshock 2. Bioshock 2 follows the story of a prototype Big Daddy, who wakes up in Rapture ten years after the fall. His Little Sister companion, now an adolescent girl, is telepathically urging him to save her from a fate worse than death, and you rush off to save the day.
This game feels very opposite from Bioshock in a lot of ways. While the first game was all about the failure of Andrew Ryan's Utopia, where the sweat of a man's brow belonged to him alone, the sequel features a Rapture ruled by Dr. Sophia Lamb and “The Rapture Family”, a group of pseudo-communist religious zealots who worship Adam and see Sophia's daughter Eleanor as some kind of genetic messiah. It provides for an interesting story and really serves to create a creepy environment as you encounter sections of Rapture's ruins that have been converted into makeshift chapels. Also, the combat is much better, with the option of using plasmids and guns at the same time eliminating one of the original's few major problems. I am also pleased to report that the technical problems I encountered in the first game are gone; I made it through the entire game without one crash. The game provides more good/evil options that just “kill or save the little girl”, and these choices have impact on the outcome of the game beyond just determining what ending you get. The game also provides a nice ending that wraps it up just like the first game did.
And that's a big problem I have with this game. It feels really unnecessary. While I am very impressed with the quality of a game that was completed only two years after the original's release without the original director, It just doesn't feel right. Great effort is taken to ret-con Sophia Lamb into the Rapture world, some of it convincing, some of it not. Much of the really good stuff in Bioshock 2 just feels like more Bioshock. Not that I mind that, since the original Bioshock was so good, I just wanted something a little more fresh. The game also a similar problem to the original game; by the time you reach the game's final two levels, you literally have every useful upgrade in the game. I found myself buying things I didn't even need and never used simply because I had Adam I wasn't using for anything. The game's multiplayer also feels extremely shoe-horned in and unnatural.
However, this is still a good game. While I wish is was something a little different, it's still a quality game and I strongly recommend it. Go buy it.
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PC
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| Genre: |
First-Person Shooter
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| Experience: |
Finished the game with the "Good" ending, some experience with multiplayer
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