In BioShock 2, you get to play the role of a Big Daddy
I finally got to spend several hours with BioShock 2 these last few days, so I’m ready to share my impressions. If you’ve been following Leveling Down for a while, you’re probably aware that my Game of the Year in 2007 was BioShock. That was a crazy good year in gaming, so for it to beat out Halo 3, The Orange Box, Mass Effect and Call of Duty 4 for me that meant it was ridiculously good. The sequel has been handed off to 4 different developers, and there’s even multiplayer now which has learned a thing or two from Modern Warfare. Does the sequel look to carry the quality of the first or even surpass it? Read on for my impressions of BioShock 2 after playing through about a quarter of the campaign and an hour of the multiplayer.
Being a Big Daddy
The biggest gameplay and plot change in the sequel is that you play as a Big Daddy. From a pure “feel” standpoint, I don’t think that the developers did enough to make you feel like a Big Daddy. Sure, I can use a drill now, but why do I move like a regular person, am able to use plasmids, yet can’t communicate with other Big Daddys? There didn’t seem to be enough development in what it really is like to play as a Big Daddy for the entire game – it’s almost more like you’re wearing a Big Daddy’s weapons and that’s it. And to be fair, that’s ok from a pure gameplay standpoint, since it’s simplified and feels like the first game, but I just think that an opportunity was missed to really give the player a feel for what it’s like to be a Big Daddy if that’s what the goal was.
The one new enjoyable gameplay feature to becoming a Big Daddy (besides using the drill) is that you get to take Little Sisters on “harvest runs”. To be honest, it’s just weird to me that I have to go kill another Big Daddy to take over his Little Sister, as these guys are basically my brethren. In any case, once you do the dirty deed and kill another Big Daddy, you’re able to somehow convince the Little Sister that you’re her new Big Daddy so she leads you to corpses that she wants to draw Adam from. The moment you set her down and allow her to start harvesting Adam, that’s when the Splicers come swarming in like insects out of the woodwork. It’s pretty fun to defend the Little Sister as she harvests Adam, and I thought it was at least one aspect of gameplay that allowed you to experience more of what being a Big Daddy is like. I had no complaints to this, and simply wished to see more aspects of being a Big Daddy like this gameplay example. Good stuff here.
Comparisons to the Original
First off, some of the things I didn’t really like after first playing this game. It’s been a while since I played the original BioShock, so I was surprised that in the sequel, I was limited to only being able to only carry 5 med kits and 5 Eve Hypos at a time. I’m pretty certain the cap can eventually be raised later, but I guess this was a new limitation put in for balance reasons. And sadly, once again, there’s a cap on the amount of money you can carry, so I found myself hitting the $600 limit pretty often in only a few hours of playing the game. In the original BioShock, you traveled between levels via sort of an underwater elevator, so you were able to return to levels if you wanted to. This was removed in the sequel, and you aren’t able to go back to previous levels so if you miss anything in this game, too bad.
One of the things that got changed for the better is the hacking minigame. It’s a lot faster now and works quite well. In the original, you had to move pieces on a grid around to set the pipe up to flow from one area to another, but in this one, there’s simply a needle that moves back and forth and you have to just hit A when it gets into the green (or blue, for a bonus). Hit it in the red and the alarm goes off, and hit it anywhere else and the hacking fails. Simple, straightforward, and effective. There are also “remote” hacking darts now, which allow you to fire into a turret or something far away and hack at a distance. Quite convenient.
When I think about it, there were not that many things I could think of in BioShock 2 that I liked more than the original, but that’s probably not a bad thing since the original was already such an amazing game in my eyes. The fact that the sequel doesn’t really do anything worse from a pure gameplay standpoint means it plays just as enjoyably as the first. If you enjoyed the first, the second preserves the gameplay, but now makes hacking less frustrating. Unfortunately, the game’s soul seems lacking, and that’s most likely because the plot and storyline this time around can’t compare to the first. I don’t feel like I’m in an interesting storyline at all – but rather, just some unnamed Big Daddy running around Rapture. I think I miss Andrew Ryan!
Multiplayer
Surprisingly, BioShock 2′s multiplayer is playable and can be worthwhile entertainment – if you don’t already have Modern Warfare 2 sitting on your shelf. My initial conclusion for BioShock 2′s multiplayer in my little time played is that it’s a solid effort in taking what makes Modern Warfare multiplayer so addicting, but applying it to the BioShock universe. Unfortunately, BioShock 2′s combat engine is not as polished or playable as Modern Warfare 2′s, so it feels far inferior. But if you can get past the weaker engine, there’s definitely a lot of multiplayer gaming to be had.
There’s a leveling system for BioShock 2 multiplayer just like Modern Warfare, and I believe you can rank up to 50. Along the way, you eventually unlock up to 3 loadouts, and each loadout allows you to equip two weapons, two plasmids (active special abilities), and three tonics (passive special abilities). As you level up, more weapons, weapon enhancements, plasmids, and tonics get unlocked, as well as new Challenges that probably also grant exp bonuses. The unlockable items pale in comparison to Modern Warfare 2, but the addicting premise of Modern Warfare’s unlocking and customization is present. It does seem a bit unbalanced though, in that higher level unlocks seem to be a lot stronger than low level ones. Why use the first level’s pistol when I can unlock a machine gun? In any case, I haven’t leveled enough to really see the majority of what gets unlocked, so I’ll hold off on really trying to analyze it for now.
There are a few different game types, but the three primary game modes I played were team deathmatch, domination, and “capture the sister”. Team deathmatch is self explanatory, and domination has both teams trying to capture and hold 3 bases on a map to win. Capture the sister is a unique multiplayer mode for BioShock 2 and it pits two teams taking turns attacking and defending a Little Sister. The objective of the attacking team is to pick up the Little Sister and bring her back to their base while the Defending team is tasked with preventing that from happening. Both sides continue to alternate between Attacking and Defending over several rounds and the Defending side always has one player randomly spawning as a Big Daddy. The player in the Big Daddy suit is very powerful, but his life does not regenerate. In both Team deathmatch and domination, a Big Daddy suit spawns at random during the match, so both sides have an equal opportunity to get to it.
In my hour with the multiplayer so far, it seems quite playable, but again I would wonder why anyone would be playing this instead of Modern Warfare 2′s multiplayer when Modern Warfare 2 does pretty much everything BioShock 2 is trying to do much better. Even though there are several varied multiplayer modes, matchmaking, and a leveling/customization system just like Modern Warfare, the actual gameplay itself is just sort of blah. The multiplayer just doesn’t feel amazing to play, but I consider that more of a limitation of the game engine itself than the design. BioShock has always been more of a slower FPS, so when you’re forced to play it at a frenetic pace, it just doesn’t feel solid. But, who knows – I’ll continue to play it more to see if I end up really enjoying it.
Parting Impressions
After playing about a quarter of the campaign and a few levels of the multiplayer, I have to admit that BioShock 2 came together well. The multiplayer is decent, but can’t compare to stuff like Modern Warfare 2 and Bad Company 2, but it is certainly set up such that you can play it for many hours. The campaign is still quite addicting for me, so the magic of the original BioShock’s gameplay seems to have been preserved by the new developers of the sequel. Unfortunately, the only thing that seems lacking in the campaign is the engrossing storyline of the first.
BioShock 2′s storyline so far seems quite forced, as the characters in this game are not as interesting, the plot not as gripping, and even the protagonist is boring compared to the original game’s protagonist, Jack. Maybe that’s what comes out of a sequel that wasn’t exactly necessary from a plot standpoint? While BioShock 2 does not seem like a sequel that is better than the original, I certainly find myself craving to go play it, and can’t wait to jump back into it some more this weekend. That means the game can’t be that bad can it? Hopefully once I complete it, I will be able to finally decide on a score for this game. From my initial impressions, the sequel seems to be off to a great start. Let’s hope it finishes strong!
