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56 of 69 people found the following review helpful:
A Bit More of the Same
Bioshock, when it came out 2 years ago, completely reinvented the way I'd played first person shooters (I had never played System Shock 2). Diving into the sea, into a world eerily familiar to mid-20th century America was one of the most blindingly original, involving experiences I ever had with a controller. My main problem with Bioshock 2 is that this feeling of...
Published 7 months ago by R. Ross
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27 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
Good if you like the gameplay; disappointing if you're after the story
I was a bit apprehensive about getting this game - I knew for fact that I'd get it, since I loved the original so much, but I was worried that the absence of Ken Levine would be too obvious on its story. However, I kinda ignored the voice in the back of my head, and decided to get the game anyway. When the 'more of the same' reviews started coming in, I wasn't...
Published 6 months ago by impitbosshereonlevel2
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56 of 69 people found the following review helpful:
A Bit More of the Same, February 9, 2010
Fun:
This review is from: Bioshock 2 (Video Game)
Bioshock, when it came out 2 years ago, completely reinvented the way I'd played first person shooters (I had never played System Shock 2). Diving into the sea, into a world eerily familiar to mid-20th century America was one of the most blindingly original, involving experiences I ever had with a controller. My main problem with Bioshock 2 is that this feeling of originality never returns. Despite what the designers do, this new main villain Sofia Lamb just doesn't strike the same terror at Andrew Ryan did and fighting splicers and other big daddies from the other perspective- that of a big daddy--just isn't as exciting or new as i would expect. The game feels so much like more of the same, and for that I give it fun factor of 5, because it builds on a brilliant foundation, but overall i feel its lack of originality compared to the original earns it only 4.
As an addendum-- I can find no issue technically with the game- I think it's running on the same Unreal engine as the first, and I believe that was pretty maxed out in the first one so there was likely not room for substantial improvements. The new plasmids aren't really as cool as the ones in the original game either, as they seem more practical (maybe not a complaint, but being able to go vertical just isn't as sweet as shooting bees at a guy). Graphics were good, sound was just as immersive as Bioshock 1, technically I really didn't have any problems with the game. I stand by the 5 I give it for fun, but I can only really give it a 4 because it just doesn't invoke that same sense of ingenuity I got in the first game.
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27 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
Good if you like the gameplay; disappointing if you're after the story, February 25, 2010
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This review is from: Bioshock 2 (Video Game)
I was a bit apprehensive about getting this game - I knew for fact that I'd get it, since I loved the original so much, but I was worried that the absence of Ken Levine would be too obvious on its story. However, I kinda ignored the voice in the back of my head, and decided to get the game anyway. When the 'more of the same' reviews started coming in, I wasn't disappointed; I loved the original game enough not to mind going through a very similar the game again (I played through Bioshock two or three times; each time finding something new in the game, or the story).
The beginning of Bioshock 2 seemed promising. It's certainly impossible to top the beginning of BS1 (the whole segment up to the exit from the bathysphere is classic), but there was a lot of promise in the presentation of the new antagonist of the game, including the shrines you find here and there, and the occasional communist drivel she spouts. Once you reach near the end, however, you begin to realize that there's really not much of a twist in terms of a plot. The ending(s) is predictable, at best. In the grand scheme of things, Lamb is barely touched upon; enough to make you wonder why she was chosen as an antagonist. Many of the characters you meet in the game seem transient; the last conflict with Sinclair is almost laughable in its brevity and insignificance. In short, the story of Bioshock 2 doesn't hold a candle to that of the first game.
On to gameplay.
The Big Sisters, which seemed to hold so much promise before the game's release are nothing but another enemy - one almost impossible to beat without dying - at least early in the game on Medium and Hard. No real story is presented to explain their existence, short of a silly blurb about them being Little Sisters in a specialized suit.
The underwater levels promised early on are nothing but brief stretches of linear path, and not deserving much mention.
The Big Daddy drill is an interesting weapon in the new arsenal, but it lacks in two serious aspects: a) the drill dash is not available until later on in the game, and this move is often crucial for survival, and b) unlike the wrench, it requires "ammunition", which is often scarce to come by, especially on higher difficulty levels. You are pretty much guaranteed to drain the drill's ammo in any serious fight; therefore, you cannot depend on it in any medium- to large-scale fights.
The variety of new weapons offered in the game is great, but you'll soon learn that you really need the drill, the shotgun, and the rocket launcher. The rivet gun becomes useless almost from the beginning - even headshots hardly scathe the opponents.
The music! One of the best parts of Bioshock is the music, as it sets the mood perfectly. In Bioshock 2, music is barely heard in five or six locations throughout the game. I have heard more old-timey music waiting for the game to load, than I have throughout the entire game; making me wonder why 2K even bothered licensing the songs.
That said, the game does make some good gameplay changes, including the spear gun, which is a fun weapon reminiscent of the one in Half-Life 2. Hacking is better, if not much more realistic, as now you need to hack as you play. While the underwater moments are all-too-brief, there are a few scenes which are beautiful and deserving a lot more attention, than that given. Another excellent addition was the view of the world through the eyes of a Little Sister - if you ever wondered why they refer to the splicers as 'angels', this part in the game makes the reason all-too clear.
All said, I'm far more disappointed by the lack of a solid story in this game, than I am by the elements of gameplay. Living up to the original is not an easy task, and while I didn't expect the same level of innovation from this one, what I did get, I expected - a sequel that desperately cried out for the attention of the author of the original.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
Why are people so disappointed?, June 23, 2010
Fun:
This review is from: Bioshock 2 (Video Game)
I did not buy this game on the day of its release, as so many people were complaining Bioshock series lost its magic in Bioshock 2. The Rapture city doesn't feel as novel anymore. But now that I have played through with it TWICE, I have to say these folks were dead wrong. Yes, the city, some of the villians and gameplay are similar, but that is why this game is labeled Bioshock 2 and not a new IP. Either way below are the pros and cons for the Bioshock2
PROS:
-CHOICES, CHOICES, CHOICES: One of the aspects, gamers loved about the original is how you have to make choices in terms of litter sister throughout the game and how it affects the ending. In this one, they have taken a step further and improved this choice system. Not only for little sisters, but also for some other things you will have to make choices. This choices will affect the story (dialogues, cut scenes and ending) to a great degree and add decent replayability to the single player mode.
-MYSTERIOUS STORY: The story is suspenseful. It is not as good as the first one, but is still pretty good and will really drive you forward in the game. If you played Bioshock 1, it is certainly a plus; however, certainly not a requirement. Even if you did not play the original, you will be able to understand most of it.
-AMAZING UNDERWATER VISUAL ANG GRAPHICS: The city looks as stunning if not better as Bioshock 1. Better yet in this one you get to play UNDERWATER. While it may not sound as thrilling it truly adds great deal of feeling to the gameplay experience.
-PLAYING AS BIG DADDY: Initially you will be somewhat confused, but this gets to be real fun. You can still use plasmids as in the original, but you get access to heavy duty weapons as you are playing as big daddy. I won't spoil much for you but YOU WILL LOVE THE SPEAR GUN :)
-NEW WEAPONS, PLASMIDS and TONICS: In this game, you get access to all the cool plasmids from the original, but you also get to use some new mysterious plasmids and tonics. Expecially, if you decide to go for good ending, you will get some really cool plasmids. As for weapons, you will just love the big guns. Trust me on it.
-NEW ENEMIES and BOSSES: I don't want to spoil it so I will just say big sisters will make you wet your pants.
-FOUR ALTERNATE ENDINGS: Again refer to choices section
-EPIC MULTIPLAYER: This game offers a very unique multiplayer. It was a wonderful break from games like Modern Warfare 2. The modes such as capture the little sisters can be fun. Just wait till you play as a Big Daddy. The power you get will truly be intoxicating. Oh did I mention you can use very different plasmids than single player in multiplayer mode.
My only complain for this one was instead of focusing on multiplayer, they should have just focused on single player and made it longer. Don't get me wrong , it will still take you a while to go through it (8-12hrs depending on how much you decide to collect).
In summary, to me, Bioshock 2 lived up to the standards. It was enjoyable and has great replay value.
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13 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
Unremarkable - Bioshock 2 As A Vanilla Metaphor, March 20, 2010
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This review is from: Bioshock 2 (Video Game)
Unlike the first, this game will not remain in your memory for long. It feels more like a prelude to another, not an end in itself. And instead of being unique in its gameplay it steals from other games. For example, the voice of a loved one interrupts the game - as seen in Dead Space and countless other games. It also steals from itself, as basically the entire game is fighting Big Daddy's and splicers, again.
The main antagonist is also watered down. She starts out with a bang but quickly becomes just a nuisance. I found myself wanting more snippets of Andrew Ryan along the course or hearing again from the woman who was an actress/singer, versus hearing from the main foe, Dr Lamb.
The game also provides way too many opportunities for help through the "Hypnotize" plasma, which is ridiculously overpowered, and with too much ammo, money, and health (on average difficulty) there is little need for strategy.
Stepping away from the complaints for a second, the world is again, beautiful. But stepping right back, the underwater section is pointless. There is little chance for exploration and no enemies. It is completely underdeveloped and is a waste. And unlike the first, I don't recall a single unique section of Rapture in Bioshock 2.
So, doing the math, Bioshock 2 is a vanilla cookie. It's there, but if it wasn't, you wouldn't care. The story in this attempt is fine. The enemies are fine, though there are no real "bosses" again and the majority of the game is finding a little sister and protecting her (which gets very boring and was stolen from the first as well). The new recurring foe, "The Big Sister" has a frightening shriek, but when you figure out she's just a quicker Big Daddy, you don't care anymore. And the end? It just ended, which is especially frustrating, given how poor the finish of Bioshock was.
Bottom line, if you played the first you will likely play the second, regardless of the review. I just hope that you rent it through a free gamefly trial instead of spending money on it.
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4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
A little balance would help, March 2, 2010
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This review is from: Bioshock 2 (Video Game)
Bioshock 2 - ahh so much promise; you play as a big daddy, there's new weapons, plasmids, big sisters and you can go outside of rapture's realm into the murky floor of the ocean.
Of course the reality here is it's the same game. Full stop. Sure it's tweaked a little and jigged somewhat but it's still Bioshock 1 and it feels little more than a user-mod instead of a full-priced game. In all fairness I just can't applaud the game makers' inability to step outside the box and advance the franchise's content by giving us more than a small upgrade. Frankly things have kind of taken a step back too - there's almost no shades of metaphorical color here, it's all black, Blam blam blam in-your-face action. No chance to take a breath and sit back and relax for a moment and enjoy the location. And with visuals like the ones found in Rapture it deserves to be savored momentarily, not run through quickly because another big sister or one of the randomly spawned brutes are after you (for the thousandth time). Audio is let down by the many pre-recorded messages which quickly become a royal pain. Main sound effects in-game are lowered in volume during these frequent and annoying playbacks and I lost count the times I got attacked because I could only hear some taped voice instead of the splicer coming up behind me. It added nothing to the game that a text-based log book wouldn't have achieved. I guess the makers had been playing System Shock 2 at some point, but they really didn't nail the point of such messages and placed far too many of them in the game.
The mechanic of dying in BS2 is also faulty. You die because you're not capable of beating whatever hard part of the game you're at and so you return to the nearest Vita-chamber. The problem is you now have a lot less ammo, less fuel for your drill, less eve and 50% of a single vial of health... and you still have to go back and fight the guys that you just lost against! This becomes especially obvious when a little sister is harvesting Adam; if you die you have to start over despite having lots most of your equipment in the last go around. So you roam around looking to stock up on inventory only to be plagued by spawning splicers in places you thought you'd cleared out. I'd just rather have my character die and reload than the current broken system of regeneration. A final stab in the eye was just as my character was getting strong enough to take on major bad guys with relative ease and I could feel things turning my way... the game ended!
Of course there's moments of brilliance - the water effects are incredible and wandering outside (brief and pointless as it is) is beautiful. The part where you play as a little sister is exactly what I wanted from this sequel, sadly it's far too short. But it's these great moments though that highlight the problems that I feel BS2 has - ultimately, the developers should have taken everything down a notch not up, let the tension build and surprise us at the critical moment...
...instead we get never ending zombies to blast away at. Meh.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Lacking the 'wow' moments that the first game provided, July 4, 2010
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This review is from: Bioshock 2 (Video Game)
If you were a fan of Ken Levine's original 'Bioshock,' this sequel will feel intimately familiar from the first moments of action up through the end credits. For the most part this is a good thing and after being away from the world of Rapture the past 2 years, a great sense of nostalgia filled my spirits as I explored and plundered the neon-lit gloom of this underwater, art-deco, utopia. The gameplay itself remains true to the spirit of the original with skill and equipment customizations for various abilities and weaponry, but this time around the action factor seems cranked up a few notches with high intensity combat comprising 85% of your playtime. What left me ultimately disappointed at the end of it all was the lack of any 'wow' moments that the first game doled out in spades and this is attributed to the fact that this sequel remains so firmly rooted to the original that it seems almost puzzling why more deviation from gameplay and setting weren't utilized.
This game is actually deserving of 4-stars but I had to dock it 1 star for 2 bugs that prevented me from progressing and forcing me to utilize earlier save files (save often, kids!), wasting several hours in the process.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
A Very Worthy Sequel, June 23, 2010
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This review is from: Bioshock 2 (Video Game)
The somewhat shocking sequel to one of the truly great titles out there launched earlier this year and we will see how well it lives up to its namesake.
The first issue was that the original didn't leave an opening for a sequel. At all. It had a very definite conclusion. So, 2K Marin had an ugly problem in even trying to start this game in the first place. And they shoehorn it as well as they can, but it is still clunky. It is illogical for a character who was, apparently, every inch as important as Ryan to suddenly appear out of nowhere in a city that had basically failed...deep in the ocean...in the middle of nowhere. Him "silencing" her is absurd since he seemed spectacularly incapable of doing so previously. He couldn't silence Fontaine...but Lamb? Yeah, he shut her up. Sure.
Dr Lamb also doesn't seem remotely real. Ryan, for his faults, came across as a true believer who failed. Lamb is just a stock villain who doesn't ring true. I get that she's the polar opposite of Ryan, but her motivation is just not really believable. But the games strength is in delving into the relationship between the Big Daddies and Little Sisters. You are Delta, one of the original Big Daddies. In the first title, they have a bizarre relationship, but here they flesh out the key question of WHY Big Daddies are so protective of these girls. The reason they give works so bravo to them.
The game definitely hits the action button much harder than the original. The original used atmosphere to generate tension. Since Rapture is now familiar territory, this title used Lambs hold over the Splicers as the main impetus for the action. You won't sit there and dread the next Splicer you see since you will see lots of them...constantly. There aren't many new enemy types, but without a huge influx of people, there wouldn't be. The two main new enemies, Big Sisters and Brute Splicers, are worthy adversaries. Fortunately, combat is so much easier this time. Dual wielding guns and plasmids makes a big difference. Sadly, melee is a joke as your drill compares to the original wrench. For a Big Daddy, you aren't the beast you'd expect. You have the choice of harvesting or killing Little Sisters, but now, you not only have to kill their Big Daddy, you must protect them from large onslaughts of enemies as they drain ADAM from certain corpses. This allows defensive strategy to be used here and the arsenal of defensive weaponry you have is impressive. the plasmids level up really well now, but you will end up relying on some heavily. As cool as a powered up Insect Swarm was...I still used the ice plasmid constantly. And they fixed up the irritating research camera, making it a video camera, allowing you to fight an enemy while researching.
I may seem awfully critical here, but this is an outstanding title. The game is terrific. Not as good as the original, but a game that cannot be ignored easily. The multiplayer is shockingly fun and they avoided an inane final Big Boss fight that killed the vibe of the game. They left no loose threads for a sequel, but I doubt that slows them down.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
This game is a great game, April 30, 2010
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This review is from: Bioshock 2 (Video Game)
I've heard a lot of complaints about this game being just more of the same, and its just not true. The major complaint is that its not original enough. I think they are missing the point, anyone who played the first game probably enjoyed the story as much as the game. But there in lies the problem once the cats out of the bag you can't put it back in. So why complain about originality when this is so obviously a sequel. Its like saying spiderman shouldn't have been the hero in Spiderman 2. What were people expecting an all new rapture on the moon. I enjoyed the story from the second one and I thought it was pretty good. Don't listen to the ney-sayers as they apparently have never pondered the thought that the first one already existed and that there is no way to ever go home again, it was time to move on and they did. The multiplayer is good but not great, it is competitive, but the servers do need some help. Overall I would give this game a 9.5 out of 10, if you enjoyed the first one chances are you will enjoy this one as well. I guess you just can't please everybody.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
Enjoyed the game play... the story was weak., April 28, 2010
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This review is from: Bioshock 2 (Video Game)
Enjoyed the game play... the story was weak. This is not a strong sequel considering the amount of time they took to ring it to market. With that said, I did enjoy playing a Big Daddy and Little Sister. Overall, the ending was poor and left a sour taste in my mouth.
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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
It was a fun game, but I'm still waiting for the plot twist, February 17, 2010
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This review is from: Bioshock 2 (Video Game)
I do not believe this game is as good as it was hyped to be. I really enjoyed the first game because of the new world and mystery story. After playing the first game, I really expected a lot from the sequel, so this is why I have been re-evaluating the game's overall score. From start to finish, I was paying more attention to the audio messages and looking for clues that might give me an insight of the new plot. I have to admit this was not my strong suit in the first game, so I was hoping to figure out the plot twist before it would happen. There were times when I thought I had it figured and realized I wasn't even close. The game never had a plot twist like the original and I finished the game quite suprised by this fact. The game was rather linear and rushed at times. At any rate, I felt cheated by the ending. Overall, I enjoyed returning the the crazy world of Rapture.
Good Points: I loved the duel welding ability, and I enjoyed the upgrades for the plasmas. Telekinesis was always my favorite plasma in the first game, so it was great to upgrade it to a point where I could pick up living splicers and toss them. As far as weapons go, I liked the new additions (rivet gun, drill etc) and my favorite weapon is the spear gun. My wife thinks I'm crazy.
This game required more strategy (protecting the little sisters) which I rather enjoyed.
Investigating the splicers has always been one of my favorite parts of the game. The video recorder is much better than the camera. I found myself attacking a recorded splicer with creative combinations of plasmas and fire power. From throwing splicers to barrels of gas, I never got tired of this.
Bad Points: I felt this game limited your creativity. For example, you have the ability to pick up the dead splicer, but you can't pick up and move an adam filled splicer that your little sister has identified. There are many times in the game where the little sister has selected a splicer that is in a horrible location to protect. I understand the designers attitude toward this, but I don't like it when a game is not consistent.
I understand the idea to have splicers show up in areas that were previously cleared, but this game had a bad approach. It became apparent rather quickly that a splicer can just materialize anywhere, whether it makes sense or not. In a game that requires you to strategize, it leaves you hanging in the common sense department.
Overall, I'm glad I played the game and I hope to see another continuation in the future.
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