BIOSHOCK 2 UNSTABLE PLASMID SERIAL

Gone is the obnoxious pipe puzzle hacking, replaced with a real time reflex test that can be engaged at range with hacking darts or bypassed entirely with auto-hacking darts. Tangential to the combat are numerous other improvements that streamline the moment-to-moment gameplay. These weapons feel more powerful, more varied, and more reliable, all while expanding the roles of ammo to include tripmine rivets and launchable mini-turrets.

Your tools are also way more fun this time, jettisoning basic pistols and tommy guns for rivet guns. Why this wasn’t the case in the original we’ll never know, but my God it makes such a difference to have your tools always at the ready. For starters, you can finally have a gun and a plasmid out at once, one bound to each mouse button. BioShock 2 gets one thing right and its the way it refines the passable shooting of the first game into something smooth and engaging. These failings of features central to BioShock should be deal-breakers, but to my surprise the combat managed to salvage the whole experience. BioShock 2 never even comes close to the horror or atmosphere of the first, and it feels like a sorely missed opportunity. Individual rooms are woefully sparse on decor and details, and you can forget big setpiece moments like Sander Cohen’s masterpiece or the brilliant scares in the morgue. Here the levels blend together into similar train stations, hotels, and shopping arcades that miss that same sense of style and cohesion. In BioShock 1 each area was unique, from the wharves to the gardens, and even the parts of specific maps like the dental office and funeral home in the medical pavilion. The levels of BioShock 2 lack the key setpieces and distinguishing features that made the original so compelling, and just turn each hub into an extended scavenger hunt to open the next door. It’s a bold concept crushed and shoehorned into the mold of the first game, following the same conventions of looting and fighting your way towards your nebulous goal.Īnd that’s the other place the game stumbles, in the places your little ill-defined odyssey will take you. You’re just as fast, just as fragile, you can splice up and rescue Little Sisters, hack things and listen to cassette players. You’re essentially the same guy as in BioShock 1 but with new guns. They wanted you to be a Big Daddy, and when we talk about combat you’ll see how grand an idea that was, but none of the implications of that track with the rest of the game. This is the core problem with the BioShock 2 experience: The developers clearly knew what they wanted you to do in it, but not why you were doing it. You still get to save or devour Little Sisters on a whim despite being a Big Daddy, and Vita-chambers still work for you despite lacking the clever story connection they had to the protagonist of the first game. Similarly, your own story has very little to invest you aside from chasing your mystery MacGuffin daughter.

BIOSHOCK 2 UNSTABLE PLASMID SERIAL

She’s more of a serial villain, coaxing splicers to fight for her with the magic of psychology words and monologuing at you about your impending death by pre-announced trap. Sofia Lamb is clearly meant to be the mad socialist mirror to Andrew Ryan’s mad libertarianism but is not nearly as well-defined as the pencil-stached captain of the freely-submerged market. Right away you’re going to notice some serious faltering in this title compared to the last. You’re back to find your darling daughter, now a key in Sofia’s plot to rule Rapture, and so it is war across the ruins of a twice-ruined metropolis using every vicious, nasty weapon and plasmid you can get your mighty hands upon. Your presence is that of Delta, an atypical Big Daddy who had stewardship over a very special child in the olden days, but got iced by Sofia for a decade. Sofia Lamb has united the spliced-up crazies of the city as part of a psychologically-manipulative “family”, and your presence is a threat to that unity. Ten years out from the original game, Rapture is under new management and she’s a mad goddess with a silken voice. Assuming the Remaster doesn’t crash like wild on you, that is. Honestly most of those changes are steps back, but the places where they aren’t are such dramatic steps forward it’s enough to save this one from fading away in the shadow of its precursor. Despite the similar trappings the two games diverge wildly in level design, story, and combat, all defining features of the series. Coming to it now in the Remastered edition is a bit of a surprise, namely in how it differs from its predecessor.

I enjoyed the original BioShock well enough, but not enough to spur me on to play the sequel when it was released.

Bioshock 2 unstable plasmid