Gaming Bioshock 2 review

Beneath the ocean wavesonce more, we return to the underwater city of Rapture. What's happened to the place in the last ten years and what's all this talk about a little sister? What is the new multiplayer mode like? We find out in our in-depth review of BioShock 2.

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/pc/2010/02/11/bioshock-2-review/1

 

"while the puny Tommy Gun is now a triple barrelled minigun"

http://images.bit-tech.net/content_images/2010/02/bioshock-2-review/bioshock_2_2010_34.jpg

Just saying

 

You leave Hull alone!

Also, why do people dislike the ending to Bioshock? You finish with an awesome boss fight then have a pretty cool cutscene. I felt thoroughly satisfied with it.

 

The boss fight was cool, ill give you that, but the ending was a little weak wasn't it?
Specially after all the thought that went into the plot...

 

strange i though bit-tech gave 7 stars to all good games
this is a miracle

 

So basically this is Bioshock 1 with a different story and minor changes for weapons and character..?

I found the first one to be dull, un-entertaining, and boring so I guess I'll just skip the sequel.

 

Ugh. I finished the boss the first time around without dying on Hard difficulty, found the character and look of the boss to be something I'd expect of a 70s game and found the polarising endings to be laughably short and annoying. I don't blame them for that though. I thought the same of System Shock 2. Interesting, Ken Levine (who lead both SS and BS) has said that the ending to both games was wrested from his control and he didn't have any real idea of the ending cutscenes until after release.

And yeah, I'm a minigun dolt. Fixing.

 

If the game was totally original then it wouldn't really be a sequel. Nobody gives the HL2 episodes are a hard time for unoriginality and they add pretty much nothing in terms of new features (strider bombs and a different car are all I can think of) If Bioshock 2 was just Bioshock with a different story then I would be more than happy.

 

Well, Half-Life 2 has entirely new areas and types of places - it's also a continuing story, not merely another story in the same place. They add new tech in too, as well as new weapons, enemies and so on. Also, bear in mind that

1) The first HL2 episode wasn't the price of a full game
2) The second HL2 episode did come with two wholly original games packaged with it

The level of polish in HL2 is also fantastic. They don't just bolt on a few extras and leave it at that - they fix all the problems in the previous game first and then expand on it.

 

SP bored me on the first game, steering clear if they changed nothing - by the way could you put "Shocking" for the caption on more pics please....

 

It is Bioshock with a different story - happy away!

 

huh?

 

Unless they went wildly off kilter with this it was never going to be a big-wow and it seems that they have gone for the safe option, nevertheless the original was fantastic so I can't see why if you didn't enjoy the first you won't enjoy this.

Multiplayer was clearly what they were putting their time into and clearly it seems they have put too much into it and unfortunately without too much to show for it. I will reserve damnation before I have had a chance to play it, my brother just gifted me the game on Steam, but I haven't had a chance to play it yet!

 

The problem with this review is that it assumes you've played the first Bioshock and so will be somewhat underwhelmed by this installment. In doing so, those who never played the first are put off playing this one.

Afterall, if the first had a begining, middle and as reported here, tidy end do you need to have played it to understand and enjoy this new game?

 

If you haven't played the first one then you might enjoy the second. Then again, since they are very similar and the engine hasn't been updated, why buy BioShock 2 for £30 - £40 when you could pick up BioShock 1 for £5 - £10?

Also, I take your point about the first game, but I made a deliberate assumption based on our audience and the popularity of the first game. I also didn't want to sum up too much about the first game and face the OMGSPOILERS complaints for a two year old game, as I did with the Mass Effect 2 review - which actually didn't contain many spoilers. /rant

 

I also see that there is the defacto whinging about the vita chambers in the review. Yes you can (ab)use them to chip away at particularly tough enemies but in general they just act as checkpoints or less convenient quicksaves which is something else that nobody complains about in other games...

 

No one cares about other games, we are waiting to see you all review Star Trek Online, the singularly most important MMO to come out since WoW

 

Would you kindly NOT put spoilers in your reviews

 

the original Bioshock was one of the most overrated games i've played in my entire life!, along with GTA4, killzone 2 and MGS4!. i have absolutely no idea how these two games got all those 9s and 10s reviews on gaming sites!, big money must have been thrown under the tables......

Bioshock was average at best, the game had a consol-ish feeling to it that is hard to shake, the levels were extremely small, confined and corridor-like, i never really felt that i was in a huge underwater city!, the game was very repetetive with almost no variety at all!, you kept fighting splicers the whole game with the occassional overrated "big daddies". the gunplay was terrible and the guns looked and felt more like toys!. the plazmid powers were nice(although more like magic in RPGs!!) but they weren't enough to save the game for me.



even the way the game told its stoy by collecting sound recordings was totally ripped from DOOM3!!. gameplay was shallow and the game lacked any kind of challenge!, there were absolutely no real choices to be made through the game!, mission objectives were nothing but fetch quests, the harvesting and adapting pathes were pretty much the same!, the whole thing felt pointless. the game also had no friendly npcs in it!, all the people you meet are your enemies and the last boss battle sucked big time. becoming a big daddy didn't make any difference at al except that it made me move slower and limited my vision!!. for me the whole game felt stripped, unfinished and average, the opening cracsh scene and stratosphere sequence were pretty much the game's only highligh....

and looking into it, the graphics were not all that great either!, enviroments and levels lacked any kind of variety, all levels look the same(almost), and the levels were also static, you couldn't shoot the lights or destroy anything in them. character models looked more like dolls than real people. the fact that this game never got any GOTY awards, that nobody talk about it anymore or that people weren't so optimistic about the sequel just shows how overrated BIoshock really was. Fallout 3 was a much better game that did everything that Bioshock did in a much better way and at the same time gave you a huge dynamic game world, dozens of interesting NPCs to interact with, better and bigger arsenal of weapons, plenty of interesting and deep side quests with multiple endings, your choices really mattered!, and it had much more variety as well....



the sequel is pretty much the original plus better gameplay, more options and a couple of underwater sections. graphics look exactly the same as the original's and i wasn't impressed by them even back in 2007!, muddy and blurry textures are everywhere and enviroments were pretty much static with no destructible objects.




it's stupid to compare the Bioshock series to System shock 2 or HL2.......

 

Not to poo-poo what you're saying (because it's an opinion I do at least somewhat agree with) to say that BioShock borrowed tactics from Doom 3 is a little wrong. Mainly, because Doom 3 wasn't the first to do the audio recording nonsense (System Shock 2 definitely did it before, but so did a lot of other games, including IIRC Pathways into Darkness on the Mac), but also because it wasn't critical to how BioShock told the story. You could skip everything in those diaries and still understand everything - it was extra content, not critical exposition.

I agree that BioShock is obviously consolised - though I hate that word and I think it's a change that's to do with more than just the popularity of consoles, such as the widening popularity of the medium, the need for accessibility and the increased sophistication of iterative game experiences - but comparisons to SS2 are still apt. The games share a lot of mechanics and ideas, including story points and the systems like enemy researching. At the end of the day both games were also made by the same team and lead designer, with BioShock explicitly made to resemble and evolve System Shock's formula. Regardless of whether or not that aim was achieved and what you think of it, that still makes discussion and comparisons relevant and important.