BioShock 2 is one of the boldest sequels ever made

(Image credit: 2K Games)

Reinstall

This clause first appeared in PC Gamer magazine issue 361 in September 2021, as part of our 'Reinstall' series. Every month we lade a love classic—and find out whether it holds up to our modern gaming sensibilities.

When BioShock 2 was released back in 2010, information technology had merely been three years since we most recently got our feet wet in briny depths of Rapture. I remember spirit like the undersea dystopia was standing relatively original in my mind, and had little desire to return. However, this sequel that nobody really sought turned out to be confident, intelligent, and creative, matching the quality of the original, and in some ways ameliorative information technology. It's the story of a Heavy Daddy, Matter Delta, searching the decaying, leaky corridors of Exaltation for his Little Sister, and butting heads with Sofi a Lamb, the psychiatrist sour cult leader WHO betrayed him.

Rapture was in a bad way of life in BioShock, just a tenner later it's in an even worse state of disrepair. Entire districts of Andrew Ryan's monument to hubris are now completely submerged in ice-cold Atlantic seawater. The once lavish ballrooms, bars, and department stores are damp and rotten, crusted with barnacles. IT's a vivid depiction of a localise losing a battle with nature, and a highly effective setting. Still identifiably Rapture, but grimmer, dingier, and more insoluble.

It's as wel more than dangerous, thanks to the front of brute splicers—grotesque ADAM-powered giants—and the Big Sisters, an agile, powerful, and terrifying new kind of protector you have to contend with. When the ocean swallows this place up, it'll be doing it a favour...

Daddy Cool

Stepping into the unwieldy boots of a Crowing Pop gives you a uniquely interesting and more sexy perspective happening the city. You aren't an foreigner (or someone World Health Organization believes they're an foreigner) like Jack in the primary game, but a key part of Ecstasy's bizarre ecosystem. Subject Delta, a prototype model, is divers from the heavy-footed, inarticulate Big Daddies who stomp around the urban center protecting the Little Sisters.

Helium has rather more free will, and a special, long bond with one Little Sister in particular, Eleanor. If she dies, he dies, which gives him spare motivation to caterpillar track her down, on the far side scarcely cistron-iatrogenic fatherlike love. From a story linear perspective, playing equally a Big Daddy is actually an inspired musical theme. But in terms of actually moving around Rapture, you preceptor't really feel like one.

On that point's really little weight to the controls. No real sense of being a eminent, wicked figure clad in an cast-iron diving case. Even the drill, a trademark weapon of the Oversize Daddies, feels oddly feeble when you swing it. The first-person controls are basically isotropous to Jack's in the original game, which detracts a little from the sentience of being a Life-sized Daddy.

The lame might not have been often amusive if you spent the whole playtime slowly clomping just about the expandable city of Exaltation, merely just a little much free weight would've helped the illusion. I answer like how you can take heed the tap of irrigate along your helmet when you stand under a leakage, though. And occasionally, if the light hits you just right, you catch a glimpse of your hulking gravid shadow, which reminds you that, oh yeah, I'm a Big Daddy, aren't I?

Harvest Boon

You might not move wish a Big Daddy, just you do occasionally human activity look-alike one. At certain points in BioShock 2 you have to protect a bit Sister as she goes about her rounds, sucking Go out of splicer corpses and recycling it. This is a neat way of devising you a part with of a dynamic you determined countless times back in the original game. When the Little Sister begins the crop, waves of splicers descend on her, which brings the continuation's developed scrap to life. Being able to simultaneously wield a gun (operating theater drill) in combined hand and a Plasmid in the other is the most significant change, dramatically increasing the pace and aggressiveness of battles, and letting you pull off king/weapon combos more fluidly.

Frore, calculating villain Sofia Lamb is the polar opposite of Andrew Ryan. He worshipped the nonpareil of the self, an objectivist, spell Serdica believes in the power of the many. A communist, basically—exactly the kind of person Ryan feared might one day invade and conquer his city. She's an important figure in Rapture, but why no mention of her in the first game? The real answer is, she hadn't been scrivened yet. But in the game thither's a hired man-wave about her being imprisoned by Ryan and all traces of her teachings organism hidden away from the masses. As an opposer she doesn't have the charisma or zealous fi re of Ryan, but her soundless cruelty does a good chore of setting her apart.

One of the sequel's cleverest tricks is how your morality affects not but your own conscience, but Eleanor's story too. At several points in the game you'rhenium precondition the opportunity to bolt down or spare a character, and how these decisions spiel down can result in one of several different endings.

If you stimulate a callous attitude to life and death, Eleanor will notice, victimization you as her moral compass. Only if you show compassion, she'll ultimately get ahead a better person. This is thusly so much more interesting than just saving or harvesting the Little Sisters in the first gear game, and has a higher emotional stakes for the protagonist. There are multiple endings – Oregon rather, around six variations of the 2 briny endings—and the outcomes of each can be drastically antithetic supported the decisions you make and, by association, the influence you stimulate on Eleanor.

Level Raised

BioShock 2's level design is also a step up from the first game. The overall themes of the districts aren't quite A striking—there's nothing here to rival Fort Frolic, for example—merely the maps themselves are more than complex, multi-layered, and spatially imaginative. In our showtime head trip through Rapture we power saw the lives of the rich and prestigious, but here we get a glimpse of what IT's like to cost down and proscribed in Ryan's city. Pauper's Drop, a rail upkeep facility turned slum, is the best example of this. The dense, detailed shanty town is bursting with little stories, showing an even uglier side to the city than we'd ever seen previously in the original BioShock.

We also get some flashes of life happening the other side of the tracks, including the Adonis Luxury Fall back, a watering hole for the wealthy and pampered. And the trip to Ryan Amusements—a propaganda theme park—is a adroit way of giving Saint Andrew the Apostle Ryan and his philosophies a presence in the urban center, despite him beingness dead for many years.

Spell BioShock 2's improved combat, nuanced approach to ethical motive, and many interesting level design makes information technology functionally a better game than BioShock, I practise still think that the original is the superior experience. Descending into Rapture first, acquisition about the city and its collapse, and the big reveal at the end are difficult to beat. Returning to Rapture in BioShock 2, it still has impact as a setting, merely that feeling of beguiling, superbly mystery just isn't rather at that place. This at least makes sense in damage of the fiction. Content Delta was created in the city and lived there for some years, which gives our conversance with the setting as BioShock players some in-universe logic.

Thanks to the 2016 remastered re-release, BioShock 2 runs perfectly on a modern play PC. That being said, you shouldn't expect practically from the 'remaster'—it looks basically the same as it did when it was low discharged back in 2010. The main reason to play this version is built compatibility with Windows 10, a 4K-friendly UI, and intrinsic support for modern gamepads. And you get both DLCs—The Protector Trials and the superb Minerva's Hideaway—bundled in, making it a complete singleplayer package.

Sadly, the game's excellent, largely forgotten multiplayer way is nowhere to be recovered in the re-release, and no longer possible to play in the original version. That's a very shame, but it's the singleplayer that really makes BioShock 2 extra, and it corpse one of the outdo, and boldest, sequels ever made.

If information technology's set in place, Andy wish probably write about it. He loves sci-fi, adventure games, taking screenshots, Twin Peaks, weird sims, Foreign: Isolation, and anything with a salutary story.

Source: https://www.pcgamer.com/bioshock-2-is-one-of-the-boldest-sequels-ever-made/

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