Before I get into that, for anyone who still hasn't played it, Bioshock 2 revolves around you, a Big Daddy, who was separated from your Little Sister ten years ago. You spend the duration of the game trying to reunite with her while her mother attempts to keep you apart. The story isn't anywhere near as interesting as the first game's, and I found myself not paying attention at some points because I didn't really care about it. None of the characters were very memorable and I didn't feel bad killing the other Big Daddies in this game like I did in Bioshock. The story really didn't catch my interest at all.
I'm not a fan of the new controls. I don't understand why they chose to change the button you hit to use a First Aid Kit. That almost got me killed during the first Big Sister fight. (I started the game on Hard without Vita Chambers. More on that later.) I also don't understand why they changed the amount of First Aid and Eve you can carry from nine to five. Six, if you have the correct tonics equipped. Was this an attempt to make the game more difficult? It didn't work.
Guns are useless compared to the drill. On the rare occasion that I tried to use a gun to kill one of the Splicers, I always took more damage and it took more time to actually kill them. With the drill, I could use Electro Bolt on them, then melee them with the drill and that would be the end of it. I'm not sure why anyone would even want to use the guns in that case. There are some new ones. A hack tool, spear gun and rivet gun, off the top of my head. The hack tool is actually useful, but I'll come back to that. The spear gun is good if you want to go for head shots, but honestly, more often that not the Splicers will see you before you have a chance to kill them and it's difficult to pull a head shot off when they're running back and forth. The rivet gun isn't terrible once you've upgraded it, but it takes multiple shots to defeat enemies and again, the drill is more efficient. Why bother?
The new locations aren't interesting, and up until the last section of the game, there's very little difference between them. Bioshock's locations differed greatly between the Medical Pavillion, Neptune's Bounty, Arcadia, etc. I was very disappointed that everything looked the same. That didn't help to grab my attention much, either. There's also no backtracking to a location once you've left it, so if you miss an audio diary, there's no going back for it later. You're screwed.
There's no U-Invent in Bioshock 2 which actually disappointed me a bit because I relied heavily on it during the first game to make ammo for my guns. Then again, I didn't bother to use guns in the second game so I suppose I shouldn't complain too much.
Plasmids and tonics, for the most part, haven't changed. There are a few new ones, but none that are worth noting.
The new camera is confusing as hell. It no longer takes pictures, it takes video. The more techniques you use to damage enemies, the more your research score seems to go up. There are only four tiers of research as opposed to the five in the previous game and I haven't decided if that's a good or bad thing since half the time, I forgot to take out the camera anyway because the rewards for research aren't as good as they were in the previous game.
There's also a new, very tedious aspect to this game. Aside from killing Big Daddies in every level so you can get their Little Sister, you now have to protect her while she does two harvests. That means if you rescue three Little Sisters in a level, you're doing six harvests per level. It's not that they're particularly hard, but it feels like such a waste of time. Towards the end of the game, I constantly found myself thinking, "I can't wait until this is over so I never have to do this again." And now, you have to rescue four Little Sisters, rather than three, to receive a gift. I can honestly say, the gifts in this game aren't really worth it. Rescue the Little Sisters or harvest them, in the end, it makes very little difference.
Bioshock 2 doesn't have a boss fight at the end, it just has a bunch of random enemies that run at you for a certain amount of time. You don't even have to get involved if you have Hypnotize 3 and the special plasmid you get towards the end of the game with you. (I don't want to spoil it.) Just hypnotize a Brute, use the other plasmid, and you don't have to do any work, especially if you got Natural Camouflage from the Houdini Splicers. You can just go invisible and wait for the prompt to go pull the lever. The game didn't feel complete without a final boss fight, this just felt like every other chaotic area of the game where too much was going on at once.
When you die, you're brought back to the start screen instead of being asked to load your last save. This may not sound like a big deal, but it takes a longer time to load from the start screen than it does to load your last save. How do I know if it doesn't allow you to do so? Because I did it whenever I failed a hack and set an alarm off.
I do not like the inclusion of multiplayer trophies, especially when you're expected to get them in order to platinum the game. What if they take the server down before someone decides to play the game? What if the person who is playing it doesn't have internet access? It's unfair. Granted, I'm not in either situation, but either way, I don't like the idea of it. And I especially don't like the fact that there's a trophy you get for reaching level 40 in multiplayer. Do you know how time consuming that must be? It better be damn good if you expect me to play until I'm level 40.
I know I just listed off a bunch of complaints, but believe it or not, Bioshock 2 does have its good points.
You're no longer limited to hypnotizing Big Daddies. You can hypnotize any enemy in the game, except for Big Sisters. With the addition of enemies like Brutes and Alphas, having Hypnotize 3 on hand makes the game incredibly easy. Nitro Splicers have been completely eliminated. Instead, other Splicers will now throw explosives at you. I don't really know why they bothered to take them out in that case, but it's one less thing to research, so I'm not complaining. Speaking of....
Bots, cameras and turrets all count as one research subject now. I didn't realize this at first, but I was so happy when I finally did. It's not that taking pictures of cameras and turrets is difficult, it's just that taking pictures of bots is difficult. You have to set off an alarm in order to get them to come out, and unless you have Natural Camouflage or access to a Bot Shutdown Panel, they're going to shoot you. This made things much easier and I'm glad they changed it.
You're now able to hack cameras and turrets from far away with the Hack Tool, so you're in less danger of being seen or getting shot. You can also collect auto hack darts for it, but they're not really necessary. Hacking in Bioshock 2 is incredibly simple compared to the first game. They've eliminated the pipe game and replaced it instead with a needle that moves back and forth, and needs to be stopped on the green section. Or the blue section, if you'd like a bonus. Bonuses include free items from the vending machines, more money from safes, increased timer on cameras and increased damage from turrets.
What's really nice is that you can use Security Command on cameras you've already hacked. You couldn't do that with Security Bullseye in Bioshock. Unfortunately, I'm fairly certain that using this on an enemy enrages them afterwards, because the Big Daddy I hit with it attacked me. That didn't happen in the first game, and I never bothered using this plasmid again after it happened in Bioshock 2.
The drill in this game is just as good as the wrench was in Bioshock. I used its melee attack throughout the entire game, on every enemy, including Big Daddies, Big Sisters and Brutes. It's the best weapon in the game, in my opinion. I had no use for the guns whatsoever.
I read the GameFAQs board to see how difficult Bioshock 2's hard mode is compared to Bioshock on survivor. Everyone said Bioshock 2 is more difficult, but I disagree entirely. The first enemy in Bioshock almost killed me on survivor difficulty. I never really had a problem in Bioshock 2 while playing on hard, especially with the new money cap (with a tonic, you can carry up to $800 at a time, which is strange, they should have just made it $999). I never ran out of items, money or ammo (mostly because I didn't use ammo).
The one thing I'm neutral about is the fact that there are no longer separate slots for Engineering, Physical and Combat tonics. On the one hand, this is good because if you're interested in say, Combat tonics and you don't like Engineering tonics, you have as many spaces as you want available to devote to Combat tonics instead of being limited to just six slots like you were in the previous game. At the same time, it's an unorganized mess.
There's a bit of an interesting story spoiler I wanted to mention briefly. You get to play as a Little Sister towards the end of the game and you see through their eyes, Rapture is a utopia. Whereas everyone else sees it as an underworld. I'm not sure if this is ever explained through audio diaries, but it's the one aspect of the story that actually did catch my attention.
Bioshock 2 really isn't a bad game. It's just repetitive, and I don't find that enjoyable. Maybe if you didn't have to do so many harvests, I would have had more fun playing it. Or if I'd never played the first Bioshock because then it would have been a completely new experience. I would definitely recommend the first game if you could only buy one though.
I wonder how Bioshock Infinite will hold up.
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