Bioshock 2: Review

N.B.: This review was written using a 360 version of the game and therefore cannot necessarily be applied to all other versions. As always reviews are subjective and the thoughts and feelings of the reviewer.

Bioshock, spiritual successor to System Shock 2, was released in 2007 to much acclaim. Now, a few years later, Bioshock sees itself a sequel and gamers picking themselves up a copy see a return to the underwater city of rapture ten years later. Whether or not this is a welcome return will depend mainly on what you’re looking to get out of the game.

Bioshock 2 is the return to Rapture, the underwater city created by Andrew Ryan, a man who clearly believed that it was every man for himself. Since his death the city has been taken over by Dr Lamb, a psychologist who’s philosophy is very much the opposite, believing that we are stronger in unity than we are apart.

The story sets you in opposition to the female Doctor by placing you in the large, heavy shoes of a prototype Big Daddy who’s Little Sister has been taken from him. This is depicted in a dramatic and well done introductory cut scene, which will have you ready to take revenge.

Those returning to the series will know that the Big Daddy’s were a force to be reckoned with, ominous enemies only out to protect the terrifying, mysterious little girls who wandered beside them. As one of these lumbering entities the story progresses as you search for your Little Sister and a way out of the underwater nightmare. If you’re a nitpicker when it comes to storyline you might have some issues as, while holding some interesting themes and concepts, such as the creation of the Big Daddys, there is an underlying feeling that, not only have we seen it all before, but some of the original has been changed just for the purpose of this story. For example, Raptures current leader, the mysterious Dr Lamb, is never mentioned in the original Bioshock yet according to the story she has always been a vital component in Rapture.

The atmosphere of Bioshock 2 is created in much the same way as the first, with the same eerie scenery and sounds. If you have visited Rapture before, however, then that experience will seem that bit too familiar and you may not be as taken with it the second time around. While the first game’s introduction built up tension and scares there are not as many frights to be had in the second instalment.

The atmosphere is supported by up-to-date graphics and sound. While neither are anything that that will be heralded as too impressive the game clearly stands with other games of this generation and is, as with the first game, more about what is achieved with them then simply how they look and sound.

If you’re a fan of the original you may find that the atmosphere is also lost by your new character. Whilst in the first game you were an everyday man, straight from a plane crash and lost in a bizarre and frightening world, you are now a Big Daddy, a force to be reckoned with, who in the first game you found yourself afraid to cross paths with. This is a character who belongs to Rapture in the first place, losing that sense of somewhere new and frightening to explore, and also means enemies will feel as though they shouldn’t really challenge you. This is seen in the Multiplayer, where becoming a Big Daddy is a temporary bonus where you have a high amount of health and give out a high amount damage.

Being a Big Daddy doesn't add as much as you might expect

The game is well designed and the environments are believable. From a haunted carousel to a dark, metallic laboratory, each new level provides you with an interesting place to travel through and search around. While some areas do seem familiar to others, you never really feel like you’ve seen it all before and you’ll be drawn into the underwater metropolis.

Outside the levels you occasional walk through a much unseen area of Rapture, that is the outside. Here you can look up at the city which gives you a real feel for where you are trapped. These areas do, however, feel a little too linear and it would have been nice to be able explore the outside of the city, if only for a little while.

The gameplay of Bioshock 2 remains unchanged from the first with the exception that you can now dual wield both weapons and plasmids. Plasmids serve you as an elemental attack, such as electricity or fire, and these work very well within the concept of the game. Those looking for a run and gun style gameplay will be disappointed as Bioshock 2 lends itself better to slower pace of play trying to show off more story and atmosphere then actual gunplay.

Unchanged from the original is the difficulty setting. Bioshock 2 is, like the first, an easy game to play. Even on hard you will not have much difficulty fighting your way to the end. The inclusion of Vita-Chambers, in game respawn points which don’t penalise you for dying, means that death doesn’t feel very final and the actual challenge in the game is almost completely removed. On the easier settings enemies will take off practically no health and you’ll feel unopposed working your way through the underwater city.

Like the first game you will be seen to gather Adam, a type of genetic material that acts as a currency for you buying new powers and upgrades to wield. This hunt for Adam will see you either befriending or harvesting the Little Sisters you were sworn to protect. The players here are faced by a moral dilemma, save the Little Sisters and receive less Adam, or harvest them which, whilst killing them, will provide more Adam to spend. One option never really feels like its outweighing the other though as both options provide relatively similar amounts of Adam by the end of the game.

If the player chooses to befriend a Little Sister they will temporarily become their Big Daddy, and the gameplay fundamentally changes. From here you will faced with a survivor type affair where you face off against hordes of enemies in an attempt to protect your Adam gathering Little Sister. For these you can set traps, hack turrets, or just gun your way through and, whilst breaking up the pace and offering a different style of gameplay, by the end of the game they prove to be tedious and you’ll probably be doing them more as a means to an end.

It would be unfair to mention Bioshock 2’s gameplay without mentioning the multiplayer which is surprisingly good. Learning from the Modern Warfare 2 style advancement system, in which the ranks and experience of the player unlock more weapons and challenges, Bioshock provides quite a fast and arcade style shooter which contrasts the single player’s slower, more methodical approach.

The multiplayer serves to be an addicting and fun experience, if not relatively deep, and many hours could easily fly by playing the few game modes that it gives you. However, at the bottom of it the multiplayer does feel a little tacked on, as though to monetize the current market of online games and this will be disagreeable of many original fans who felt the game didn’t need this added experience. Still, nothing beats becoming the slow moving Big Daddy and killing off your opponents with a few shots as they team up against you.

Become a Big Daddy online to show them who's boss!

As a sequel you would be expecting the game to make some improvements but the game seems to make relatively few. Though a slight graphics and sound boost is to be expected the game play is unchanged and the story can feel a little tacked on. It feels fair to compare Bioshock 2 to its predecessor, in which it would could well score lower marks, but when judged on its own the game is an enjoyable play through.

If you’re approaching the game as a fan of the original then you will either welcome this return or wish you hadn’t set foot there a second time. The story can either provide you with more detail of a place you truly connected with or it can demean the image it first created. The game play will either be that which you loved from the first game or needless repetition of the same old mechanics. If you haven’t played the first, however, and are not inclined to pick it up before the sequel, then you are probably due to have more fun than those playing in constant comparison.

In conclusion there is an enjoyable experience to be had with Bioshock 2. The main story doesn’t last long and aside from the multiplayer and achievement points there is little real replay value, but you’re sure to have fun whilst your there. All in all it depends how you go into the game and what you’re expecting to earn from the experience.

Authors comments: Bioshock 2 is about as sequel-ly as a game will probably get. It makes no real improvements to the first game and, in some light, appears to be a tad unnecessary. I did, however, find it enjoyable to play and it wasn’t really until I replayed the first game that I noticed just how unatmospheric and unimproved it was. Needless to say, I would recommend Bioshock over Bioshock 2 and would suggest going into the sequel with uncritical eyes.

Mass Effect 2: Review

When the name Bioware is behind a game title gamers come to expect a solid, well written, and epic RPG but with the company’s 2007 absorption into the EA monolith, some fans were worried about the effect of this on their favourite titles. The original Mass Effect was released to critical and commercial acclaim as it defined next gen Science Fiction RPGs and provided an epic experience unlike any other. If the question is whether Bioware have still got what it takes to produce an action RPG, then the answer is yes, if the question is whether Mass Effect 2 lives up to its predecessor, then the answer is that it surpasses it in nearly every way.



Mass Effect 2 starts as it means to go on, with a dark, yet epic, opening sequence that will leave you just waiting to make it past the first few customisation screens. The Normandy takes damage and Commander Sheppard is left missing in action only to be found by the mysterious, and morally ambiguous, Cerberus. Headed by a character known only as the Illusive Man, but excellently portrayed by Martin Sheen, Cerberus is a pro-human group with a questionable agenda. It’s not long before you are thrust into the action once more when you are sent on your first mission, to find out what happened to human colonies that have gone completely missing.
Anyone coming into Mass Effect 2 not expecting a great and dramatic space opera will be surprised by the story weaving at work here. Though the main plot can feel a little cliché at times, with the usual large ominous threat risking the safety of the galaxy, and the urgency isn’t always portrayed to its best, it’s the characters you’ll meet along the way and their individual stories they tell which really add that shine to Mass Effect 2. While the main story will have a lot of its plot out in the open quite early on it takes a longer time for your relationships with other characters to build which will give you a sense of rich character development and back story.

The game play of Mass Effect 2 has changed from the original Mass Effect and is now heavily focused on its action element. It’s obvious from the first few missions that you will be shooting your way through most of the game so it’s pleasing to know that the gunplay has been completely overhauled. The cover mechanic now works well and the gun battles now feel much smoother. You can still pause the action and select a biotic attack or change the weapons of your team but buttons are now easily assigned to make this much faster.
The RPG element of the game, such as the levelling up and the armour and weapon selection, is vastly reduced then in the original game, suggesting a move to a more streamlined and action orientated game play. While some fans may dislike the new approach, it is easily missed when caught up in the deeply involving story. Mass Effect 2 also see’s you spending a majority of your time talking to NPC’s, something Bioware do incredibly well, and all conversations give you the opportunity to be a Commander Sheppard of either Paragon or Renegade character. Some conversations even give you the option to change the course of the conversation with an action, of both moral characteristics, which sees you defenestrating a character or taking a weapon from a youth, depending on your moral standing, and while interesting and welcomed the choices are not hard to make and many gamers will end up choosing the good or the bad options simply for the sake of it.
Each character in your team, whether new or old, comes with their own ‘Loyalty’ side mission for you to complete in order to gain their trust. Each of these are interesting and well designed. Mass Effect 2 removes the planet exploration, something that could have been enhanced rather than completely removed, and now you will spend a lot of time with tedious planet probing. This probing can be skipped but at the cost of not finding enough materials to afford the best weapons and upgrades. It seems Bioware haven’t quite got it right yet with their planet orientated side missions but this is something to look out for in future Downloadable Content. The vehicle segments from the first game are also removed; something which will either please or upset original fans. This also means the game play is less varied then the previous instalment however future Vehicle orientated DLC has been named.

A much more Action Orientated Commander Sheppard

When it comes to design Mass Effect 2 receives top marks. Each location is perfectly conceived, and almost perfectly portrayed, with beautiful graphics and textures. Character models are mostly well designed though a few of the human NPCs can look a bit too plain at times. The locations are everything you could want from a Science Fiction game, from large futuristic metropolises to the war torn home planet of the Krogan. Sometimes, however, an area can feel a little too limiting and the sprawling feel of the city is lost. Gone is the large citadel of the first game replaced with a shadow of its former self.
Everyone you meet in Mass Effect has brilliant script writing matched only by its voice acting. With some famous names lending their voices you are sure to be enthralled by the dialogue, a good thing since the game consists of so much, however in some cases, such as with non-interactive NPC’s, you’ll find yourself hearing the same snippets of dialogue again and again. The sound effects are also on par. Everything in the game sounds exactly how you’d imagine with futuristic space craft and high tech weaponry.

One flaw, still not improved from the first game, however is the loading times. Though the elevator scenes of the first game are thankfully removed we are now faced with meaningless wire animations which, at first viewing, are interesting enough but after seeing them many times over you'll quickly become tired of watching them on repeat.

Lastly, a review of Mass Effect 2 could not go without mentioning the ability to bring back your previous character. Fans of the first game will rejoice in bringing back their own loved Commander Sheppard from the previous game, bringing with him bonus’ and changes to the storyline. How you played the first game will impact a surprising amount of dialogue and story in this game and Mass Effect 3 is expected to carry on this trend giving you a soul character spanning the trilogy.

In truth it is hard to find reason to fault Mass Effect 2. The game sticks to telling an epic and engrossing space opera and manages this with little effort. From the moment the game loads you’re taken into a fantastic story, which only Bioware seem capable of, with characters that you will actually feel for by the end. The game play is different from the first but it fits better with the new action orientated direction. While the game has arguably little replay value, with few achievements you can’t get through one play through, and the only real reason for a second being the choice of different moral options, Mass Effect 2 focuses on delivering a long and engaging first experience and it easy to say that it’s simply one of the best experiences you’ll have had with a recent video game.

Shaun Kellett

Clockwork Musings

What's this?

This blog is going to be a collection of articles I write about Video Games. This may include Reviews or just general opinions on where the industry is heading. Please remember all this will be in my own opinion, I'll quote anything I use from elsewhere.

I'll try to get up something by Sunday every week, but, as University work is building above me just waiting to drop I might run over a little late. Anyone who reads anything I've written before will know that I'm pretty rubbish with deadlines and/or keeping track of things. I hope to put more effort into this though!

Lets hope this isn't just a novelty.

Shaun Kellett

Clockwork Musings