Along with Citizen Kane, BioShock was top on my list of stories that would only be undermined with a sequel. It would be a third arm sown on. A third arm that couldn't actually move and therefore adds nothing other than complete revulsion.
It's eight years after the events of the first game, yet somehow Rapture is still fully functional despite everyone being killed in the last game and all the Little Sisters being rescued. So all the stuff you did in BioShock? Complete waste of time! You might as well have just gone back to the airplane and burned to death.
You play as Subject Delta, the first Big Daddy to be fused to a Little Sister. Of course, whilst all the other Big Daddies are slow-moving monstrosities, you're just a normal guy with a fishbowl on his head. It turns out your Little Sister is actually the daughter of Sofia Lamb, a pseudo-communist who plans to take over Rapture. Despite killing you, you wake up only mildly annoyed with the determination to rescue your Little Sister and escape Rapture together.
BioShock 2 was only really made because Hollywood wanted to make a BioShock movie. This of course never materialised because screenwriters realised that 90% of the film would feature the protagonist rummaging around eating cakes, and the other 10% would be spent farting around with levers and quest-items like a point and click adventure.
But, for a game that was only created as an artificial way to extend the story despite it clearly ending at the end of BioShock - the same way we're getting Star Wars Episode VII even though Star Wars ended in 1983 - there is genuine effort here. In some respects it's better than the first, but in other ways it's worse.
The plot isn't great. It's your typical 'female has been captured and you must rescue her because feminism' baseline. (Yes, BioShock Infinite does this too, but the story soon becomes much more than that, and Elizabeth is awesome so shut up.) Not to mention that the story really exploits Adam. This is always the danger of using magic - eventually it'll just be a device for the writer to escape from plotholes. Whilst there are plenty of twists and turns, plus the ending nicely wraps everything up, it's simply not up to scratch compared to the last game.
I always thought that the biggest problem with BioShock is that despite being underwater you never, ever swim. So I was excited to find out that there were actual underwater sections here. But sadly they're just linear corridoors from one location to the other where you can't use your weapons. An enourmous wasted oppourtunity.
The opening downright sucks. BioShock has one of the best introduction sequences to any game ever, so obviously this had a lot to live up to. But it doesn't even try. All your given is a non-playable cutscene and then BAM! the game has begun and you're already gradually building up your arsensal
The gameplay, however, is actually improved. Yes, the story keeps grinding to a halt so you can engage in a fetch-quest or a detour that requires you to fulfil multiple objectives, but the first game did that too. Yes, the right combination of plasmids and tonics can make the game ridiculously easy - but the first game was an even worse offender in this regard.
Hacking is done in real-time, so you don't have to play that dull minigame every time you want to make a new turret-friend. You now dual-wield plasmids and weapons, which means you don't have to awkwardly switch between the two. The weapons have been rebalanced so instead of a crappy pistol, your first ranged weapon is a rivet gun which, when fully upgraded, is still one of the best weapons. The flamethrower has been removed since it was basically a plasmid gun that I never used, and the crossbow (which I never used either) has been redesigned and is given to you at a convenient point where you can still fully upgrade it. The Grenade-Launcher is the last weapon you'll get, and this time you can't just load up on RPG's so boss-fights present a challenge.
I at first hated what they did to the Little Sisters. You still have to kill a Big Daddy, but if you want to rescue the Sister then you're forced to escort her around collecting Adam for a while before you can finally heal her with the power of love. It evokes the second to last part of the first game - which was also the second worst part of the first game.
But then it hit me: the idea behind this is that you have to actually work for your 'good' ending. It's not 'Press F For Moral Choice' but an actual choice. There's an incentive to harvest Little Sisters now because it requires no effort and still gives you plenty of Adam, whilst rescuing them requires an extra ten mins running around fighting off enemies. CHOICE! WE HAVE CHOICE!
Of course, there are now three endings - a good, a neutral, and a bad ending. My favourite is actually the neutral ending since it's both heartbreaking yet realistic. It's not overly sentimental, nor is it ridiculously harsh. The bad ending is just as out of place as it was in the last game, and the good ending is a bit better but still made me vomit in my mouth a little.
However, the game is still way too easy, and still not scary. It tries to shoot you in the foot by limiting the amount of medkits and EVE you can carry down to just five rather than ten - but this meant I just kept a mental note of where medkits had been dropped and backtracked whenever my medkit count got lower than three. Of course, often I didn't even need to do this because within an hour I'd earned enough money to reach the wallet cap - so I just bought everything I needed at a vending machine. This meant I never ran low on ammo or health or EVE.
And, yet again, I had waay too much Adam. By the end of the game I had enough to fully upgrade my health, my EVE, my four plasmids (lightning, incinerate, scout, and hypnotise) and fill out every tonic slot. I was a god of death, yet I still got the good ending because I only killed the hideous mutants rather than the attractive humans. The game praised me for being a pacifist, ignoring the mountains of people I'd killed to save the handful of people...all of whom you leave behind in Rapture at the end, which to me is just as bad as murder.
Whereas BioShock started great then deteriorated, this game starts blandly then actually gets better. The climax is an adrenaline rush that ultimately feels satisfying when you finish the game. This might be because, whilst the plot isn't good, I became much more invested in the characters than the previous BioShock. There are more of them, and the game makes a real effort to make each of them unique. Sofia Lamb is nicely hateable, Gill Alexander reminded me of a character from Brazil (one of my favourite movies) and I really liked Sinclair for some reason. He's not the nicest man in the world, but he's charming, funny, and reliable. They even manage to make Andrew Ryan more interesting this time round by giving him a little amusement park that manages to explain his philosophy far better than the first game did.
BioShock 2 is nothing new, and let's be honest: BioShock never needed a direct sequel. This game has no reason to exist, but if you're curious then by all means check it out. It's by no means a 'must play,' but it's an interesting eccentricity.
