Would you kindly?

PC, Xbox 360, and PS3

You return to the world of Rapture as Subject Delta. You’re on the hunt to find the little sister that you are bound to, known as Eleanor.

Bioshock 2 starts off with you and your little sister (Eleanor). You are fighting to defend her when a splicer uses a plasmid on you to control your actions. You are commanded to shoot yourself in the head with a handgun, and you do so. One may think that Subject Delta is dead, but he might just be waking up, 10 years later (2 years after the first game ended). You explore the underwater utopia known as Rapture, trying to locate your little sister, who is now grown up. You start off with your drill, using it to fight your way through splicers and such. Throughout the game you will acquire many guns such as the Rivet Gun, Shotgun, Machine Gun, and others. Each gun may be upgraded a maximum of 3 times, thus making the firearm even more deadly. There are a total of 11 plasmids, each with their own unique power. You will also find many more tonics in this game than you did in the previous. Little sisters still exist in this title, and are more important than they even had been before. As a big daddy yourself, you can take a little sister from another big daddy by killing him. Once you have a little sister on your shoulder, you can go gather ADAM from two bodies per sister. Before you pick them up each time, you can decide to adopt, or you may harvest them. When you are done gathering your two parts of ADAM, you may take a little sister back to the ventalation system and either rescue them or you can harvest them. After so many rescues you will be given a gift. There are a total three gifts that you can obtain, and the first two contain very useful tonics that will help you with your little sisters for the remainder of your game. Researching is still a very useful part of this game. It will help you gain more advantages when fighting a researched enemy. There are a total of nine different enemy types as well. While you are on the hunt for Eleanor, you will find more certain characters that you may either kill or let live. Letting them live, depending on your play style, usually will help you out in the end. You’ll also be on the hunt for audio logs as usual.

Graphics in Bioshock 2 look incredibly similar to that in the original Bioshock. There has been improvement but you can still see the same old style there was. The developers definitely paid attention to detail. The morbid artwork and the disturbing environments. I was constantly awed by the beautiful scenery and art on the walls. The water effects are similar to the first game, but greatly improved. You will see so even in the beginning of the game. The ragdolls in this game react the same as they do in the first game. Objects sometimes glitch through the floor but I have only seen it happen a few times. While I was playing on the PC version, I am not aware of the drop in graphics that the console versions had, but I’m sure they were not much different.

When listening to the audio logs, you will notice that they are done so well that you may even stand still just to listen to the whole thing. The voice actors in this game did a very well job of combining insanity with beauty. You will find that music is only in place when there is a working record player, you can also hit the record player to hear a funny skipping of the needle. Loading screens may not be around for long, but the music that plays during them is also quite fantastic.

Bioshock 2 has very few prerendered cutscenes, mainly in the beginning and the end, but they look fantastic. Mostly everything else that exists is all ingame. The character movements and the weapon animations are spot on.

The mulitplayer game mode feels like it was just slapped together real quick. On the PC version, it sometimes takes quite a while to get into a game. If you do get into one, with balanced teams and a fun game type, then it is pretty enjoyable. Playing with friends in the only way I could see you playing multiplayer for that long of an amount of time. There are 40 levels to get to and you unlock plasmids, weapons, and tonics at certain levels. It’s 5v5 and there are game modes such as Team Deathmatch, 1 Flag CTF, and Free For All. You can pick from a small list of characters and also customize your mask and your melee weapon. It’s a little weird to explain how it all works, so you would just have to see it for yourself.

The only bugs that I have encountered are things such as a door glitching through a wall, objects falling through the floor, and splicers being idiots and not realizing I’m right next to them. This isn’t exactly a bug, but autosaves only happen when you load a new level. Levels can take up to 2 hours each, and if you don’t save and your PC/console messes up, you’re screwed out of all the work you had been doing. Thus, ragequit ensues.

I was able to complete Bioshock 2 on Medium difficulty in roughly 10 hours. The replay value of the game seems kinda low. Half of the appeal of it is the story, but there are multiple endings (four) that you can get by doing different options throughout the game. The only downside to this game that I can see, is that the multiplayer didn’t have a lot of thought put into it. The guns and upgrades are awesome, the plasmids rule, the combat kicks ass, and you may find yourself running back for more.

9.5/10