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| | Gameplay
Sound
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Value
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| | Genre: Shooters | | | Min OS X: 10.6 |
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The ability to wield plasmids and guns at the same time allows for more difficult and intense combat. The game maintains its mostly open and freeform approach to levels and fighting which lends it a much different feel than most shooters. The game's toughest and craziest fights are also initiated by the player in the form of choosing when to take on a Big Daddy to get a Little Sister, and subsequently when you choose to harvest ADAM. Once you set down your Little Sister to harvest it attracts swarms of Splicers leading to a frantic defense against the mad assault. It's great fun to set up all manner of traps before starting, and subsequently enjoying the triumphant feeling you get when it's over, standing bloodied and victorious over the corpses and spent shells casings. Bioshock 2 introduces a few new Splicers as well as more Big Daddy variants leading to more fun. Brute Splicers will ruin your day and soak up tons of damage, while the formidable Rumbler Daddies sport both rocket launchers and mini turrets to make your life miserable should you challenge them. A totally new kind of enemy, the Big Sisters, also appear regularly throughout the game and prove to be deadly and agile foes. Some of game's best moments are when all of these different enemies and characters mix together or are in the same area, leading to widespread chaos should you start a fight or stir things up with the enrage plasmid. As with the first game, there are Vita chambers which will infinitely revive you upon death. You can also turn these off if you want, leading to a more traditional "die and reload" approach. I for one left the chambers as, as even upon reviving you are penalized by only having a minimum of health and EVE and preferred to keep things uninterrupted. Difficulty wise the game also has a significant increase. I found I mostly breezed through the first game on Hard, while Bioshock 2 on Hard regularly kicked my butt. This was a welcome change and I enjoyed the challenge. Graphically speaking Bioshock 2 is beautiful. Keeping in line with the same art-deco style and impressive visual design of the original, there's never a dull moment and something new and interesting is always around the next corner or area. Rapture is even more ruined and chaotic now, and you are even allowed a number of undersea sections, allowed by your Big Daddy suit. There are also a number or very memorable sequences involving the collapse of the level and the ocean filling in. What the game does with water is very impressive indeed. Rapture is both gorgeous and haunting at once, not just visually but thematically. An amazing construct deep under the sea, this proud utopia and society, all now fallen to ruin, half destroyed, half remaining. And it's yours to explore, and save or destroy as you like. Audio remains just as strong. Excellent music and a well done voice cast all lend themselves to immersing you into Rapture and the story. Guns rumble, plasmids flash, bots explode, Big Daddies roar and Little Sisters coo and sing. There's a lot going on and it never misses a beat. If I had one complaint about the sound, it's for the lines the vending machines used to make, but are now oddly removed. I miss being cheerfully greeted by the Ammo Bandito machines. I experienced great performance on my Mid-2010 iMac. I had 1-2 crashes while playing, but I was also tabbing in and out of the game which may have caused wonky behavior. Otherwise, it ran smoothly and I have no complaints. I have a 1GB video card so of course it ran well for me. I wasn't able to test it out on a lower spec machine, but I recall playing the first Bioshock on lower settings and it still ran fine and looked good enough. What's acceptable is of course always up to each player, but Bioshock 2 should be scalable enough to run on both old and new hardware. Bioshock 2 also adds a multiplayer component. While easy to dismiss at first as a largely unnecessary addition to a story driven shooter, it turns out to be surprisingly fun. Entitled "The Fall of Rapture" it's set a year before the events of the original Bioshock, and as such all your weapons are from the first game, with a few additions. There are 10 different maps to play on, and a variety of game modes including the usual deathmatch and team deathmatch, as well as Bioshock flavored takes on modes like domination and capture the flag with "Capture the Little Sister," "Adam Grab" and more. Its unique element is that every player can also use plasmids and guns just like in the single player portion. However, here you are limited to two guns & plasmids per load out, with a possible of 3 load outs to customize and choose from as you see fit. An experience unlock system grants you access to better weapons plasmids and gene tonics as you rank up. I'm not a huge fan of this, but it does work well enough and unlocking new items is always exciting.
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