Bioshock 2 is a missed opportunity in agency and immersion. The game will please those who enjoyed Bioshock 1--it is called "Bioshock *2*" after all. Top-tier voice acting and new set-pieces can't shake the feeling that I've been here, done that. The crux of both the game's intrigue and fundamental problems are that now you get to play as a Big Daddy.
As a Big Daddy, the logic of the game collapses on you, the player, in real-time. I have an enormous power drill, why can't I just plow through this flimsy, water-logged wall? Why do I have to awkwardly roam around the rooms with the hidden doo-dads when I can just bust through them? Because the game's story won't allow you. They want you on-rails, and they'll remind you when you are not. Why am I such a weak big daddy? Even playing the game on normal difficulty, I can be killed by just a few swings of an enemy's wrench, but if I try to attack another big daddy, it's quite the challenge! How does this guy even reload his weapons with one hand? It's overall pretty lazy to not show any means of how he reloads his weapons, instead just lazily they programmed him lowering his *one* hand below the screen and one second later the complicated steampunk gun is magically reloaded. What is this, 007 Goldeneye for the N64? I also think these quick reloads remove some of the potential tension of the game. How does Delta Daddy eat or drink? When I'm damaged, what am I bandaging? Do I have a giant hole in my suit that I'm bandaging? Being otherwise immortal but having suit integrity would have been an interesting mechanic. Maybe if I sustain too much damage, my pressurized suit explodes and I would suffer catastrophic decompression sickness and die. No, it's just another shooter. Bring health packs and eat cake while the game destroys my immersion.
Being a big daddy also means you also get to have a little sister! If I as a big daddy have a little sister with me, there is no benefit to having one besides the potential to harvest or rescue them. It doesn't fundamentally change the gameplay. It just becomes a chore. Worse, it breaks my immersion due to yet another missed opportunity: what would happen if two big daddies with two little sisters meet? Do they team up and help me fight off the mutant drug addicts? Do we have a picnic if the coast is clear? Share water cooler stories of mutant drug addicts they've killed--and then let the kids play and harvest them? No? Nothing happens? We gotta rush the game out, we don't have time for that. What could have been a really neat moment, or even a nice easter egg of self-awareness just broke my immersion. It also raises the question of why *my* little sisters always draw hordes of enemies to my position whenever I allow her to harvest, but when other big daddies' little sisters do so, nothing happens. Why? Because this is The Matrix and I can see the game design numbers streaming down the walls.
Who the heck is Sophia Lamb? An interesting and surprisingly plausible character in the realm of Rapture. I personally prefer her character to that of Fontaine from the first game, but she does seem quite shoe-horned since there is no mention of her in the first game (to my recollection, anyway).
The game will hound you endlessly with hints and reminders of what to do and how to play, even when you disable these features. I get the vibe that I am wasting the game's time by scrounging around looking for loot or secret areas when the game reminds me to 'press the M button for hints.' Something to mod for future playthroughs. Enemies, upon death, also transform into lockboxes of loot by the power of low-memory, leading to humorous situations where one revisits rooms to find potentially dozens of lockboxes. More to mod in the future. Until then, it certainly breaks my immersion further.
The pacing of the game is rather contrived. Take a train and go here and do the thing, then hop back on and go wherever someone on the phone tells you. Literally on-rails. That works for games like Bioshock 1, or Dead Space, where you are just an interloper into a wider world. But here in Bioshock 2, as a Big Daddy with a goal in mind (to find your daughter-MacGuffin), I think a Metroid-style game with exploration would have served better.
This game should have been a Metroid-style game minus the platforming. It very nearly is that. All of the elements are here: a map, a power suit, an immersive setting, and various power ups that could unlock new areas. What's missing is the agency--the independence of action. Maybe you could meet the people you chat with on the radio in each area and they will give you clues, keys, or additional power ups to help you reach new areas. Instead I'm just going where people tell me to go. Again, that worked for the first game--and players of the first game know *exactly* why that's so important to the game being structured in such a fashion, as it's fundamental to the way the story is told. But this game is not the same story being told, so it should have been driven by independent agency.
The blueprints are all here for a really neat sequel. Instead we are left with a well-made but rather unimpressive return to Rapture treading mostly the same ground, and in the same fashion we did in the first game. You being a Big Daddy ultimately factors very little beyond new threads for the old ceremony. Which is fine. They aimed for a sequel and made it. Mission accomplished. I would have given this a "B" if they had handled my immersion not being broken every few minutes.
Post-script: Additionally, I've noticed a number of bizarre bugs such as floating, stationary particles, audio cue errors ("the Big Sister is coming" music never stopped), and the game crashing to Windows numerous times upon me attempting a quick-save, during a scripted battles, or occasionally when I'm conducting "research" with the camera. Sometimes the game tells me that it's "adjusting the graphics settings, please wait" while I can hear the game going on (i.e., me dying) in the background--before I have to ctrl-alt-delete to figure out what's going on, by which point the game has crashed. I'm not going to judge too harshly on these bugs beyond note them. I am aware that there is a remastered version of this game, which I've yet to play, but I'm hoping that they have fixed these issues there, but as it stands for a PC release? This game is wildly unstable, seemingly crashing sometimes every 20 minutes.
