In the Garden we are growin’….
Obligatory thoughts & views on Bioshock 2 follow. Please stand by.
So, Bioshock 2 came out last Wednesday, and as I’m now on my second playthrough, I have to admit, this game is just as good as the origonal. The story is class, the character development still there, and the atmosphere and attention to detail in the underwater world is just, well, amazing.
So the single player portion delivers in buckets and spades. The gameplay upgrades feel natural and enhance the game from the previous title, and the new weapons and plasmids are pretty awesome.
Couple things wrong with the single player mode though; there seems to be a Gene Bank station on every wall; and as such there are a lot of Gathers Gardens around too. One of the challenges of the first game IMO was coming across these things. There are also Ammo Bandito machines sprinkled liberally, moreso than the first game, where they weren’t very obvious at all. The Circus of Values were always all over the shop, so that’s no surprise though.
Health stations suffer from the same problem, actually. There are also aren’t a great deal of security cameras, auto-turrets or other electronic defences compared to Bioshock 1. Multi-part quests don’t even pop up until the very end of the game. When a box pops up to teach you a gameplay element during the final boss, you know it’s been underused.
Big Sisters on the other hand a goddamn hard and fun to fight. There’s nothing better than a nicely sculptured female body in a diving suit doing extreme parkour and using telekanisis to throw doors at you.
The multiplayer element, though, is not so good. The fact that everyone essentially spawns in the same room at the start of the match, and subsequently respawns in the same room 90% of the time, means that the fighting generally concentrates in one small area, with large bits of map not very inhabited in smaller games.
This also means that this game is a camper’s dream. Just sit in the corner with your granade launcher, and wait as person after person appears in the same general area.
The idea of having to use research on bodies to do well in multiplayer battles, and the story driven level based gameplay, is actually a fresh idea that I like. But unfortunately the sides are let down by the core product.
The spawn points need spreading out. Like, srsly now.
But all in all, a brilliant game that I really can’t fault. A 9 out of 10.
Now, Sonic & Sega All Stars racing…. the demo for that game is pretty awesome. I’ll be picking that up next week too…. stay tuned.