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Alex P

BioShock 2

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What the fuck is that thing?!

I need to get around and finish the base game. I only got a few levels in but the gameplay was different and felt improved over Bioshock. Too many good games this year.

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That sounds like pretty interesting DLC, but the blurb on Eurogamer is hilariously/atrociously 'IGN' :)More dangerous Splicers that command the power of the elements, upgraded Security Bots that throw rockets and lightning bolts, and even a never-before-seen type of Big Daddy!

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[bump]

Picked up BioShock 2 recently and finished it a couple of weeks ago.

To be blunt, I'd been putting off playing it for so long because neither the player character or the setting appealed, having been captivated by the first game. But in practice, playing as a Big Daddy was less gimmicky than I was expecting (and pretty much irrelevant by the end, once you've powered up everything).

For a game that consists entirely of combat, the balance and progression isn't particularly great. All the weapons initially feel unexpectedly weak and insubstantial, and it felt like a very long time (10+ hours) before I properly determined what each weapon was best at and what I wanted to spend upgrades on. Once I had settled on a couple of weapons and about 4 offensive plasmids that suited my play style, I was about two-thirds of the way through the game and hadn't really enjoyed it much.

Overall, I wouldn't describe the combat as particularly fun for the most part. It's gritty and spluttering, often feeling completely out of your hands in terms of manageability, regardless of what you were facing or how many there were. Sometimes you could take on a whole group of enemies and come out with barely a scratch. Other times you could just be fighting one or two common Splicers and feel completely overwhelmed.

To its credit, the variety of settings do force you to be tactical. And the weapons and powers in the game feel more tactical than the original. I enjoyed setting up traps and ambushes and watching them work. I also enjoyed mopping up if things didn't go to plan. The tactical play in and of itself is probably some of the best from memory for an FPS, it just doesn't really start to reveal itself until quite late on.

The story is pretty bland. It's a thin facsimile of the original Ryan "grand visionary or homicidal dictator" except with an even more pretentious main character. The whole thing descends into repetition and sideshow by about the mid-point and doesn't do anything interesting or surprising. One promising character early on even seems to suddenly disappear entirely just as they're beginning to get interesting.

And that's pretty much it. I don't regret playing BioShock 2, or resent it for the time it took to complete. It's just not much to write home about. In some senses the sequel had huge shoes, so it was inevitably going to fall short in places. It just doesn't feel all that cohesive or interesting in the shadow of the original. There's skill and talent on show nonetheless, and the combat is fun once your arsenal powers up. But it's not a particularly convincing whole.

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Did you play the DLC?

You should play Minerva's Den.

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I desperately want to play Minerva's Den, but I'm waiting for the main game to drop in price. I'll gladly pay full price for the DLC in this case even if Hot Scoops doesn't get a penny about it anymore, but for the main game I really don't care at all.

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I think Minerva's Den was probably the best thing to come out of BioShock 2.

I mean, but i also think i probably like the main game quite a lot more than most people.

I don't agree with a lot of the comments Wrestle was making, i think BioShock 2 is generally a better balanced and better playing game than the first one, and i think the narrative has some good beats, but it ultimately just feels like such a bolted on and unnecessary sequel. They're really trying hard to force some of the pieces into place, and it ends up feeling really disingenuous.

I think Minerva's Den, as a very strong and very stand-alone story that gets to build on the gameplay strengths of BioShock 2, ends up being the best thing about BioShock 2.

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I liked Bioshock 2 a lot. Not long ago, I replayed Bioshock on PC (having originally played it on 360, hating the controls but loving everything else). Then I immediately moved on to Bioshock 2.

My conclusions, which are somewhat unrelated, are thus: 1) Bioshock is nowhere near as great the second time around, as most of what made it great for me was the shock value of a lot of the scripted events (as well as the twist, of course); and 2) Bioshock 2 was more fun to play, and probably I think I maybe kinda like it more than Bioshock even accounting for story? X:

In conclusion of the conclusions, Bioshock is cool. I look forward to Bioshock everythings in the future.

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I thought the idea of having a second Bioshock that is still in Rapture wouldn't work and that a Bioshock game without Ken wouldn't work, but I ended up liking it a lot. I still liked the first game more, and I played it twice; when it came out on PC and then again a month or two before the sequel came out on 360. When I played it on 360 I went for a 100% achievement play-through and ended up missing a single audio log in Andrew Ryan's office which you obviously can only visit once, so yeah that didn't work out. I point that out just because I've never even attempted to get all the achievements in a game, or even cared about achievements in a game. I don't think I'd play Bioshock 2 again, and I got it for 360 and traded my copy in to get something else later on, but it's possible I could since I didn't play Minerva's Den and that does interest me a lot, so it could happen.

One thing, I didn't like the way the little sisters looked in the second game, I felt sorry for the ones in the original but in the second game they annoyed me and I wanted to kill them, though I never did. This could also be because in the original game you killed their daddies and they were scared and helpless, and in the second game they loved you and were happy to see you.

I also remember liking the ending of Bioshock 2 QUITE A BIT, though I don't really remember what it was. I also loved that one section where you see things a a little sister. That and that alley section in Arkham Assylum are the coolest/ most memorable game moment I've experienced in recent years.

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Did you play the DLC?

You should play Minerva's Den.

So I keep reading. But I'm done with Rapture after finishing the second game, it just doesn't interest me any more.

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I also remember liking the ending of Bioshock 2 QUITE A BIT, though I don't really remember what it was. I also loved that one section where you see things a a little sister. That and that alley section in Arkham Assylum are the coolest/ most memorable game moment I've experienced in recent years.

While I prefer almost all the other story beats in the original Bioshock considerably more than those in the sequel (as is the popular consensus), the way each game ends is the exception. Bioshock 1 kinda putters off after the climax/twist in Andrew Ryans office, and the finale just sorta did it's job and nothing more. Bioshock 2, I think, ended a lot better... at least in terms of gameplay, if not story too. The final level was actually a very cool level, unlike in Bioshock 1 where it was a boring escort thing leading to a surprisingly cliched boss fight.

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Oh god I just remembered watching my friend finish Bioshock 1 this past summer (When I played the game on the 360 I stole his copy so he had never been able to finish it). He went for all the plasmids that boosted wrench attacks and froze targets on hit and stuff, and the boss battle was even worse. He literally would just hold down the trigger and silver surfer would get frozen and there was nothing he could do. He would just attack him over and over and the boss would be frozen the whole time so my friend literally took 0 damage. The flip side was this took forever so it was double boring. He had played the game up to the end and had been waiting to finish it for ages, and that's what he got.

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For a game that consists entirely of combat, the balance and progression isn't particularly great. All the weapons initially feel unexpectedly weak and insubstantial, and it felt like a very long time (10+ hours) before I properly determined what each weapon was best at and what I wanted to spend upgrades on. Once I had settled on a couple of weapons and about 4 offensive plasmids that suited my play style, I was about two-thirds of the way through the game and hadn't really enjoyed it much.

This resembles my experience from the game when I finally got around to playing it a month or so ago. I spent the first few hours feeling powerless and confused, trying to headshot people with the awful rivet gun, and that persisted until I got my first fully upgraded weapon, which was around the same time I had four or five guns and three or four plasmids. At that point, I totally fell in love with the gameplay, which had been pretty underwhelming thus far. I guess it's a matter of granularity?

In a way, it feels like the opening of Bioshock 2 is stingy with combat options to keep atmosphere in the beginning, which most of us fresh from the first game resent. In fact, they skirt dangerously close to KotOR 2 territory, where you spend the first couple hours running fetch quests naked while people make fun of you for being naked and useless (the main reason I haven't replayed that game with the new content mods).

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For a game that consists entirely of combat, the balance and progression isn't particularly great. All the weapons initially feel unexpectedly weak and insubstantial, and it felt like a very long time (10+ hours) before I properly determined what each weapon was best at and what I wanted to spend upgrades on. Once I had settled on a couple of weapons and about 4 offensive plasmids that suited my play style, I was about two-thirds of the way through the game and hadn't really enjoyed it much.

This resembles my experience from the game when I finally got around to playing it a month or so ago. I spent the first few hours feeling powerless and confused, trying to headshot people with the awful rivet gun, and that persisted until I got my first fully upgraded weapon, which was around the same time I had four or five guns and three or four plasmids. At that point, I totally fell in love with the gameplay, which had been pretty underwhelming thus far. I guess it's a matter of granularity?

In a way, it feels like the opening of Bioshock 2 is stingy with combat options to maintain some level of atmosphere, a technique that most of us fresh from the first game resent. In fact, they skirt dangerously close to KotOR 2 territory, where you spend the first couple hours running fetch quests naked while people make fun of you for being naked and useless (the main reason I haven't replayed that game with the new content mods).

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The darkest art of thread necromancy!

 

A public service announcement: all digital and retail copies of Bioshock 2 now register on Steam, regardless of their origin. This includes physical disc versions, too! The new patch strips out Games for Windows Live completely, adds full controller support, and enables Big Picture mode. Also, if your copy of Bioshock 2 was purchased before today, you get the Minvera's Den DLC for free.

 

This feels really unprecedented, an incredible goodwill gesture.

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Glad someone else did this, I was tempted to thread revive but couldn't be bothered to actually find it. Very cool, the addition of controller support is the most appreciated.

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People going back to Bioshock 2 are going to discover that the drill attack is just as horrifying as the skyline hook in Bioshock Infinite.

 

The audio logs for Minerva's Den are way better writing than anything in Bioshock Infinite. It is so great that this opportunity for a 2nd pass is available now.

 

Props for 2K for getting all of this right.

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:tup: Props to DE who worked on the Steamworks update. Really stoked at the response so far.

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Finally I get to play Minerva's Den! Not that interested in the main game itself.

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That's cool at least. I was worried that the PC version of the game would just disappear. I'm a little dissapointed they didn't add controller support earlier. It would have been nice to have it when I played through the first time earlier this year. Not sure if it'll be worth playing again.

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That's cool at least. I was worried that the PC version of the game would just disappear. I'm a little dissapointed they didn't add controller support earlier. It would have been nice to have it when I played through the first time earlier this year. Not sure if it'll be worth playing again.

 

Due to lack of controller support, I played on 360 despite owning it on PC. I might go back and play it again just to see it in glorious PC graphics and for those damned Steam achievements. :(

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