Completed Bioshock 2

I am one of the few people who has yet to play the original Bioshock game. I did play the demo, but it left me unimpressed at the time. Thus, when Bioshock 2 was announced, I paid very little attention to the hype surrounding the series. However, due to some friends in Australia needing help purchasing a four pack on Steam, I received a free copy of the game. Even though I was still hesitant towards the series, I cannot deny I found myself a bit excited to see how the new game would turn out.

Despite dealing with three different forms of DRM to access Bioshock 2, the game started off great. I found myself easily drawn into the world of Rapture, and I had a good bit of fun fighting splicers, big daddies, saving little sisters, and scavenging for loot. Having not played the original game further piqued my desire to continue on and discover what happened to Rapture. Sadly, the sense of adventure and excitement I started with began to wane quickly for a variety of reasons.  I found myself becoming frustrated with the game controls, balance, user-interface, and even the story itself.

*Warning: Spoilers Ahead*

One of the most important aspects of an FPS game is the controls, and how well they handle during the course of play.  I can only think of one word to describe Bioshock 2 in this aspect, and that is sloppy.  Mouse acceleration appears to have made a return, a source of many complaints from the first game.  I attempted multiple tweaks that were rumored to solve the problem, but none seemed to truly work.  As a result, I had a very inconsistent experience with the handling and aiming of my character, often overshooting targets as the game changed my sensitivity.  The only partially decent fix that allowed me to play was setting my mouse to the lowest DPI possible, loading Bioshock 2, and waving the camera around until the game settled on a new sensitivity. By no means was it perfect, but at least it was playable.

Another annoyance with the control scheme is how during a large fight, I would find myself backpedaling or sidestepping to avoid incoming attacks, only to become stuck.  The problem is, I was not stuck on any particular object.  It was as though I would run into invisible walls at times and then could not move anywhere.  At other points in the game, I was body blocked by my own hovering security bots who refused to move, and would continue shooting me in the back of the head, lowering my health.   Needless to say, it became frustrating as the game continued on, and I would take damage for reasons I should not be.

Balance between enemies in this game also seemed incredibly varied and inconsistent.  One would imagine splicers to be of average difficulty, with big daddies being the biggest challenge.  Instead, it was completely the opposite.  I found myself struggling at times with large splicer battles.  Part of this is my own fault for not being prepared with traps, but other times it was simply due to the sheer number of splicers attacking me and their near perfect aim.  Big daddies and big sisters on the other hand became complete non-factors.  Once winter blast is obtained, the battle is nothing more than freezing and destroying the immobile target.  Towards the end of the game, it gets even worse with hypnosis level 3.

As for the user interface, I do not even know what was going on there.  Early in the game, I often found myself needing to tweak settings or possibly change a key binding.  Upon hitting the escape key to bring up the menu, I would get kicked out of my game and taken to the original starting menu, losing all progress since the last save.  This was a repeated source of frustration the entire time.  The worst of it being when I was finishing a large battle, but the phone began to ring.  Instinctively I hit escape to pause the game, only to lose a great deal of progress as it kicked me out once again.

Many of these faults could be overlooked or put aside if not for one thing, the game simply became incredibly repetitive, dull, and confusing.  There was little variation in game play the entire time, and only a few areas I would deem truly interesting.  Worst of all, it began to feel like a grind at midpoint.  I began to grow tired of constantly hacking machines, and I was growing weary of defending little sisters.  To be fair, I could have avoided this or harvested the little sister right away, but I am someone who opts for the good ending to games, and so it felt as if tasks were becoming a chore.  The game was also fairly predictable, further removing any excitement.

Then there is the confusion this game offered.  To reach the good ending in the game, you need to spare at least two lives I believe.  While some characters are easy to decide their fate, others are not.  For example, one character had gone mad and was even pleading for the player to kill him to end his misery.  He had no real physical form left (see picture below), and nothing would be achieved by his remaining alive.  However, if you decide to help him and cease his suffering, it will count as a negative against you.  Others appear to have found this confusing as well, and making little sense.

This is only the start of the many issues that bugged me within Bioshock 2.  I would like to write about the low-quality textures and how they were handled, the severe lack of general background music, and some very buggy splicers.  If I do though, then this post will likely never end.  All in all, this game felt like a missed opportunity on the developers’ part.  I started off really liking the game, but the flaws it contained became so great that I found it difficult to continue on.  I rarely could play longer than hour before finding something more entertaining to do.

Last night I finally convinced myself to sit down and finish it, which I did.  The very (and I mean very) end became slightly more exciting at least.  Even so, I was still a silent observer, as hypnotized alpha daddies pretty much took care of the job for me.