Videogame review: Bioshock 2

The underwater city of Rapture, full of technological wonders, is still in deep trouble. Ten years passed since the first game and now Sofia Lamb and her cult like organization rule the city. There is also a new hero and this time is one of the Big Daddies from the first game, Subject Delta. He needs to save his little sister Eleanor, who is also Sofia Lamb daughter, from her crazy parent.

The first Bioshock was an extremely good game, a masterpiece First Person Shooter. The second one is still very good. They kept everything that made the first one so good and even added something.

The basic game play is virtually the same; there are slight differences with the weapons and the hacking system but noting of real importance. Being a Big Daddy adds only some random walks outside, on the ocean bottom, and the chance of adopt some little sister.

Those are two really cool things but honestly I was expecting a more radical experience out of playing a character so iconic.

This is actually the main problem of the game; this is basically just more of the same, so if you played the first one you got a feeling of “Been there, done that” while if you are new to the series you probably wanna start with the first one. I’m not saying that the developers didn’t do their job, the experience of fighting a big sister is incredible, just that this was a battle that they couldn’t win.

A big part of what made the first game so interesting was the sense of discovery. Exploring a new and interesting setting is something that, by definition, can be done only once. Going back there is bound to be a subpar experience.

Actually the developers of the original game understood this problem and so the next game of the series is not Bioshock 3, instead is Bioshock Infinite.

This is a daring move that I hope pays. There is a completely new setting and story but, at the same time, it looks very Bioshock to me. The flying city is another failed utopia in the vein of the underwater city of rapture. The overall design reminds me of rapture while being completely different. Is like watching a new painting from a favorite artist and recognizing the design.

This is the same reason every Final Fantasy, a Japanese Role playing game series, has a different story in a different world. When the same person get to save the world again and again all drama is lost, it gets silly, it became like princess Peach who got kidnapped by Bowser, I don’t know, on twenty different occasions?