34.8 hours played
Written 11 days ago
Playing [i]BioShock 2[/i] felt like coming back home. Although we visit different locations, it's still Rapture. The atmosphere remains excellent, one can get freaked out by his own shadow. The story offers yet again heavy moral choices, and our actions are gonna leave a deep impact.
The gameplay is fun, and I really enjoyed smashing into the enemies and drilling them into bloody pieces! Ok, that sounded a little bit morbid, I am actually a sweet and peaceful person. ^_^ Anyway, the fights can get pretty hectic and quite brutal. But protecting the Little Sister is the most important thing, so [i]"Give them the hell, Shepard!"[/i]… ehm, wrong game, but you catch my meaning. Our arsenal is vast, and what's more, we can use plasmids too! Good thing that normal daddies don't use them, otherwise they would be invincible. xD The Gene Tonics give various bonuses, and with them, we can easily customize our playstyle in the preferred way. Have to say that most of the time a more direct approach proved to be the best tactic.
[i]BioShock 2[/i] also introduces a few changes. For example, hacking - instead of pipes that need to be connected, we have a rapidly moving needle that needs to be stopped on the right segments. Can't say that I am a fan of this design. The difficulty is upscaling quickly, and unless you invest in every tonic with hacking bonuses, it turns into a chore. The next thing that got changed is the camera research. In the first game, you needed to collect ammo/film for your camera to be able to take photos. Now, you record videos with it without the need for any ammo. Neat!
I have enjoyed both the visuals and music, especially the loading jazz songs were pretty catchy. The voice acting is also good. The story is interesting, although I got lost in the timeline a few times, but that may be thanks to my long pause between the two games.
And now to the most problematic side of the game - technical problems. I have experienced a few crashes, but luckily, they didn't hinder my progress or made me frustrated enough to drop the game - yep, I save a lot. These crashes happened only during hectic battles - against a Big Sister or a large swarm of lesser enemies. Sometimes the game would crash again in the same spot until I did something different in the battle - let's say I moved in the opposite direction or used a different weapon. What is interesting - I have experienced no crashes during the Protector trials, and there are only swarms of enemies.
Oh, there is also a great bug where if you load a save during your fight with Big Sister in one of the levels, you get stuck with the fighting music for the rest of the location. Yeah, it got quite monotone after a while. xD Luckily, it really happens only in that one specific level.
It's a shame that it suffers from such problems, but returning to the Rapture in the shoes of Big Daddy was quite fun. I'd say give this game a chance, it deserves it.