NIDZUMI+

Everyone who played the first Bioshock still remembers their first encounter with a Big Daddy. These metallic crushing machines pushed anything and everything out of their way, including you, if you happened to get the bad side of one. Relief, satisfaction and joy would follow a confrontation with these hulking behemoths and soon you would come to relish every opportunity. So why is it that finally having the chance to play as one feels so underwhelming?

Bioshock 2 lets you don the atmospheric diving suit of Subject Delta, one of the early test prototypes for what we now call a Big Daddy. After a quick encounter with Andrew Ryan’s budding successor, Sophia Lamb where she forces you to shoot yourself, you wake up a decade later with no recollection of what has happened since. It’s then made clear that the only way to be truly free from the plasmid-torn city of Rapture is to find the original Little Sister you are tied to, who happens to be Lamb’s daughter – dun, dun, dun.

It’s probably worth pointing out that Sophia Lamb who seems to be quite an important character in Rapture was never mentioned in the original. Surely someone who overthrew Andrew Ryan would pop up at some-point in the original. I know it’s nitpicking but that point alone just tells you how flaky the story is, but then again they didn’t have much to go on.

In actuality, and story aside, the original Bioshock had it’s problems, luckily some of them have been addressed with streamlined shooting and subsequent combat. Now you’ll dual-wield with plasmids in one hand and a weapon in the other, which nobody thought of two years ago, yet it seems so obvious now. Other touches like the omission of Pipedream and the addition of a golf style swing meter for hacking along with new weapons and plasmids make the action feel fresh enough even though as a whole it’s very similar.

The game feels like a nostalgia piece only two years after the original, only the veterans of the series who appreciated the original’s audacity in the unique will find a home in Rapture

You’ll still spend a majority of the time starring down at corpses hammering a face button to get some measly dollars and 4 bullets of ammo. You’ll still be creeped out when rising strings sound and the level fades to almost absolute black. This game is clearly a nostalgia piece for the thousands who appreciated the original’s audacity in the unique – at least for this medium.

The whole game is really just an excuse to spend more time in the underwater utopia of Rapture. The reasons why you loved your first encounters with the place soon come clear. The design of a vending machine, the glow of an objective and even the tick of a security camera; you’ll realise how well designed the original really was. Unfortunately you’ll then realise how little Bioshock 2 evolves the Art Deco aesthetic. Still it’s nice to have an excuse.

An excuse it is though, anyone who missed out on the original should go and play that first – it’s a much better story and all around experience. While Bioshock 2 makes a few worthwhile tweaks, this very much feels like iterating rather than the evolution in narrative and setting that the original was. It was always going to be a tough one and Bioshock 2 definitely feels forced – and even a step-backwards – at times.

For any one of the four teams who worked on the game, the whole development must have felt like an uphill battle. Not only was the original Bioshock an excellent piece of fiction and design but Bioshock 2 was instantly labelled as ‘the game nobody asked for’. If it wasn’t for my infatuation with setting and general vibe of Rapture, this would have been labelled as just another shooter. If you’ve played the original snap 2K’s hand off when they invite you back to Rapture for Bioshock 2, just don’t be surprised if the original sense of wonder has waned ever so slightly.