This isn’t totally relevant to the post, but is a very interesting Bioshock related video. This episode of Batman: the animated series, entitled Deep Freeze, has a lot of Bioshock-esque qualities to it. And came out years before. This is particularly evident in the robot guards that guard the crazy capitalist’s underwater city, and the black and white movie (with still images) explaining why the city is so great. To me it seems like Bioshock’s creators might have been inspired by more than paradise lost, and ayn rand.

They can die – I suppose you’re referring to the vita-chambers but there’s story behind that (stuff about genetic codes… in the first you could be revived because you had Ryan’s DNA, in the second Eleanor does something to the vita chambers to make sure you come back to life.)

Personally, I saw it as Rapture looking for somebody to lead it; I mean, as horribly disfguired and mutated as they are, Rapture is still full of people, (people who can’t die unless it’s from natural causes, no less) and they’ve all been through hell, experienced death a few times, and are turning to Lamb to lead them to what they’re hoping will be a better place.

It gets foggy at spots, though, like what Lamb’s actual plans are and how Eleanor was going to fit in to it all. (it’s implied that she was going to be another overseer type thing)

The achievement for killing x number of enemies with hacked security in Bioshock 2 is called “Look at you, hacker,” which is the best achievement name I’ve seen since “Hey, it’s-a-me!” for stomping an enemy in Mirror’s Edge. I laughed out loud.

I do seem to recall an audiolog that suggested Ryan had introduced something to the Adam that gave him limited control over splicers, or some such. I suppose you might exert influence over them via their addiction to Adam, but contrary to the first game’s “guv’nor” loading screen, it’s actually Tenenbaum who seems to have taken over the Little Sisters operation and its Adam supply. (She gives you big gifts of it, remember?) Either approach amounts to slavery, though; it hardly seems appropriate to credit any agency to the splicers themselves.

The first encounter with the Brute sees him gazing out the window at the ocean floor, theres alot in the game that suggests that not all the splicers are mental. Then it throws all that away by having them all scream and run at you.

B2 feels like the player has way more agency (admittedly, it’s actually only three more choices, related to whether you kill or not), but I really liked the way it reflected your choices through Eleanor’s attitude, and her final choice about Lamb. I played through the game (maybe giving the designers too much credit by doing a lot of the role-playing in my head) with a very specific ethos of violence only in explicit self-defense, and it was extremely gratifying to see that reflected in Eleanor, and in the ending.

You could also make the argument that that focus on choice shows up in the gameplay, especially when it comes time to harvest with the Little Sisters. Setting up ambushes and figuring out where to fight from before setting your Sister down is one of the best parts of the game.

Deliberately screwing up hacks (hitting the red bit on purpose) to summon sentries and then pegging them with autohack darts was a good way of getting some help fast before the summon sentry plasmid became available. If you set off an alarm by screwing up a hack you can turn the alarm off instantly by hacking that thing successfully.

I used a lot of autohack darts on those mini turrets the Rumbler fires as well, which made taking them down fairly easy. Otherwise I’d sometimes roll with the upgraded drill because drill dashing enemies is so satisfying.

And lots of rocket spears for comedy.

Anyone got any favourite plasmids/combos/tonics/tricks? I loved Drill Specialist, which restricts you to the drill but makes Plasmids super cheap.

I used Decoy for almost everything: protection, midirection, and ultimately damage and healing.

Although I should probably just take the spoilers. While Bioshock never felt perfect, it certainly felt finished. I feel no urgency whatsoever about buying the sequel; I’ll probably wait for Steam to mark it down to $20 or less. In that time, I’m sure I’ll hear about whatever CRAZY TWIST© they end the second act with.

On the other hand the combat reached the kind of improvisational madness I always hoped for from the first game. The weapons are great, expecially the spear gun with its alt fire rockets and the upgraded sawn-off shotgun with it’s twin-linked revolver chamber loading mechanism (it’s there in the last screenshot). The realtime hacking game was much quicker and even easier to bypass altogether with auto-hack darts and the right Tonics. Mind you, I could have really done with the pause button Tom mentioned on Twitter. You end up juggling so many guns and powers by the end of the game it’s a bit too much.

Though there were times it felt padded out, obstacle after obstacle is put in your way, ending up like contrived game lengtheners, It became tiring to slog through it. It just felt so…..

…..And then I got THAT tonic, you know the one – Only a drill, a hack tool, the camera and cheap plasmids. I went from a cautious trap setter to a badass drilling machine, charging into splicers with a smile on my face

My Playthrough was shorter than I thought it was, but after slugging it out to the end I felt a wave of satisfaction, It was fantastic.

Multiplayer seemed devoid of both life and a server browser. Then again if you bought this game purely for the multiplayer, WTF were you thinking.

Now, in Bioshock 2, you’re supposed to be this huge-ass Big Daddy, stomping your way through Rapture like a killer-machine. But in-game, you tread lightly, make little to no sound, and walk the exact same way as in the first game. You’re also very weak at the start which is very annoying.

I expected there to be some wobbly movement, stomping, smashing things out of my way with my drill. Instead, I can jump like a meter high as a BIG DADDY. At least, it should kill a splicer should I hurl at them.

That’s something that’s completely killing the atmosphere for me.

The multiplayer seems to be broken at the moment, and the game uses GFWL- coincidence? It’s a shame, because ( when I have been on playable servers) it was enjoyable and interesting.

I got completely lost timeline-wise too :D

Like you said Tom, there are flaws, but it was fun- if a little unnecessary.

Having a population of non-crazies looking for help would give Lamb or Fontaine or whoever an actual reason to bother trying to restore order, and having interference from surface-world soldiers would give a good reason to go nuts with power and weaponry. (I mean, wasn’t there something with a submarine in one of the original endings? What happened there? Ten years later, the Navy hasn’t bothered checking it out?)

But the important part is, we have a drill.

I get the impression 2K were shooting for Lamb to be the gutless James Taggart to Ryan’s fucked-up John Galt – always championing the group over the individual – but her role in Rapture never came across as clearly as Fontaine’s. Like you, I seem to have a problem with listening. Either that or the game doesn’t explain itself nearly as well as Bioshock. It couldn’t be that, could it? Surely not.

Where Bioshock seemed to be saying that objectism’s end point is a society of sociopaths, Bioshock 2 seems to be saying… what, exactly? That’s it’s better to be out for yourself than to be part of a group? Why then do the Little Sisters have to work together to save the day? Perhaps that working together is okay so long as it’s not under the command of a nutcase? Was Lamb insane? I don’t know – I never caught anything she said.

In the end, on way or another, the living embodiment of all Rapture’s people is walking around on the surface. Surely that’s a victory for Lamb’s philosophy?

I dunno. I still LIEKED SHOOTING DA FINGS, anyways. It’s a better action game than the original, but it tells a weaker tale.