Bioshock had big ideas of overturning standard approaches to video game storytelling, questioning philosophies, the horrors humanity can fall to, and the nature of free will. It even succeeded in some of them! However mixed my response, I can’t disagree that it stood out. So after those ambitions, it feels a bit odd to discover just how traditional its sequel is, returning to the same world a little later in time to play through a structurally similar game with a few fresh tweaks. The even odder thing is how much it works in its favour.
Eight years on in underwater Rapture, the first game’s all-powerful Randian adversary Andrew Ryan is seamlessly replaced with Sofia Lamb, who instead promotes the collective with a similar ranting zeal, talking about how “the tyrant dwells within us all”. Continuing the theme of reversal, this time around you are cast in the role of one of the Big Daddy enemies from the first game, hulking brutes in brass diving suits that provided a regular tough challenge. The first person cinematic intro sees your character turn to stare at their reflection in one of the pipes of the city to take that in. You have a Little Sister to protect, and some remote audio assistance to help you take down Lamb to do so. You even reach a similar point mid-game where you are weakened but can carry on towards a newly clear goal.
You’d think that being a Big Daddy should feel different, but it doesn’t particularly. You can’t exactly jump around the place with freedom, but the biggest difference from being mostly human in the first game is that you can now use your magic left hand powers at the same time as the big guns in your right hand. You also get a big drill, which runs out of fuel all too fast but can be used to just clonk people over the head with, which elevates close-up attacks compared to the first game. The new tricks are largely used in the same ways on the same enemies, though. There are completely underwater sections which are the closest the game gets to stunning with the novelty and scale of its setting as much as the first one, but they are brief and limited. Hacking, buying ammo and carefully but brutally picking off enemies takes up a lot more of the time.
At one point my save failed to work and I got fed up with repeatedly failing something I’d already succeeded once, on one of the harvesting sections where you are a sitting duck while your Little Sister works their magic. I switched to easy mode, started swatting enemies aside, and suddenly the game actually felt like I was a massive brute force of nature in a way which seemed a lot more fitting and enjoyable than the careful progress to that point.
Turned into more of a breeze through the facilities and museums of Rapture, Bioshock 2 came into itself. It wears its setting a lot more lightly than its predecessor, getting across all of the failures and tensions of isolated Rapture without turning them into such structured horror show vignettes. This is especially important because there is a level of “both sides are just as bad as each other” to its themes which could have been especially bad if approached with the same sledgehammer emphasis.
A new game in the same place was never going to have the same first time impact (“I’ve already been on all the rides”, as your guide says at one point), so it’s good that it doesn’t even try. It also doesn’t need to keep you occupied with quite as many twists of arriving just in time to see things happen, thanks to making your character’s actions more of the driving force in the story so it makes sense that other characters are waiting for your arrival.
The result is a game which can tweak the complexities of its combat a little better – for all I’m sad not to have the pipe hacking minigame anymore, doing real-time penalty-shoot-out-swingometer hacking while things are shooting at you is a great replacement. More importantly, it’s a game which can tell a story on a smaller scale, where people feel more like people than stand-ins for ideas and horrors, and where the personal conflict feels properly personal. It’s a fine proof of the value of having a less ambitious narrative sequel.
Top of the charts for week ending 13 February 2010:
