It makes it hard to understand what’s happened in the ten year gap. Michael here feels disillusioned by objectivism, and is thinking seriously about his worldview. They came to see the fundamental validity of her ethos in the last ten years, did they? In between screaming “Semen! On EVERYTHING!” and scampering across the ceiling with meathooks? Ryan set these Splicers on me? Why, don’t they just attack everything anyway? And now these Splicers are working for Lamb’s Family. What never works for me in either game is that the Backstory is still going on. I buy into both, and I even buy into the Backstory leading to the Ecosystem, as the failed utopia finds a physical outlet for its neuroses in Adam, and creates something monstrous. Then there’s the Backstory, a tawdry tale of fifties dames and johns doing the dirty on each other while high-minded well-to-dos carry on like they own the joint. There’s the Ecosystem, this alien world of inhuman protectors stomping around with delirious gatherers, while packs of crazed aggressors try to steal them away. I can barely process basic information in a game unless it affects the level in front of me.īoth BioShocks often feel like two different game ideas, layered on top of each other but not convincingly connected. I thought doing philosophy at uni would help, but I think I need a degree in listening. After hours and hours of hearing her talk about it, I still have no idea what Lamb’s plan for Eleanor was, or even what she believes in – except that it isn’t ‘the self’. As a Big Daddy might, I grasped that I was after my Little Sister, but all the other voices in my head seemed like a very long list of names all angry at me for something I didn’t understand. Plot-wise… I guess my only problem with the plot is that I missed almost all of it. BioShock 2 is saying: what if that moment was just a few hours in, and you could just keep getting more bizarre, manipulative and powerful from there? Mechanically, it finishes BioShock’s clever sentence. By the last third of that game, you’d found enough interesting plasmids and tonics to develop some properly demented playstyles, ones very personal to your preferences. It feels like a remake, a ridiculous thing to do immediately after a great game, but some of BioShock’s systems needed it. But starting from a position of Least Necessary Sequel Ever, given too little time to both form a studio and significantly reinvent the game (MoonShock!), and committed to the obsequious inclusion of multiplayer – I could see fun, I could see interesting, I couldn’t see “I’m glad they made this.” It wasn’t any lack of faith in the team – BioShock was very much Ken Levine’s gig, sure, but the prospect of a Jordan Thomas gig is just as enticing.
It’s like making a Fight Club 2 – either you’re not gonna have that twist, or we’ll kinda see it coming. This will sound bad, but the last thing I expected was for BioShock 2 to be worthwhile. The second half of this post has end-game spoilers, but they’re hidden until you click to reveal them. There are some end-game spoilers later in this post, but I’ll warn you before we get to them. If you can read this, the way I hide spoilers isn’t working for you.
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