Bioshock 2

I have a love/hate relationship when it comes to video games, primarily when it comes to first person shooters. I love them because they're awesome, and I can get lost in them for hours on end. I hate them because they are difficult. I am not exceptionally good at playing them, and therefore I often spend an awful lot of time under enormous amounts of stress, grinding my teeth, swearing and yelling at the television set.

Reaching the end of a video game is a lot different from reaching the end of a movie. Whenever I complete a great video game I feel two things. First, I'm filled with a ridiculous sense of accomplishment. I stand up and parade around my living room triumphantly; I call friends on the telephone so that they can share in my moment of greatness. Second, I feel a profound sense of loss. After spending so many hours involved with these characters, in this world, the countless moments of aggravation and the excitement felt after each victory, there's a real "what now?" feeling that comes with completing a great game. That's why I'm always so excited to find out when a sequel is being released to a game that I love.

One of the greatest/most frustrating and completely rewarding video game experiences I have had in the past few years was with the original Bioshock on the X-Box 360.

The premise of the original Bioshock is that in the 1950's a city, named Rapture, is constructed beneath the sea. This city serves as a mecca for artists, scientists and free-thinkers to live and work in without any sort of moral or governmental oversight. One of these scientists discovers some chemical that occurs naturally in a rare type of sea slug, a chemical that, once injected into the blood stream, speeds up evolution and gives individuals a wide variety of super-powers (WHAT?!) such as shooting lightning bolts and fireballs out of their hands. The residents of Rapture all become wildly addicted to this chemical and absolute chaos ensues, resulting in some sort of civil war that leaves the city in ruins and inhabited by genetically altered monsters.

There is a lot more to the story, but when you're playing the game what it boils down to is that you're alone in this crazy, scary, art deco looking nightmare city, everything is trying to kill you, and you have to defend yourself by using large weaponry and by shooting lightning out of your hands. Sound awesome? It is.

The scariest, and most difficult enemies that you encounter in the game are called Big Daddies. Big Daddies (as seen at the top of the article in the cover art for Bioshock 2) are enormous hulks in diving suits with giant-ass drill hands.

The thing that originally excited me about Bioshock 2, once details about the sequel began leaking out about a year ago, is that in this game the player gets to control a Big Daddy. I began day-dreaming about what it would be like to run through Rapture, nearly invincible, using my giant drill arm to effortlessly smash and gore everything I saw.

But where would the challenge be in that?

The folks at 2K Games were smart enough to understand that if the player was too powerful, then the game would only be fun for an hour.

I'm happy to say that I'm about twelve hours and half-way through my first run through and I'm still having a lot of fun.

This game is set ten years after the events of the first game, so Rapture is in an even larger state of disrepair, and the remaining inhabitants of the city are even crazier and scarier than they were in the previous game.

Difficulty wise, despite the fact that you're a Big Daddy, this game is every bit as difficult as the first one was, and you seem to die just as easily as you did in the first game when you were just some dude who wasn't in a giant diving suit. Luckily, Rapture is filled with "Vita-Chambers" and every time you die you simply re-spawn in the nearest one. There is an option to turn the Vita-Chambers off, so that when you die the game is over. Personally, I think that's insane, and I would be forever stuck on the first level if I tried to play with that option. But, like I said, I'm really not very good.   


This game, like its predecessor, looks positively amazing. The world of Rapture is one of the most stylistically unique and beautifully rendered environments ever created for a video game. Also like the first game, the story is extremely involving, fun and weird.

I highly recommend this game to anyone who has ever wanted to smash a freak in the face with a drill.

4 / 5 on the Awesome Meter