You can tell the business department had the final say in production
The most disturbing and game breaking element of the game is the damage model. It's identical to the first game, except that....
Instead of being some spliced up human. I'm suppose to be some genetically modified "brute" encased is an armored shell.
I don't feel like that, in fact after half-way through the enemy does as much damage to you as the very end enemies did in the first game. Nothing like being told I'm a walking tank and to be constantly one shoted by a deformed skinny human with a pipe.
To make matters worse I'm surounded by creatures almost identical to me that take sometimes half my entire ammo load out to kill that definately are capable of one shot killing me.
This breaks my immersion and constantly being told I'm a walking tank.
This should be a game of numbers and being defeated by overwhelming odds. They way one has to take out a tank. Not three shots and your dead. Which is the norm at the end of the game.
The original involved a lot of indirect combat and sneaking, but you were suppose to be no better protected than the enemies you went up against and some were definitely suppose to be more powerful than you.
The presentation and concept here is you are suppose to be a very powerful and daunting foe, but less than half-way through you are definitely constantly indirectly attacking any and all foes when possible, because the other option is death.
My immersion into the game is constantly destroyed due to this.
The only way I have managed to get the immersion as presented on the box and story is to play on "easy" mode. But unfortunately, this makes most of even the rush events easy to play through.
If I put my business hat on this is an excellent game. The normal and hard options make it a difficult and challenging game. You feel that most of your enemies are more powerful than you and a constant challenge. The environment keeps things lively and there is little to no repetition. You have down all the solid mechanics of a good shooter hybrid.
But you totally destroy the story as stated above.
Since this is a gatherer/shooter game, not having a replay with all gathered items option, really destroys the re-playability of the game as well. It takes a lot of practice to get good at the level 3 plasmid techniques. Yet the game is over quickly after attaining them. As well, you definitely CAN'T AFFORD all the plasmids you want the first time through. So, WHY is there no "New Game +"?
There is no "New Game +" feature for Bioshock 2. I bought a PS3 purely to play Bioshock with the "New Game +" feature, which was not offered on the xbox360. And the Bioshock 2 forums were full of thousands of requests for this feature. Yet, it was not implemented. I no longer try and keep my PC "game" qualified, and my PC won't play Bioshock 2. Yet, the PC version, I can console and give myself all the "anything" I want to start off, which is almost identical to the "New Game +" feature.
This is a good game, but not a great game… very unfortunate, and unexpected coming from 2K.
Update in relation to Mass Effect 2, the other highly anticipated game coming out early 2010. Mass Effect 2 has more staying power and therefor wins out over Bioshock 2. It has a New Game + feature, and has 5 or 6 very unique classes that play very differently. So even without the New Game + feature, you are likely to replay this game at least part way through again with other classes. With various story paths that cancel other story paths and a core "good guy" or "bad guy" story path... The replayability is just mind blowing. Biosshock 2 has none of this.