In exploring the creepiest and most unique relationship in Rapture, Bioshock 2 climbs above its predecessor
Thankfully, being sensible enough to realize that, 2K settled on bringing to the spotlight Rapture's second most disturbing and unique thing besides the city itself. During the original game, during many instances, Jack would come across an unusual and fearsome pair that worked together to gather ADAM from the victims of the city's civil war. Even though the mighty Big Daddies and the child-like disturbingly cute zombies called Little Sisters were somehow explored during the course of Bioshock, their origin, their relationship and the story behind each of those pairs that used to be nothing but healthy male adults and young girls as innocent as any child out there could be clearly taken advantage of in order to create a compelling narrative that would send players running around Rapture for another round of exploration and another series of meetings with lunatics that only an underwater city could produce. Bioshock 2 is exactly that, a deep dive into the world of Big Daddies and Little Sisters where Rapture's glass corridors will witness an epic emotional rescue mission like no other.
In some ways it could be said that Bioshock 2 starts where the original left off: by putting you in control of a Big Daddy. Only, this time, the Big Daddy is not a male figure in disguise, but a human being that has been fully converted into one, meaning that both its body and its mind have been heavily altered for the accomplishment of its lone goal: protecting its Little Sister at all costs. The game starts as a Big Daddy, one of the first to be created, is mind-controlled by Sophia Lamb to put a bullet through its own head while his Little Sister watches and screams in desperation as she realizes what is about to happen. Ten years later, Subject Delta – the very same Big Daddy who had killed itself in the past – is revived in one of the game's Vita Chambers and, like any other Big Daddies would do, is quickly compelled to find his Little Sister. Once again, the game's story is far more complex and tied together than it seems at first, and while travelling through new locations within Rapture in the desperate quest for his Little Sister, Subject Delta will learn about his past, Sophia Lamb, the Big Daddy project and, of course, about Rapture itself.
Being a Big Daddy has implications that go beyond turning the storyline into an amazing adventure of discovery and enlightenment on the dynamic of the relationship between a Big Daddy and its Little Sister. It also affects some key aspects of the gameplay that end up making Bioshock 2 unique. The degree of difference between the two games is not enough to blow anyone away or strip the game from its original characteristics, but it is enough to give us more of the same – which is the reason why sequels are so loved among gamers – while adding a few fresh elements here and there to make things a lot better. For starters, instead of having to switch between plasmids – the genetically added abilities that allow players to set enemies on fire, freeze them, hypnotize, use telekinesis, and etc – and weapons, it is now possible to use both at the same time as Subject Delta will always have plasmids mapped to his left hand and will hold a gun with his right hand. It makes combat far more streamlined and removes the hassle of having to switch between both, further giving players the ability to use different combinations of plasmids and weapons for combat.
The second change happens in your relationship with Little Sisters. ADAM needs to be, once more, gathered so that the game's central character can upgrade his abilities, buy new plasmids with new useful skills for combat, upgrade plasmids that have already been acquired and buy physical tonics that add minor powers to Subject Delta such as extra speed, the ability to avoid cameras for longer, delivering an electrical shock on enemies that physically attack him, and so on. Due to that, Little Sisters need to be used; however, as a Big Daddy players will be faced with a different ethical choice in Bioshock 2 as they can either simply harvest the girls, therefore gaining large amounts of ADAM while killing the girls, or they can choose the hard, yet morally good, path of protecting the girl from a big and dangerous wave of enemies while she gathers ADAM from two corpses, which allows Subject Delta to rescue her while still getting some ADAM. While the second option is more time-consuming and, sometimes, even stressful due to the size of the enemy waves, it is certainly the most rewarding and fun option.
Also making a return is the ability to hack machines in order to gain control over them and hacking safes to get them open and collect the treasures inside. Instead of engaging players in a game of placing pipes so that the liquid flow will reach its destination, hacking is now done with a quick-moving gauge that needs to be stopped at a green area so that players can move on to an even faster gauge that speeds against a surface with an even smaller green area. If the timing is wrong the gauge might land on a white area, causing players to lose health; on a red area, causing players to deploy security bots and an alarm to sound for 30 seconds; or, finally, it can land on a blue area, which will make hacked security bots even more powerful. It is a tempting risk-reward system that is faster and, consequently, less disruptive of the game's flows than the fun pipe mini-games of the original.
Bioshock 2 presents pretty much the same enemies as the original title. Splicers come in different varieties and carrying distinct weapons: some are armed with machine guns, others will rely in fire-throwing plasmids, others will have the ability to vanish into thin air and reappear right behind you and spider splicers will cling upside-down onto walls when under fire. However, two new enemy types have been added. The first one is a new kind of splicer that has, for some reason, grown to sport quite a large body and incredible health, they are extremely hard to take down and their physical blows deal a lot of damage, thankfully, though, Subject Delta – being a Big Daddy – features an array of impressive physical attacks of his own that deliver equally impressive amounts of damage to nearby enemies. The second new enemy are the Big Sisters, which are nothing but Little Sisters who have reached their teenage years and are equipped into diving suits similar, but smaller, than those worn by Big Daddies that give them stunning agility and a big group of weapons to fight with. They are by far the most dangerous enemies in the series, and dealing with them requires a lot of skill and knowledge on which weapons to use and when to do so.
Although ten years prior to the game Jack swept through Rapture riding the city of many of its maniacs, Rapture still houses a surprising share of characters that have been driven somehow insane due to the unique nature of the city in which they reside and the freedom of morality provided by the government. Going into their realms within this underwater city and slowly discovering all the steps that led them into their current state of mental breakdown through the audio recordings adds a lot to Bioshock 2, not only by rewarding players that explore optional locations with extra bits of information, but also by making the atmosphere in Rapture more dense with tension. Through the twelve hours of the adventure players will always be engaged in uncovering something behind the city itself of one of the game's core characters, the story is always moving forward at an excellent pace.
Overall, Bioshock 2 packs more value than the original game, because besides featuring an adventure that is just as long, with a story that is better developed and culminates in a superior effective ending, the game also has a very solid multiplayer mode where players take control of Splicers during the breakout of Rapture's civil war. Surprisingly, the most interesting part of the game's multiplayer are not its seven different modes that can be played for a very good amount of time, but how the mode adds a few extra pieces to the big puzzle that is Rapture's past and how its demise has come to happen. The modes include traditional shooting affairs such as free-for-all, team battle and capture the flag, with a curious twist where the flag happens to be a Little Sister; to more unique ones, such as ADAM Grab where the player who is the first to be able to protect a Little Sister from other players for three minutes takes the victory. It is fun, and it is built to last for long.
In the end, Bioshock 2 is a slight improvement over its predecessor. Though its graphics have remained pretty much the same, even though three years separate the two games, the visuals are still impressive and Rapture is very effective in overwhelming players with its mix of technology and art-deco and the atmospheric noises that make up its involving soundtrack. The pacing of the story has been dramatically improved to a point that the ending in Bioshock 2 does not come with the same disappointment that the winding moments of Bioshock did. Bioshock 2 might as well be our final venture into the depths of Rapture, but it is an amazing conclusion for the city and the characters that roamed through its halls and made constructed, with human brilliancy and greed, its glory and its doom.