Bioshock 2 - 4 hours in...

I have to preface these comments by saying that I am only four hours (or thereabouts) into Bioshock 2 at the time of writing and I may revise many of these opinions upon completely the game. However, I have so far found a number of reasons to complain about this highly-anticipated sequel.

The original Bioshock was probably my favourite game of 2007, if not my favourite game of this console generation. It was certainly imaginative when compared to the majority of brown-grey shooters which flood the market. Set in 1960 the player was submerged into a colourful, art-deco, underwater dystopia called Rapture. Rapture was eerie, atmospheric and it held my attention fully, demanding that I obsessively uncovered every inch of the map and located each and every audio recording (the games way of filling in background story). Everything from the kitsch faux-1950’s advertising to the bold fascistic sculptures was compelling and made me want to see more of this place and to find out more about its ruin. The sight of a hulking man in a diving suit, with a pneumatic drill for an arm, protecting a little girl from bemasked, Tommy gun wielding drug addicts to the strains of “How Much is that Doggy in the Window” was something approaching the iconic. Needless to say, when a sequel was announced I was extremely excited by the prospect of returning, even if just to see the same things all over again.

It brings me no pleasure to report that I am a little disappointed by what I have found in Rapture this time around. So what is wrong? Well, it’s little things. One of the pleasures of the first game was combining the use of gene-splicing “plasmids”, which granted you the power to throw fire or lightning at your enemies, with more traditional contemporary weaponry, like the aforementioned Tommy gun. This time around you take the role of a “Big Daddy”, one of the diving suit clad guardians who roam the sunken halls, and so you are restricted you using their weapons. These, so far, amount to a pea shooter, a drill which runs out of fuel very quickly (the use of which sees you die as you attempt to get close to your gun wielding enemies) and a heavy machine gun, which runs out of ammo just as quickly. Whereas, in the first game, these tools of the “Big Daddy” spelled quick death when turned against me, in Bioshock 2 they aren't half as effective and I am left feeling a little weak. Of course, my abilities and weaponry will upgrade through the course of playing the game, so this complaint maybe premature.



Another problem with playing as the “Big Daddy” is the fact that the enemy characters don’t seem to be afraid of me... at all. I remember hearing that they would run away if they came across you alone, and come back in greater numbers. However, in practice they always attack me as soon as they see me. They also have the annoying habit of being brilliant shots. I really don’t like it when enemies in a game seem to get the homing bullets out as soon as you turn a corner.

It is also a shame that the game doesn’t imbue your relationship with the “little sisters” with any personality. The key role of a “Big Daddy” is to protect these little girls, and in the first game you’d hear them chatting away to their guardians as they walked about the place. “This way Mr. Bubbles” they would say. However, in the stretches of the game which see you protecting one, by placing her upon your shoulders, she remains silent. A sad omission, this just leads you to forget you’re even carrying one, when it could have been a really atmospheric and interesting new element of the game.

A cosmetic difference, but one that leaves Rapture poorer, is that the vending machines no longer have the jingles and advertisements that gave them so much personality last time ("Fill your cravings at the circus of values!"). They also added a layer of horror: their enthusiasm and happiness contrasting with the carnage which lay about them. I have also found the environments less interesting this time around, because they seem busier. Writing is all over the walls, along with posters and photos, surrounded by candles and cream cakes (I’m not making that up). The last game had a less is more quality to it which compelled me to seek out the details and to study my surroundings. The sequel is less atmospheric and has less personality. Without wanting to sound pretentious, I felt like each level was a distinct character last time around. There was the place where the crazed artist had made displays out of the dead and his whole level had elements of performance and displays of demented art all through it. In contrast, the two levels I have visited so far feel a little samey.

There have been some nice touches so far, in the Ryan Amusements level you can find a number of animatronic dioramas over which Rapture founder Andrew Ryan explains the reasons for the construction of his ocean metropolis as well as the mechanics of constructing the city itself. As a fan of the world from the first game, this was interesting stuff, but it underlined another problem with this instalment: Andrew Ryan and Rapture's past is much more interesting than the new antagonist “Dr. Lamb” and her the new threat she poses. For the sake of not spoiling either game, I won’t go into any more detail on this here.

Probably my single biggest problem with this new instalment of Bioshock is the opening. The first game had you sitting on a commercial airplane, which crashed into the ocean. You were then placed in the middle of the ocean in the dead of the night, your path lit by the bright yellow flames of the rapidly sinking fuselage. You swim to a tower which stands on a small island, in the middle of nowhere. You climb the steps and go through a huge metal door which closes behind you. The lights turn on and you find that you are in a magnificent lobby. You walk down a staircase and get into a small submarine, which begins its descent whilst playing you a video message from Andrew Ryan explaining his intentions for Rapture. This video is pulled away to reveal a window onto the ocean and you look out in wonder at the city on the sea floor and the sea creatures swimming about it. It stunned me and had me deeply immersed in the world of the game from there on in. Check this intro out below:



There is nothing so grand about the opening to Bioshock 2. It opens with a cutscene, which was entertaining, but over which I had no control over and so it didn’t immerse me at all. The first steps you take as a player find you already in Rapture and the game begins immediately in earnest. I can see why the developers at 2K Marin (a different team to that behind the first game) might feel that people who had already played the first game might want to hit the ground running this time around. But for me Bioshock is about atmosphere and having an interest in discovering Rapture is crucial. In terms of gameplay there was nothing really original or groundbreaking about the first game and, obviously, there is even less originality in this sequel.

So, with the game (so far) failing to replicate the atmosphere of its predecessor, I am left feeling a little short-changed. The fact that I have only played the game for four hours since its release on Tuesday speaks volumes.

Come back soon for a full review.

So much silliness...

Jordan Thomas of 2K Marin (the developers of Bioshock 2 which was released today and will be reviewed here later this week) has called it like he sees it and decried the pointless “my console is better than yours” juvenility present since time immemorial. He is quoted by Destructoid as saying: “There's a cognitive effect known as confirmation bias which leads people to latch onto conclusions that support their preferences and ignore data which doesn't... This leads to wild, unreasoning loyalty to a chosen platform, sports team, or brand of soda.” I don’t know about you, but those people who go on and on about their favourite soft drink do my head in. But partisan video gamers come in a close second. Whether they play for team Microsoft, Nintendo or Sony, they are all their fair share of annoying.

Now, I’m not against people pointing out differences between platform specific versions of a game, (as done in great detail by such sites as IQGamer). Those sorts of comments are only right and fair. But I am really tired of arbitrary bias affecting any reasonable conversation you may want to have about a game or a console, especially as it’s hard enough to have a serious conversation about video games at the best of times. But a brand-loyal gamer just won’t hear you speaking if you insist on talking well of an enemy clan. They may as well be making “la la la” noises and holding their palms against their ears. This is illogical for many reasons, but my favourite reason is this: the companies themselves don’t care if you live or die. This loyalty is a one-way street. In fact I’m not sure the head of Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo wouldn’t bludgeon you to death like so many baby seals with his raw and bloodied fists if it would make the corporation a few dollars richer. OK, maybe he’s actually a smashing bloke... but you get my point.

So why do these machines command such loyalty? I suppose it is understandable for people to defend the one they have bought: to justify the money they have spent. Nobody wants to have bought the “wrong” one, so you naturally might not want the rival machine to have better games than the one you chose to purchase. I know I relished each and every bad review of the PS2 launch title, when I was a Dreamcast groupie. But people shouldn’t pretend it’s for any grand moral or cultural reason that they have aligned themselves with one of these massive companies and are prepared to sacrifice their integrity by becoming some sort of volunteer spokesperson in their free time. Especially seeing as how the 360 and PS3 are the same, but one plays Blu-ray discs and the other has a superior set of online options. They both have fairly bad reliability records and they both run games that look approximately the same, so long as the developers have done their job right. Otherwise some look better on one and some look better on the other. One is more expensive, but includes built-in features which you must pay for as extras on the other, balancing the whole cost thing out in the end. Ok they have the odd exclusive title to harp on about, but exclusives are becoming less and less frequent by the year.

So that’s it. Case closed. And if you don’t agree with me I’ll get some biggers kids come and beat you up.

'Mass Effect 2' review: Judgement Day

I’ve finally played my way through 30-odd hours of Mass Effect 2 and only just feel like I am ready to review the game. As anyone who read my article at the beginning of last week would know, my Mass Effect 2 experience has been dominated by an obsessive compulsion to mine every planet in the universe for mineral ore. However, alongside this peculiar industrial career mode there is also a Bioware RPG game. Well, I say RPG, but Mass Effect 2 has really done away with most of the traditional role-playing game elements popularised in games such as Baldur’s Gate and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. For instance, you are no longer asked to attribute skill points to stats like “strength” or “intelligence”, with the game instead simply asking you to select and upgrade abilities upon levelling up. This is hardly any more like an RPG than any game with basic customizable weapons.

I don’t think you need to have ever played an RPG to understand the combat system of ME2. Whereas in the first Mass Effect a sniper rifle was rubbish in the hands of a character without the required skill set, now the effectiveness of any given weapon is determined by your ability to aim it. In this respect the game now plays like any post-Gears of War third person action/shooter game: you glue yourself to a piece of cover (invariably a box or a wall) and pop out to take aim and shoot. However it’s not as full of wilfully unappealing brown environments as Gears of War, substituting them for pleasing, shiny sci-fi interiors and exotic alien locales... as well as a lot of warehouses filled with low walls and boxes. There are, incidentally, so many rooms and corridors filled with low walls and boxes in Mass Effect 2 that they quickly become mini plot spoilers indicating “there is going to be a fight in here”. And it’s a bad time for anyone with a warehouse, because their boxes are getting shot to bits in every system of the Milky Way.

Stripped of its RPG elements and played like a third person shooter, Mass Effect 2 is curiously easy. I had to switch its predecessor into ‘easy’ mode because I found the boss fights too tricky given the terrible combat mechanics. Yet I completed Mass Effect 2 on its default setting, only dying a handful of times. Even then it always felt as though I had been careless or over-zealous, rather than challenged. In the games defence it comes equipped with three difficulty settings harder than ‘normal’, which I imagine present much more of a challenge to players who place less faith in a games default settings.

Of course, the major selling point of all Bioware games, including Mass Effect 2, is the promise that your individual choices will dynamically change the game with actions always followed by consequences. This is made even more potentially interesting by the fact that in Mass Effect 2 you can continue your character from the first game (and into the third), with any meaningful decisions you made having further repercussions in the sequel. The problem with this is (and has always been) twofold in Bioware games. Firstly, the choices you make are never really difficult if you know how you want your character to turn out: all dialogue options fall into three categories: you can be saintly, Swiss or Hitler. This has the effect that I never end up making any natural decisions, but rather I think “this is my good character, so I will say all the “good” things”. There aren’t really shades of grey. You can either be narcissistic bore, high on the smell of their own farts, or a total jerk, being unnecessarily rude to everyone you meet - at every turn.

The second problem is that the decisions you make have only cosmetic impact on the game. It is never the case that taking one course of action sends the game to a different world or into a different mission to any other that could be taken. The game is always broadly the same for everyone who plays it. Take this example of a big decision you make in the first game which is carried over into ME2 (some may consider this a SPOILER): in ME1 you are forced to choose whether to sacrifice one crewman or another on a particular mission. In ME2 the character you saved turns up at one key plot moment and basically tells you to how you’ve let them down badly, then departs never to be seen again. This happens on the same world, at the same point, whichever character you chose to save. In other words they are completely interchangeable. Ultimately this made me feel like it made a bit of difference which character I chose to save, other than the fact that I saw a different character model and heard a different voice actor. You could argue that it adds an extra layer of reply value in that you can play through hearing different dialogue play out, but in practice I probably won’t want to spend another 15-20 hours (even when you cut out mining) running through what is mostly going to be the exact same game, with a handful of small differences to look forward to.

Having said that, it is worth pointing out that ME2 is supposed to run straight into ME3 (scheduled to be released in about two years time), with some of the decisions you make at the end of this second instalment really seeming to set up something very different depending on the games climatic final choices. I won’t spoil it, but the ending (laugh-out-loud-ridiculous boss fight aside) is really quite impactful. In fact this highlights the major strength of this series: the story. Bioware really create an interesting world of creatures, races and places, and considering just how many sci-fi films/TV shows/books have existed prior to the Mass Effect world, it is an achievement that it has a distinct atmosphere of its own.

Overall, Mass Effect 2 is a spectacular improvement on the original in every way, most notably in terms of its combat system and the comparative strength of its side quests (in that they don’t all take place in the same room, transposed onto a differently textured planet as in the first game). It has really fun shooter elements, a great atmosphere and an above average story. It isn't, in my view, as satisfying as Knights of the Old Republic, which had richer RPG elements, but it's far more polished than the recent Dragon Age: Origins. The best compliment I can play the game is that, after so many hours, I was sad to have completed it and am eagerly awaiting the next instalment.