• Coelacanth
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    5 days ago

    After my rather disappointing adventure with Metro: Last Light recently I ticked off another backlog game in the way of a third-of-a-trilogy I’m really looking forward to this week with Bioshock 2. I adored the first game back when I played it, and I’ve been really looking forward to Infinite, with 2 being a kind of red-headed stepchild in the way.

    Overall I enjoyed it and found it alright. The novelty of playing as a Big Daddy wore off pretty quick, and after that it was kind of just “more Bioshock” - which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The setting was still fantastic, and using the Nvidia RTX HDR feature the game looked stunning. The voice acting was great and the shooter gameplay felt as tight and entertaining as the first game. Lots of plasmids that kind of sucked in the first game were surprisingly great here which was fun. I did kind of miss the hacking mechanic from the first game, though.

    While I liked the story, it doesn’t really hold a candle to the first game in my opinion, but that is more of an effusive praise of Bioshock 1 than an indictment of Bioshock 2. It served its purpose and wasn’t in the way of me enjoying the game, though it’s not something I’ll think back on time and time again and heartily recommend like the first game, I think.

    Finally - and most sadly - the game suffers extremely from instability. I even played the Remastered version, but crashes were frequent, sudden and unpredictable and from looking around online this is apparently a common problem. I tried all the various fixes online but only managed to slightly reduce their frequency. Very unfortunate.

    Still, I’m glad to have played it and am looking forward to Infinite sometime in the future.

    • @ampersandrew
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      13 days ago

      BioShock 2 was interesting for improving the combat of the original (but not as much as Infinite did) and for what they did with the story, turning it into a parable with its ending. The story was pretty one-note in that regard, but they went for it, you know?