Something’s clearly amiss from the outset of Bioshock 2. The first thing you lay your crusty visor upon is graffiti stating that Babylon has fallen. You’ll then notice that Rapture’s once pristine art deco stairways are now taken over by luminous coral overgrowth, rubbish and, strangely enough, butterflies. Even the game’s HUD is corroded with rust and calcifying under barnacles. It’s like a corruptive force has washed over and warped the city’s very essence, wherein lies Bioshock 2’s own essence – a reinterpretation of one of gaming’s most well realised worlds more thoughtful than it’s ever given credit for.

This is most noticeably distilled in Sofia Lamb, monologue dispenser extraordinaire and embodiment of Rapture’s ideological swing of the pendulum. Collectivism for her doesn’t stop at every I in service of the we, but rather the outright elimination of self-awareness and subsuming of individuals into a singly-minded mass, a bit like a (purely theoretically) more utopian vision of those guys from that other game whose title ends in ‘Shock 2.’ She’s a well chosen opponent for a story whose stakes are so much more personal this time around, revolving around her attempts to erase the individuality of your girl Eleanor and transform her into what she refers to as “the People’s Daughter,” a prototype for the citizenry of the utopia she envisions who’ll be unable to question anything and who can fill any societal role by way of plasmids. Where Ryan and Atlas question the player’s agency, Lamb questions the player’s ethics: you can prove her wrong and even save her from herself by setting a positive example for Eleanor to follow that only Subject Delta as an individual is in the position to produce.

Your treatment of the Little Sisters is a key factor in this respect, as ever, but Bioshock 2 tweaks this mechanic so that the method of obtaining the most ADAM from them is much more proportional than before. To get the best result from rescuing each one, you need to protect her as she harvests ADAM from two corpses scattered about the area, attracting splicers, new kinds of Big Daddies and eventually the bullet sponge to end all bullet sponges that is a Big Sister. Between all parties attacking each other in the crossfire, security bots and a harsher limit on how much first aid/EVE you can carry, these sections can become legitimately tough, if not in terms of deaths accrued then certainly in resources consumed. Harvesting Little Sisters is now granted the niche of middling reward for little risk, an all the more tempting proposition if you use one of the new modular difficulty options to turn Vita Chambers off. It’s an altogether solid solution to the dilemma that led Clint Hocking, lead designer of Splinter Cell 1, Chaos Theory and Far Cry 2, to coin the term ludosudowudo-whatever.

2 revises much of Bioshock’s formula in other, similarly beneficial ways. Being able to wield a plasmid and a weapon simultaneously ties each half of the combat system together by granting you bonus damage to enemies afflicted by plasmids, allows for more flexible enemy design (brutes and Big Sisters are particular standouts, turning every environmental object into both a potential tool & hazard) and is otherwise such an obvious addition that a friend of mine misremembered it being in the first game. They say any FPS is as good as its shotgun, and while we do have one here that’s both very useful and emblematic of this series’ A+ art direction, only Bioshock 2 is as good as its gigantic drill hand, which allows for anime moments and the worst possible deaths in equal measure. They and every other weird and wonderful weapon Subject Delta comes across enjoy greater functional variety this time around too, thanks to an expanded weapon upgrade system that grants each one a unique quirk at the final, gated tier – for example, reflecting projectiles with the drill or ricocheting bullets for the machine gun.

Mechanics aren’t the only things that’ve been fleshed out, either. Bioshock 2 concentrates a veritable Metroid Prime’s worth of effort into conveying the sense that you, the player, really are inside the rustbucket of a suit inhabited by Rapture’s #1 dad. Rims of Subject Delta’s visor occupy each corner of the screen, reflect light and jolt about according to his current state. Droplets of blood, water and certain plasmids spatter and drip down its glass, which also gets fogged up by steam. Landing after a jump is accompanied by a hefty screen shake, an upheaval of lingering dust and a metallic thud. You can even see your shadow now, projected by dynamic light sources, which is used against you for at least one jumpscare that I’m aware of. A diegetic HUD of some kind might’ve helped it stand out even more in this respect, but in general and as befits a game with this kind of ancestry, Bioshock 2’s immersion dial has been turned up several notches compared to its predecessor, making the recipe of raiding long-abandoned apartments and backrooms for tidbits of environmental storytelling and other goodies feel all the more tactile.

This is all without even touching upon Minerva’s Den, but despite deserving its credit both as what should be a standard for DLC and for its influence over a subset of indie games birthed in the years that followed, I can’t help but feel that the general perception of it as the highlight of a lesser entry is erroneous. It’s really just more of what’s an already excellent game which demonstrates an intimate understanding of what made its predecessor tick, gameplay-wise and thematically, and is as a whole long overdue a reappraisal.

Revisit Rapture with Bioshock 2 and discover that what you’ve been misled to believe is an ancillary sequel is, in reality, assuredly among the most underappreciated games to have still garnered relative acclaim, as well as further evidence that the real best games usually have an average Backloggd score starting with a 3.

Reviewed on Apr 30, 2023


13 Comments


10 months ago

My hot take is that the original BioShock is the weakest of the trilogy. I give it credit for introducing us to Rapture and for its top notch art direction, but in terms of gameplay it felt too watered down compared to forerunners like Deus Ex and System Shock 2. BioShock 2 and Infinite made the right move by doubling down on the shooter aspects.

10 months ago

@toadhjo That's cool. I like the first Bioshock much more than I expected to given how frequently it's spoken of like a watered down SS2, I think it's got far more to offer than that description implies even though I prefer the latter. Telekinesis for example's way more multifaceted than psi pull and leads to a lot of different gameplay scenarios that can't be replicated in SS2.

I don't know if I'd say that 2 doubles down on the shooter aspects in the same way Infinite does, though. The actual shooting in 2's better than 1's for sure, thanks mostly to how splicers actually react to your attacks, but it retains the slower exploratory bits that made the first game shine as well. Infinite's a clear outlier in how action oriented and setpiece-driven it is, imo.

10 months ago

Your buddy wasn't the only one who misremembered dual-wielding plasmids and guns in the first game.

10 months ago

@thephilosopher It happens. I had a moment like this myself a while back when I remembered you couldn't use the energy sword in the first Halo. Aaaawubadugh indeed.

10 months ago

@ProudLittleSeal It was disappointing for me to start Halo's campaign for the first time years after the game came out only to realize that I couldn't use the energy sword.

10 months ago

@thephilosopher It does have the only assault rifle that doesn't make me want to go on a Great Journey though, so it all balances out in the end.

10 months ago

@ProudLittleSeal I'm sure nostalgia and expectations play a bit part in my perception. I played System Shock 2 when it was relatively new and loved it. Later I played BioShock very briefly in the late 00s but PC issues prevented me from getting far. The game made a great first impression but I didn't get back to it until much, much later.

In the meantime, Prey happened. And Prey simply blew my mind. It was essentially the sequel to System Shock 2 that I'd always wanted.

Going back to BioShock after playing Prey, I found it wasn't quite what I was hoping for. I then went into BioShock 2 with lower expectations, which it easily surpassed. Infinite is a bit more of a mixed bag but I knew to expect a fairly straightforward shooter and I wasn't disappointed.

10 months ago

@toadhjo No worries, that makes sense to me since my own play order of this particular set of games was a bit higgledy piggledy too. Arkane's Prey was my first and it wasn't until after it that I played the System Shocks, which I remember initially deflating my impression of Prey a little when I realised just how much it takes after them, but I reneged on that pretty quickly when I replayed it and SS2 back to back and it became apparent how many independent strengths they each have.

10 months ago

So far (from where I stopped in Bioshock 2), I think both are on the same level and equally awesome, while the first excels at Story and Atmosphere (Andrew Ryan and Rapture is one of the best villains and places in any videogame I have ever seen), the second absolutely excels at Gameplay but Story and Atmosphere are not as great (the main plot in of itself I found meh and the horror atmosphere doesn't work as well because the MC is from that place and is more powerful than Jack, especially with all the new gun upgrades and plasmid upgrades).

10 months ago

@Rougeliker That's fair, I'm with you on the first two Bioshocks being a really consistently strong pair. Atmospherically I didn't find 1 to be especially unnerving or anything (which is fine, since I don't think it was trying to be as overtly horror as its spritual predecessor anyway), so I didn't mind that Delta was bigger and badder than Jack. The feeling of being inside the suit adds enough from an immersion standpoint to make him a pretty firm net positive I think.

10 months ago

@Rogueliker woops.

7 months ago

Having just finished replaying 2 straight after 1, I'm downright confused that I was once of the somewhat common opinion that this game has better gameplay, but an inferior story. I suppose it's an unnecessary sequel, but it's a near-perfect iteration of the first game's incredibly solid foundation, and I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one out there that thinks so.

7 months ago

@Mariofan717 Same. Rapture having been ideologically flipped on its head coupled with how touched up it is mechanically were enough to prevent 2 from feeling unnecessary for me, I think stuff like being able to have plasmids + a weapon out at the same time or the influence Minerva's Den ended up having on indie games of the early/mid 2010s proved the formula still had ideas worth exploring. Really consistently strong pair of games in any case.