So damn addicting, Every puzzle is just NEURON ACTIVATION.
So many games I've never played but know by their vibe.
TRUST YOUR FUCKING INSTINCTS. I've failed so many cause I just didn't guess the 'complete stretch' that was totally right all along.

go get addicted.

This might have been the real source of my dinky-sideport obsession.
This game is UNBELIEVABLY DEEP (see what i did there) for a stupid-ass mobile port.

Funnily enough I've slightly turned on the 'real' BioShock over the years, but this dumbass game. pure gold.

So what's actually here: Bioshock 2d is a top-down crpg in the vein of fallout 1.The game recreates nearly all the core mechanics of BioShock in this perspective down to the non-linear level design, unlocks, hacking minigame, and multifaceted combat system.
It manages only a few levels of this before abruptly ending, with dreams of more 'episodes' you're even given a code that presumably would've allowed you to carry your inventory into the next game.
it's fun, for the 50 minutes you'll be playing it, but I'm slightly more fascinated by the potential here. It's no Doom RPG but it's arguably more ambitious.
I can see why people might think games like this were cynical derivatives of popular franchises but I have to disagree. there's so much actually going on here that it makes me want to experience the entire game as a top-down demake.

This can be emulated without too much trouble on j2me, the bindings are a bit all over the place but it's manageable. I highly recommend giving it a shot to see one of the most fascinating dead ends of gaming history.

I didn't find it quite as incredible as people say. but it is breathtaking.

The vision is absolutely there. everything about the atmosphere and the pacing. going from the calm and quiet vast open world to the somber boss arenas.

the absolute highlight for me was the bosses in the water areas. something about fighting something massive above or below the waves is just awesome to me.

It pains me to rate this so low.

The first game was a cute little melancholy jaunt across a desolate wasteland. You managed your fun little vehicle and occasionally solved tiny puzzles that fed into the world and its lore. It reached a high point then a low point, then ended on a somber note with a tiny glimmer of hope.

The sequel... it's the same but worse.

The visuals have improved and the tech was expanded but the new visuals hurt the performance and the new tech leads to frustrating puzzles that didn't work properly during my playthrough.

I first bought this game on switch thinking 'the first one was so simple surely I can just play this on switch' but it ran so poorly I couldn't make basic jumps consistently which made it fundamentally unplayable.

On my PC I still had to run this game at medium settings.

The new mechanics are interesting at first but I constantly ran into puzzles that didn't trigger properly then got stuck for minutes before giving up to check a guide only to find out the puzzle just broke for me and I'd have to keep trying the same thing till it worked.

Everything in this game is made more tedious, it has all the same beats as the first game but many are repeated additional times, result in dead ends, and all of them take WAY longer on the ship.

The dead ends are the weirdest part, at least three times the game reached a sort of punctuation mark then shrugged at me and told me to keep going.

On top of that the achievements felt condescending. telling me 'what now' after one of the big false endings or congratulating itself on the real ending.

Worst of all the stellar soundtrack from the first game is toned down heavily in this one. There's still some incredible musical moments but they're fewer and further between.

I went into this game so wanting to love it but it dragged my patience to its limit then clapped for itself awkwardly.

I just couldn't like this game.

The best moment was a major spoiler that I won't mention here. it's also needlessly harsh but I suppose it was earned regardless.

I've played some wildly inadvisable games on PSP but this takes the cake.

First off take a look at that cover art and take a wild guess what type of game this is... I'll wait...

Didya guess marble platformer? no? well me neither.

Ok fine, I'm a fan of venineth and marble madness, I'll bite... actually it's sort of a marble... suggestion game...

no really, you don't actually play the marble, you play a column of light that DIRECTS the marble, awkwardly.
You can increase or decrease your influence on the marble and even toss it a tiny bit by hovering over it directly. It's one or the other tho, you can't exactly tell it to jump one way or another all that well.

On the whole, a monumentally bad way to control a video game. I cannot imagine this had a very confident development cycle.

Also, the end gates have a massive hitbox meaning you'll finish levels whether you want to or not.