From a drill melee,
For a little sister's cries,
You're the Big Daddy!
Additional Comments:
First: yeah...that haiku sucked. But, second, DUDE, this game was awesome! I was huge fan of the first game. In fact, I think that Bioshock (1) was probably the best game ever made. The environment was wonderful, the story was riveting and suspenseful and philosophical, the weapons and plasmids (magic) were satisfying, and the many other little things in the game made it a delight to play. To me, Bioshock is the maturity of the "Fallout direction" in gaming--meaning that the world is certainly one of the biggest stars, and survival one of the biggest gameplay devices, but you don't have to sacrifice story and content to prove you can make a survival game.
So I hear that BS2 is coming out, and I honestly have pessimistic feelings about it right off the bat. I'm kind of an anti-advocate for the trend in gaming to hammer out a new sequel to cashcow franchise every year, and after the satisfying conclusion of the first game, I didn't think they had anywhere to go with the story, for one, but also I didn't think they could even make a successor that was even remotely close to the penultimate paragon of my gaming experience. And it wasn't even made by the same developer! Needless to say, there were many obstacles in my mind.
But I gave it a shot, and borrowed it from my brother. I played it for about an hour on the first night, and I had to admit, this game is awesome. The story is still good. Even though it's a sequel story-wise, and I thought there was nowhere to go, they actually went to the back-story of how the Big Daddies and Little Sisters started. The world is as beautiful (in a broken down sort of way) than ever. But the biggest delight was that all the little inconveniences in the first game were streamlined and honed into a better version. The hacking is better, the guns and upgrades are better, the combat is better, the plasmids are better. And the new addition of the Big Sister surprised me at how good it was.
My only gripes are small ones. The music is virtually nonexistent in this game. I understand why, though, since it adds even more immersion to take away the music in this case and have the natural sounds fill your ears. That said, it still does have music, but more in the theatrical sense, along the lines of a suspenseful movie. It's there only when you want to build drama. My other quibble is that the dramatic tension in this game is somewhat less than in the first. There were many scenes and stages in the first where I literally sat on the edge of my seat as I played, hoping to not have something pop out in front of my face, having something do just that. In this game, there are couple of moments where it seems like that, but it just isn't all there. But, like I said, that's just a quibble. But my biggest (minor) gripes are about the story. Though the story was almost just as good as the first--and certainly just as immersive and satisfying--it seemed a little convoluted at times. And the ending scene dumbfounded me at how close it resembled the ending to the first game. It was almost identical.
Minor--very minor--gripes aside, this was a huge surprise, and was a really great game.
Rating: 5 crazy Big Sisters out of 5
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