Bioshock 2 review (Boston Herald, 2/22/10)
June 21, 2010
It’s easy to be cynical about Bioshock 2. How do you follow one of the best games ever made? Why continue a story that ended definitively? It’s like making sequels to Citizen Kane or the Bible. You could do it, but why?
Critics and consumers alike loved 2007’s Bioshock. It’s a gorgeous and terrifying first-person shooter that smartly comments on philosophy, human nature, and game design. It introduces the unforgettable decaying underwater society of Rapture and its founder, the Randian objectivist Andrew Ryan. The art deco architecture and radio serial bombast of Ryan’s speeches add a sense of history rarely seen in games. Bioshock also challenges your morality, letting you rescue or exploit a group of young girls twisted by science into corpse-pilfering parasites called Little Sisters. The ending disappoints, but everything up to that point is amazing. It’s hard to imagine a sequel living up to that.
The beginning of Bioshock 2 doesn’t instill much hope. Rapture’s still beautiful, but no longer surprising. The new villain, Sofia Lamb, is an uninspired mirror image of Ryan, preaching collectivism instead of individualism. It’s a little obvious and convenient for Lamb to espouse the exact opposite philosophy as Ryan. Also, if Lamb is such a threat to Ryan’s influence in Rapture, why is she never mentioned in the first game? The first hour feels like the rehash many feared.
Eventually Bioshock 2 forges its own identity. It lacks the indelible characters and audacious twists of the first game, but Bioshock 2 tells a better story.
You’re not in Rapture for self-discovery, but for family. Eleanor, a girl who considers you her father, is being held hostage by Lamb, her birth mother. Lamb envisioned Eleanor as the personification of her beliefs, turning her into one of the earliest Little Sisters. When she was young you protected Eleanor as a Big Daddy, the first of the iconic diving suit-clad monsters from Bioshock. Your emotional and psychic bond between you drives the surprisingly resonant story.
Bioshock 2 ends with a transcendent series of emotionally powerfully set-pieces. You’ll see Rapture through the eyes of a Little Sister and fight alongside the girl you came to rescue. There are multiple endings based on your decisions, and the best possible conclusion is as stirring and satisfying as any I’ve ever seen. Bioshock appeals to the brain, but Bioshock 2 aims for the heart and scores a bull’s-eye.
