1 Overview
Bioshock II is a story-driven FPS with RPG elements developed by 2K Marin and
published in 2010. It takes place after the events of Bioshock and the levels feature
similar environments to the first game.
2 Formal Elements
2.1 Players
The main campaign is single-player only, but there is a multiplayer mode as well. You
play as a Big Daddy, known as subject Delta, who has been separated from his Little
Sister, Eleanor.
2.2 Objectives
The main objective is to reunite with the Little Sister which you are bonded to, but
there are optional objectives in the form of rescuing or harvesting all the Little
Sisters, buying and/or upgrading all plasmids, completing the research on some or all
of the enemies, and a few others.
2.3 Rules
The player may only have one weapon in the right hand and one plasmid in the left.
If the player dies, they will respawn at a Vita-Chamber with half-health and some
amount of EVE restored.
As a Big Daddy, you can attack other Big Daddies and take possession of their
Little Sister. If you choose to, you can have them guide you to a corpse with ADAM
to be harvested. While they harvest the ADAM, the player will have to protect her
from waves of enemies.
There are a limited number of Little Sisters in each level, and in the game as a
whole. The player must decide how to treat them, either rescuing them or harvesting
them. Either choice awards the player with ADAM to use in leveling up, but
harvesting gives more immediate benefit. After gathering all the Little Sisters in a
level, the player will face a Big Sister, which is a faster and plasmid-enhanced version
of a Big Daddy.
The game is a linear set of levels, yet each level may be explored freely by the
player. Unlike the first game, there is no backtracking, as some levels are flooded or
destroyed following story-events.
2.3.1 Equipment and Inventory
Managing one’s inventory is extremely important. You may only carry a limited
amount of ammo for each weapon (although this may be upgraded throughout the
game), and 5 health kits and 5 EVE hypos. Running short of ammo, health
kits, or EVE hypos can easily result in death and respawning. Scavenging
around the environments for these items and for cash to buy them at vending
machines.
2.3.2 Hacking and Plasmids
Throughout the levels, the player will find vending machines, security cameras, and
turrets of different kinds. These may all be hacked. The vending machines give
reduced prices to the player, while the security cameras, turrets, and flying bots
become allies in a fight. If the player is clever, they can maneuver a Big Daddy or Bid
Sister into an area with hacked security cameras and turrets, turning a challenging
fight into a fair or even easy one.
2.4 Procedures
There are several procedures that the player will engage in during play.
- Defeat Big Daddy/Big Sister: In order to acquire a Little Sister, the player must defeat a Big Daddy. These are initially neutral to the player as you go through each level, and only become hostile upon attacking them. Before attacking, a wise player will pick an ambush spot and stock up on ammo and health kits/EVE hypos. The Big Sister encounters are more difficult, since they will occur automatically after the player has freed or harvested all the Little Sisters in a level. These are one of the few times where I felt frustrated in the game, since I would often die, only to respawn and have half health/EVE and be minus the ammo and health items I’d used trying to defeat her the previous times. The player cannot advance without defeating the Big Sister.
- Defend Little Sister: During ADAM harvesting, the Little Sister is defenseless, and the player must defend her from waves of enemies. As the game progresses, the level of the enemies increases, making each harvest more harrowing.
- Find/Destroy Item: At several points during the game, the player will be tasked with finding or destroying a specific item(s). The player must explore the environment or follow the quest markers until the item is taken care of.
- Defeat Boss: There are several bosses in the game, and the player must learn their attack patterns to some extent in order to defeat them. However, many of them are simple bullet sponges.
- Explore Level: Exploring each level is a joy. The developers have hidden audiologs which tell backstory, give combinations for safes and locked doors, rare plasmids, and lots of random items and cash. Scavenging the items is necessary to succeed in the game, but learning about the history of the city of Rapture is also a pleasure.
2.5 Resources
2.5.1 Abstract
- Health: Health measures how much damage the player can take. If it runs out, the player will respawn at the nearest discovered Vita-Chamber.
- EVE: EVE allows the player to use plasmids.
- ADAM: ADAM is gathered from corpses by Little Sisters. The player may either rescue the Little Sisters to receive their ADAM, or harvest them directly. Either way, the ADAM is necessary to purchase and upgrade plasmids.
- Plasmid (upgrades): There are 10 plasmids in the base game, each of which may be upgraded twice. Each allows the player different abilities, such as becoming invisible, causing enemies to become allies and attack other enemies, summoning fire, ice, or electricity, etc.
- Passive Plasmids: There are a large number of passive plasmids that the player can equip. These include abilities like linking health kits and EVE, so that whenever the player uses a health kit, a small amount of EVE is also replenished.
2.5.2 Physical
- Weapons: There are 8 different weapons, each of which uses different ammo and is useful in different situations. The speargun, for example, functions as a sniper rifle, but has the useful property of allowing the player to retrieve the spears from fallen enemies and the walls/floor, etc. However, like most sniper rifles in other games, the amount of ammo that can be carried is extremely limited and the firing rate is quite slow.
- Health kits: Health kits are used to replenish health. Only a limited number may be carried at any given time.
- EVE hypos: EVE hypos are used to replenish one’s EVE, which is like mana or magicka and is used to cast plasmids. Only a limited number may be carried at any given time.
- Ammo: Each gun has multiple types of ammo, but the player can only carry a limited amount each time.
- Cash: Money is used to buy ammo and other items.
2.6 Conflicts
2.6.1 Rescuing versus Harvesting
As mentioned before, there is an immediate reward versus delayed benefit mechanic
at work in this conflict. Harvesting, although morally questionable, gives the player a
larger reward initially. However, for rescuing the Little Sisters the player receives
extra ADAM and plasmids later. Thus the player could look at this simply as an
economic choice, but personally, I remember seeing the struggle of a Little Sister
while I harvested her the first time I played Bioshock, and after that I created a
new game file just so that I would not have that ”virtual” crime on my
conscious.
2.6.2 Revenge versus Forgiveness
While playing through certain levels, three different NPCs will either taunt the
player, or send the player on dangerous missions before helping. At the end of the
level, the player is faced with the choice of killing them or sparing them. Sparing
them allows the player to achieve a ”positive” game ending, and for one
of the NPCs at least, gives the player robot allies at specific points in the
game.
2.7 Boundaries
2.7.1 Map
Each map may be freely explored, but they are arranged in a linear order and there is
no backtracking allowed.
2.7.2 NPCs
Almost every NPC in the game is an enemy and must be killed or avoided. The only
exceptions are the Little Sisters.
2.8 Outcomes
The game has limited outcomes. Depending on how you treat the Little Sisters and
how you treat three key NPCs throughout the game, your Little Sister, Eleanor,
will either forgive or try to exact revenge on the woman who kidnapped
her.
3 Dramatic Elements
Like the first Bioshock and its successor, Bioshock Infinite, Bioshock II features a
strong, well-written and voice-acted story. As a Big Daddy, the player has been
genetically and experimentally modified to be bigger and stronger than a normal
person. You are also bonded to a Little Sister, whose death will break the bond and
cause you to drop into a coma.
The action of the story takes place entirely in and around the mid-ocean
underwater city of Rapture, a Libertarian haven created by Andrew Ryan. As learned
from the first game, and during play of the second, Rapture was supposed to be a
utopia for free thinkers, artists, business-people and scientists who wanted to live free
of the restrictions of conventional society. However, soon classes emerged, gangs
appeared, and scientists created plasmids, genetic modifications which gave
powers like telekinesis, the ability to summon fire, and freeze or electrocute
things.
Little Sisters were introduced to harvest ADAM, a resource needed to create
plasmids, and the Big Daddies were created to control the them. Chaos soon ensued,
with most citizens going crazy and selfishly trying to get as much ADAM as they
could.
Whereas the first game primarily explores the breakdown of a Libertarian society,
the second game introduces the character of Sophia Lamb, a Collectivist. This allows
the game to explore the concepts of collectivism. However, from a game mechanics
point of view, there are no enemy types that could be called collective, for instance,
an enemy that grabs onto the player and is killed in order to allow other enemies to
damage the player.
3.1 Characters
The player receives messages from Eleanor Lamb throughout the game, and
is in frequent passive radio contact with Sophia Lamb, Augustus Sinclair,
Holloway, Poole, and Alexander, which copies the first game’s use of radios to
provide context and mission goals. The player may also find notes scrawled on
walls, audiotapes, and other indirect forms of communication from other
characters.
3.2 Story
Your Little Sister has been kidnapped, and you must rescue her. The rest of the plot
revolves around the player encountering multiple obstacles on the way to rescuing
her.
4 Dynamic Elements
4.1 Hacking
Hacking allows the player to save money and to turn the security elements of the
environment to the player’s advantage.
4.2 Plasmid/Weapon Interactions
The Inferno and Electrocute plasmids cause enemies to become shocked or set on fire,
and thus create opportunities for the player to attack them with impunity. The
Freeze plasmid turns enemies into blocks of ice, which can be destroyed if enough
damage is dealt.
4.3 Plasmid/Environment Interactions
The Inferno and Electrocute plasmids allow many interactions with the environment.
Oil spills are flammable, and any pool of water will kill any enemy standing in it if
electrocuted. These interactions encourage player awareness of the environment and
tactical planning of battles.
5 Conclusion
Bioshock II enhances many gameplay features from the previous game and gives the
player an interesting second look at the world of Rapture.
5.1 Potent Elements
The weapons and plasmids interact with the environment during combat, and
exploration of the environment allows the player to freely discover as much or as
little of the story and secrets that Rapture has to offer. Besides the pure
gameplay, the story is quite interesting and provides a few challenging moral
questions.
5.2 Areas for Improvement
Although the UI in itself is quite helpful, I played the game on PC using a controller,
which is something that either didn’t exist when the game was released, or was
something which the developers never thought of. Consequently, all the user tips and
explanations for how to do things were for the mouse and keyboard, and I
had to discover what button / button combination did what. Especially
in a game where resources are limited, this lead to a lot of wasted ammo,
health kits, EVE hypos, etc, until I figured out the controls. New abilities
are introduced throughout the game that make use of these unexplained
controls.
As mentioned before, the fights against the Big Sisters cannot be avoided or
skipped, and this can lead to a cycle where the player has less and less ammo, health
kits, and EVO hypos to aid in defeating it.
No comments:
Post a Comment