BioShock 2 Remastered Review (pyoh1988)
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Bioshock 2. What a sequel should be: superior and evolving from the original, complementing and deepening it. And, Bioshock 2 Remastered, what a rerealise shouldn't be.
First gonna talking about vanila game
The gameplay has become much more dynamic, due to the fact that now you don’t have to switch between firearms and plasmids, and also, due to the drill, which allows you to make jerks with unrealistic speed.
In terms of weapons, the sequel does not betray the principles of good immersims: shooting is awful. 2 of the 3 available modes of some guns are simply useless with the advancement in the game, and the last shooting mode is exceptional. Damn, I tried to beat the game with only one toothpi... oh i mean with a rivet gun, and even at maximum improvement, it takes longer to kill a splicer than a micro-burst from a machine gun. And as much as 3 "Power to People" stations to spend on this, knowing that all the stations will not be enough for all the improvements for all of the weapons, isn't it stupid? It's only stupider to add this to the game as a developer. Okay, the hell am I talking about, maybe after DOOM Eternal something moved in my mind.
Oh, yeah, game now is much more linear than Bioshock 1.
Oh, yeah(2), new hacking is also dinamic. It's just a QTE now, not plumber mini-game.
Btw, now, after a showdown with big daddies, the sisters can not only be immediately harvest or rescued, but also, well... torment them a little longer (and rather yourself), briefly, you can now collect Adam, protecting the little sister from A LOTS of enemies. Yes, they made the episode before the finale of the Bioshock 1 a permanent gameplay feature, and then they also made a pathetic DLC from this, but more on that later.
Enemies have increased from the original, new daddies, splicers-tanks, older sisters have appeared. Their research with the camera has deepened, now it shoots video and requires original kill records from you, and it also makes sense, at least for the sake of tonics and damage bonuses, but tracking is but tracking progress is not so convenient now, you need to constantly go to the progress menu. Let me remind you that in the original Bioshock, after the photo, appears an unambiguous, gradually filling band.
The locations are large and, what can't be taken away from Bioshock series, they are interesting. Elite and poor districts, the secret part of Rapture, laboratories... Everything has its own history behind it, and everything is interesting to explore.
The plot, well, is really good.
What deserves special praise is the deepening of the lore by the developers without the ideological inspirer of the first game – Ken Levin. Audio diaries reveal a lot of information about political Lamb and Ryan's fights, about the plans of the first one, about people and their thoughts, and etc. But by the way, audio recordings are not the only way to present a narrative. At least, one of the first locations of Rapture that we find ourselves in is a museum that tells about the building of Rapture and the values of its founder, which he so wanted to instill in the citizens of the underwater utopia.
Music. Ah, that music! Sometimes excellent licensed jazz plays in the gameplay, and the OST itself is not worse, for example, the melody of the rescue of the last sister in the location from the mollusk smoothly turns to the roar of the older sister and then into fight music. In cut-scenes and staged moments, the soundtrack emphasizes the drama of happening things, continuing the "The Ocean on His Shoulders" style and... oh Neptune, I'm crying again...
Optimization. Vanilla game is not great, although it could be more polished. But «remastered»©® version, ooh, let's go.
First: crashes. Happen all the time, in tough scenes of ripping and tearing a bunch of enemies in the finale, just walking around the streets, while qsaving, while qloading... Yes, they always can happen.
Second: FPS drops. Arising out of nowhere and quickly disappearing. What is it, why is it?
Oh, and btw, it's a «remastered»©® version! It must correct minor flaws of the originals, right? Quick'saves for some reason stop the gameplay, but, just how it realised in other games? You press F5, at the bottom right somewhere an icon appears saying the game is being saved.
Here, the game stops for 3 seconds when the F5 key is pressed. This damn thing was an archaism even at the time of release, okay in the first part, but here... Plus, the gameplay sensitivity is similar to the sensitivity for menu... remember what small items in the menu and constantly change mouse dpi. The map is very difficult to use properly.
Well, because the publisher of the great and terrible 2k, let's discuss the Protector's Trials dlc.
Why is it?
What is it for?
What kind of diarrhea of moronic dlc-arenas-with-waves did approximately all developers have in the early 2010-s?
Okay, so, it's just an arena with waves of splicers that you'll have to protect lil sister from. And oh gods, why? The gameplay in terms of shooting in the game is bad, and the spent man-hours could be sent for polishing... But no, we will make the most disgusting DLC for masochists, add an achievement for its 100% completion and count the death threats from the players!
As a result, we have a clear attempt to play on the strings of the nostalgia of ordinary players, full of bugs, crashes, full of lack of benign changes. I just can't recomend this piece of code to everyone. Play original game.
Bioshock 2 itself is a great game, 9/10
Minerva's Den - good story DLC (wait for review btw), XX/10
Protector's Trials is bullshit that doesn't deserve even a minute spent in it, 0/10
Bioshock 2 Remastered - at least you can change FOV, 3/10
Thanks for reading