Like the first game before it, Bioshock 2 Remastered took me around a month to complete. In real-time, it was actually just over 7 hours to complete the story-line, but I did do other things in the interim and to be fair I was sick for a few days and didn’t play much of anything (still trying to get over the last of this lingering cold). That said, I have some commentary about this title along with some screens of the end of my playthrough. This isn’t exactly a new game so most of you can probably skip this post, but I like getting these things written down for posterity.

Bioshock 2 didn’t fare as well as its predecessor when it came to review scores or community opinion. There are some neat and novel ideas present, sure. It was clear that your character from the first game died at the end, and they did a good job of tying up loose ends (Fontaine taking over for Ryan at the end of the first game and then being over taken by Lamb by the beginning of the second), and explaining what happened with the little sisters, who you are, etc. The concept of playing a Big Daddy was cool, but in some cases I felt over powered compared to the main character in the first game. Despite Rapture being a similar place in this title, it still seemed to lack a bit of charm, felt much more linear and honestly it was a little too short. I blew threw it a full 3 hours faster than the original, and there wasn’t even a final boss fight. Overall it just wasn’t as good.

This of course is a byproduct of the fact that we had the original, it was very good and we’re making comparisons. If this game stood alone, you would have less of an understanding of Rapture, but it probably would have felt like a better game. This time around I chose to be the bad guy and harvest all of the little sisters for ADAM. I had several maxed out plasmids and upgraded weapons by the end of the game and felt nigh invincible. I likely got a different ending because of this, teaching my “daughter” Eleanor to be a ruthless killer as a result, and she not only killed her mother Lamb, but killed me at the very end as well. It’s a shame because it feels like they could have gone further with the story of Rapture, but I know that the sky city in Bioshock Infinite sounds intriguing as well. Not sure how the story will tie in (if at all) but I do look forward to getting into it.

Here are screens of the final bit of my playthrough. I’ll be back with more on Infinite as soon as I get into it!

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