Reader Review: BioShock 2

Do you have what it takes to get a review published right here on Kotaku? Steven does, as he dines on ham and jammy in the land of the lollipop.

Yes, that’s right, we’re now publishing reader reviews here on Kotaku. This is your chance to deliver sensible game purchasing advice to the rest of the Kotaku community.

And thanks to the very kind chaps at Madman Entertainment, purveyor of all kinds of cool, indie and esoteric film, the best reader review we publish each month will win a prize pack containing ten of the latest Madman DVD releases.

This review was submitted by Steven Bogos. If you’ve played BioShock 2, or just want to ask Steven more about it, leave your thoughts in the comments below.

BioShock 2 (PC)

BioShock 2 is… well, most of you already know what it is. The sequel to BioShock, the winner of many of 2007’s game of the year awards, and considered by many to be one of the greatest computer games of all time, can BioShock 2 stand up to the enormous expectation set by its predecessor?

Loved

Re-Raptured: The developers behind BioShock 2 know what made the original BioShock so great: the setting. BioShock 2 gives us enough of the same to make us feel right at home, but enough variety to avoid the ‘BioShock 1 with new guns’ feeling. Many familiar settings and characters have been tinkered with slightly, as well as new elements added to the mix, such as the Theme Park level and the Brute splicer. Take everything you liked about BioShock, and improve on it just enough to make it exciting again, but not so much as loose the feeling of the game and you have BioShock 2.

Daddy’s Home: Playing as the Big Daddy, both in multiplayer and single player, is easily the highlight of the game. In single player it may seem a bit underwhelming when you first start out but as soon as you get the drill dash upgrade, you feel like you are indestructible. The same feeling is conveyed in the multiplayer, more often than not people can come from last place to first just by donning the Big Daddy suit and racking up a killstreak.

Hated

A Match Made In Heaven This Ain’t: Being a predominantly PC gamer, and one of five gamers that boycotted MW2 and actually stuck to my boycott, I had yet to encounter the joys of matchmaking. It is regrettable that the otherwise-perfect BioShock 2 is my first experience. Finding a game for survival of the fittest (deathmatch) usually takes an ‘acceptable’ time (10-15 minutes) and you’ll probably have fun despite the lag, provided the game doesn’t put an entire team full of Aussies with an American host. If you want to play any other game mode, forget it. I stood in the ‘Capture the Sister’ lobby for almost a half hour, during which a grand total of four players joined the game.

BioShock 2 is a sequel worthy of the BioShock title, and I highly recommended any Rapture fans pick it up. It’s also good for anyone who is sick of this recent over-abundance of ‘open-world-third-person-sandbox games’, and a lack of point A to point B shooters. When did linear become a dirty word?

Reviewed by Steven Bogos

You can have your Reader Review published on Kotaku. Send your review to us at the usual address. Make sure it’s written in the same format as above and in under 500 words – yes, we’ve upped the word limit. We’ll publish the best ones we get and the best of the month will win a Madman DVD prize pack.

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