I finished Bioshock 2. finally. I've owned this game pretty much since it came out almost 4 years ago but was unable to play it on my aging rig, and in the intervening years I took a hiatus from playing new games because I was lazy/cheap about building a new rig, so... even though this is one of my favourite game series I'm still catching up. Infinite is installed and ready to go next.
anyway, I loved it, so I'm going to rant disjointedly about it.
I know this game, though still praised, is not as highly praised as its predecessor or its successor, on account of not being a true Irrational game like them, and therefore having reduced involvement from Ken Levine. however they've managed imo to build on what he's established and keep it true to the Shock spirit. this has true Shock game feels (though there were no memory hallucinations, which I found mildly disappointing).
the game mechanics are more fleshed out, the world of Rapture is as brooding and atmospheric as ever, and the characters and storytelling are still totally solid. the Splicers still say the most hilarious/deranged shit which makes you want to just lurk and listen instead of taking them out. also I found the Little Sisters in particular took on a greater character of their own, more so than in the first game. that whole aspect of the story, with the Little Sisters/Eleanor, was rather heartwarming and sweet, I'm not afraid to say (I saved them all - things would've been different if I hadn't, I'm sure).
my biggest criticism was a technical one: the sound is still a problem. I got it working well enough that it didn't totally break immersion (at one point I was playing a level with no ambient sounds, which I found totally intolerable) but it's annoying to see that this has carried over from the first game, which also had similar issues. I wonder if they've fixed it in Infinite.
other criticisms I can think of simply have to do with the style of the game and the way it's been built, so you either love it or hate it. I can see why some people wouldn't like the engine/models/physics, if you don't like the whole steampunk thing. stuff is kind of rubbery/wooden. also the combat can get overwhelming - when shit kicks off, it gets crazy pretty quickly and given the variety of weapons/ammo types/plasmids/tonics you can easily get confused about wtf to do with that much choice. enemies target you accurately and aggressively, so if you hesitate, you get fucked up.
I thought it was interesting they had a tonic that cheapened the cost of Adam for plasmids significantly but limited you to just the drill and hack tool. I might try that on my next playthrough, it'll be hard as fuck.
anyway, good job, 2K Marin. pity you were hit so hard with layoffs recently, you deserved better for this.
here's some lush screenshots just because (I took like 200+ fucking screenshots):
