feature: Daddy’s Home: Ars reviews Bioshock 2

feature: Daddy’s Home: Ars reviews Bioshock 2

The world of Rapture has a lot in common with Jurassic Park. Both fictional places tried to create a sort of closed paradise, playing with nature to fulfill the needs of their respective creators. Both experiments went horribly wrong, making a point about the will of man. In popular culture, when reach exceeds grasp, people die terrible, action-packed deaths.

Bioshock 2 takes place ten years after the events of the first game. I’ll keep this review spoiler-free for both games for those who are still playing through Bioshock due to various Steam sales, but allow me to say that things haven’t settled down since we last saw the underwater world of Rapture. Everyone is still breathing, you see lumbering riveters repairing damage to windows and other structures, and the Splicers are still hunting for ADAM and coming into contact with the Little Sisters and their hulking Big Daddy escorts. It’s a constant fight for survival, and as the frequent scenes of death prove, most are not successful.

There is something of a power vacuum, however, and a few personalities have risen to try to fill it. Bioshock 2 is the story of a Big Daddy. You might call him the Big Daddy. The game begins with a violent act, and you wake up to a world even more violent now than how it was left at the end of the previous game. You have a single name on your lips: Eleanor.

Read more