The recently released BioShock 2 is a very interesting game, it starts out very promising and then builds up, getting better and better, only really hitting its stride about two thirds of the way through.
At the start the game offers the same intoxicatingly kitsch mix of 1920's architecture, 1950's culture and pulp-style fiction as the first. It also has a similar plot – one which talks of a bigger issue of the human condition, but never really delivers anything other than sound bites to support its lofty ideals.
Unfortunately, and much like Darksiders, the game fails to pace itself – and so the last 3 areas are all pretty much rinse and repeat missions which pass by with very little bother once you've upgraded a few weapons and plasmids.Then we come to the last section, a pointless and poorly explained slog against wave-after-wave of enemies that leaves you wondering why you'd worked so hard to get to this point in the first place.
The first game reached its peak at the end, but this sequel feels like the team ran out of ideas about 60% of the way through and as such BioShock 2 squanders the first game's sense of being truly different.
You could argue that on the heels of Mass Effect 2, BioShock 2 also feels a bit old fashioned – and you'd be right, it does.
So it's with a slightly heavy heart that I consign my copy to Ebay - wondering just where the series goes from here.
