Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Currently, the prevailing definition of the word “gamer” is “someone who plays video games.” However, the label has an older connotation. For years, gamers were people who populated the tables of college dorm basements, comic store back rooms and Mom’s dining room, one of them hunched behind a screen describing unspeakable horrors while the others rolled dice, complained about rulings and flung Cheetos at each other. Thankfully, that hobby is alive and well in the world of testosterone-charged first-person shooters and time-destroying MMOGs. With love in its heart and tongue firmly in its cheek, The Gamers: Dorkness Rising shows us how these “real” gamers live and play.

Produced by the Dead Gentlemen, Dorkness Rising is a follow-up to the original film called The Gamers. However, it’s not necessarily a sequel. The story centers on Kevin Lodge, a man struggling to create a unique campaign world for Dungeons & Dragons and writing up its first module. His regular gaming group, however, is frustrating him at every turn due to their shameless power-gaming rules-mongering ways. To fill the ranks of their small group, one of the players – arrogant, by-the-book Cass – enlists his ex-girlfriend, Joanna. It turns out that Joanna, like Kevin, is more interested than the story than the rules. The perspective shifts between the players and their characters, and as the adventuring party embarks on their quest to retrieve the Mask of Death from an evil necromancer, the gamers themselves begin to grow in their understanding of both their characters and the reasons they play these games.

At first blush, there’s a lot of similarity between The Gamers and Dorkness Rising. It has gamers rolling dice, yelling at one another and making off-color jokes at each other’s expense. If you’ve never sat down for a session of Dungeons & Dragons before, you’ll get a pretty good idea of how they tend to proceed. There are plenty of jokes about both the nature of table-top role-playing games and the people that play them. Some of these might fly over the heads of a general audience, but anybody who’s rolled dice to determine a hit against a goblin’s armor class can tell you they’re right on the money. Beyond the scenes and jokes themselves, the film’s probably been responsible for an explosion of conversations that begin with someone saying “Dude, something just like that happened to me when…”

The surprising thing about Dorkness Rising isn’t the humor, however. This film has got a lot of heart. It parodies the lives of gamers and plays up the hilarity of some of their arguments out of love rather than spite. The story has a lot to say about the nature of friendship, the way people immerse themselves in their hobbies and the process of storytelling itself. Despite the ways in which certain characters behave, the film never resorts to mean-spirited or blatantly gross-out humor to get a laugh. That isn’t to say that this comedy is high-brow, by any stretch – there’s bawdy jokes aplenty. But the jokes never really exist for their own sake. Like action that has the audience riveted in a well-directed film, the comedy in this story grows organically from character interaction and growth.

The only real drawback to this film is that it’s aimed at a very specific audience. A lot of the jokes, references and situations will be utterly lost on anybody who hasn’t ever played a table-top role-playing game before. And beyond that, there isn’t a whole lot to say about Dorkness Rising. Chances are, if you’re at all connected to table-top gaming, you’re aware of this film and you know if it’s up your alley or not. While there’s a lot to like about both of the films in The Gamers series, beyond their good-natured humor and the surprising quality of the storytelling in the second one there isn’t a whole lot to say about them. They’re funny and clever and aimed straight at table-topping dorks everywhere. If that sounds like your cup of tea, then by all means pick these up on your Netflix queue. But not everybody’s going to enjoy the same kind of thing. That’s just as true in the gaming world as it is when it comes to movies. I remember this one time I was playing a rogue in a Planescape campaign and…

Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.

(NOTE: May contain minor spoilers. Readers be ye warned!)

Subtitled THIS TIME IT’S PERSONAL. (Right, Harbinger?)

Here we are, at last. I know quite a few people have already played and reviewed this game. Some are even playing it again. I actually went back to the original game to start a new playthrough to span both games, and while I know there will be some repetition in dialog and encounters, the story’s solid enough to withstand repeated playthroughs. That’s more than you can say for a lot of games out there today. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Mass Effect 2 opens with a shocking curbstomp battle between Commander Shepard’s intrepid vessel, the Normandy, and a mysterious attacker that can see the plucky ship despite its stealth systems and blasts through its defense systems like they weren’t there. Shepard manages to get his crew to safety before he’s blown out to space and dies. The pro-human semi-terrorist “by-any-means-necessary” organization Cerberus scrapes Shepard off of the nearby planet’s surface and spends two years resurrecting him. The Reapers, extragalactic Big Bads introduced in the first Mass Effect, are still a major threat despite the government’s denial of their existence. They’re not helping humanity in the disappearance of their colonies, either, so Cerberus turns to the reconstructed Shepard to undertake a suicide mission through an unexplored mass relay to uncover the source of the abductions and send back more information on the Reapers. Because who better to send on a mission where everybody’s likely to die than someone who’s been dead already?

Stuff I Didn’t Like

We got this instead of a vehicle. I hope you’re all happy.

Wait. Shepard dies? He wasn’t in a coma or suspended animation and presumed dead by the galaxy at large? I found that to be a little far-fetched. Sure, technology in the future depicted by Mass Effect is pretty advanced, and being rebuilt by Cerberus explains why you can implement so many cybernetic upgrades to Shepard as the game goes on, but the whole resurrection angle pushes the limits of believability. Shepard doesn’t really seem that bothered by it, either – there’s no crisis of faith or any real rumination on what thoughts are evoked by the experience of coming back from the dead. Even the more spiritual team members don’t think to ask, which would have been a good opportunity for the player to do a little role-playing in choosing to start a deep theological conversation, or give a Renegade-oriented “None of your damn business” response.

Oh, and the story problems don’t end there. We do learn more about the Reapers, as to what motivates them and why they do what they do, but it still doesn’t explain why it wasn’t explained to us previously. Did Sovereign go for a stream of verbal crap in the style of Matrix: Reloaded’s Architect just to mess with human heads, or was it embarrassed that the motivations of its supremely powerful machine-race were so basic and organic-like that it needed an extra layer of obfuscation? Or had the writers not figured it out yet themselves at that point? Maybe they had but they wanted to keep us guessing. Don’t get me wrong, the writing in this game isn’t bad, not by a long shot. More on that later.

The only other major insurmountable problem I had beyond the story issues was the scanning mini-game. I touched on it previously and it appears that my initial assessment was on the money. Here it is again to save you some time:

Some of the complaints about the Mako sections of the first game were their length and tedium. Scanning in the sequel takes just as long and… is just as tedious. Another Mako complaint is, obviously, it’s handling. So if scanning is meant to be an improvement over the Mako, the controls should handle smoothly and be a delightful diversion from ducking for cover like we’re playing Gears of War, right? Sorry, that’s not the case here. The reticle moves slowly over the surface of a world when you’re scanning, and unless you want to risk missing a particularly rich pocket of Element Zero, you need to drag it across every square mile of the planet’s surface.

Now one thing the scanning mini-game does well is convey the feeling that one is in space. And I don’t mean it hearkens to Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica. No, it hearkens more to 2001: A Space Odyssey or video recordings of NASA operations. That is to say that it’s lengthy, quiet, procedural and really rather dull.

Stuff I Liked

“Gosh, I hope you weren’t fond of your face, buddy.” *ZAP*

Let’s move on to better news. The other major complaint about the first Mass Effect was the inventory system, which stuffed your interstellar backpack with a plethora of ultimately useless junk that you then needed to sell one at a time to the nearest vendor. BioWare tossed that stuff into the Mako when they shoved it out the airlock, and the system of managing equipment in the sequel is extremely streamlined. Rather than switching weapons, you upgrade the models available to your team members. While these upgrades must be purchased with resources gathered by the aforementioned scanning malarkey, you won’t be thinking about that tedious stuff as your new Normandy takes you from one gunfight to the next.

Speaking of fights, the combat system in Mass Effect 2 is also somewhat streamlined. You can map more powers for easy use, you don’t have quite as many to manage, squad commands are broken a bit more easily and fights are bit faster-paced. The measures of protection on your foes, as well as their scale, can vary from encounter to encounter which can lead to breaking up the monotony of the cover-based shooting. The multiple map buttons mean you can address a particular enemy’s defensive measure at a moment’s notice, provided you don’t just pound them into submission with a stream of mass-accelerated death or your favorite physics-altering biotic ability.

Like the previous game, this one is rendered very well, with the environments and technology providing a great sense of immersion. The voice-acting, for the most part, also draws the player into the experience, as they travel from one exotic locale to the next to recruit members for Shepard’s suicide mission. And being able to customize your armor’s look was a nice touch, along with the fish tank & Space Hamster you could add to your cabin on the Normandy.

Stuff I Loved

Thane: “Shepard, what is this ‘DeviantArt’ site you sent me?”
Shepard: *whistles innocently*

BioWare might be a little shaky in the story department, but one of their strengths is their characters. Mass Effect 2 gives us a diverse, interesting and well-written cast, from the penitent and quiet assassin Thane to Subject Zero, who uses aggression and profanity to conceal a deeply wounded soul. The conversations Shepard has with these individuals give the game a surprising amount of depth for what could easily have been a Gears of War clone with a few RPG elements. While this might come as no surprise to long-time fans of BioWare’s games, the purchase of the company by EA could have caused some concern. However, as much as EA might mess with other aspects of a game – DLC or DMA or some other acronyms – it appears they’re leaving the story alone, and thank the Enkindlers for that.

Being able to import your Shepard from the first game gives the experience a fantastic sense of cohesion and immersion as well. It’s surprising the amount of continuity exists between the two games, from the outcome of major events to minor encounters you frankly might have forgotten about in the intervening years. Returning characters are a welcome sight, even when they’re hated foes and especially when they’re beloved party members. There’s a real sense that time has passed since the end of the first game, and every life you touched then, even in passing, has been changed because of your influence for better or for worse.

The last thing that really made this game enjoyable for me was the changes to the conversation system. It’s been said that quick-time events should be an integral part of gameplay and not thrown in arbitrarily. The Paragon/Renegade interrupts are not mandatory for you to finish a conversation, but setting one off not only flows well with the conversation but often yields pretty spectacular results. On top of that, conversations in general flow more naturally, with characters moving as they speak, camera angles changing dynamically during conversations and subjects reaching far beyond the usual “What did you think of the last mission?” or “Do you think I look cute in this armor?” fare.

Show »

“I believe the organic saying is: ‘BOOM. Headshot.’”

Bottom Line: Are you a fan of the first Mass Effect? Buy this game. Do you like sci-fi shooting action? Buy this game. Looking for a relatively decent story with solid, well-rounded characters? Buy this game. Got a void in your life that only a Space Hamster can fill? Buy this game. Have I made it clear yet? No? Go buy Mass Effect 2. It’s well worth the money, the time and the frustration of the scanning mechanic. Hell, I plan on playing it again, not once, but at least twice. I mean, we’ve established previously that I’m pretty damn dull, but at least something like this is more exciting than Star Trek Online:

Runner-Up in Review Wars II, over at the Escapist.

The first of many sword-in-the-ground opening screens.

I cherished my golden cartridges as a child. The original Legend of Zelda was one of the first Nintendo games we owned and I played it like it was going out of style. My sisters and I mapped out every dungeon for each other, as this was back in the days before GameFAQs or the Internet or internal combustion. It was innovative and challenging, and when a sequel was announced the children in the house were understandably excited. This was, as I’ve intimated, a more innocent time before I realized how disappointing sequels could be when they simply retread the ground covered by the first installment – but even now, I’d have been impressed by it.

Ten-year-old me: “This is a Zelda game? GNARLY!”

Instead of rehashing the top-down interface of the first game, the designers took it in a different direction, a similar direction to Castlevania. The Adventure of Link is a side-scrolling adventure-RPG, full of the familiar foes from the first games seen from this new perspective. I had no idea moblins were taller than Link. Anyway, replacing the sub-items such as the boomerang and bombs is a magic system, and Link has moves at his disposal other than “slash” and “toss my sword with power.” Other than that, there’s dungeons that need to be conquered in a specific order, a mysterious Big Bad at the end of it all and a damsel in distress named Zelda who needs rescuing.

Stuff I Didn’t Like

Wait, what? Already?

• There’s a ‘lives’ system. It’s perhaps the most frustrating thing in the entire game, considering that neither the first game nor any one following had one, for good reason. In the first game, when Link got rocked, he’d be sent back to the beginning of the dungeon or the starting point in the overworld map. Here, there are ‘checkpoints’ that exist within the dungeons and the overworld encounters that will put you back to the start of the current room or scene. But being sent back to that checkpoint after stabbity death or being set on fire costs you one of your three lives. Once they’re gone, the game is over and you have to start from the beginning. While you’re able to continue so you don’t lose special items or experience gained, spending hours slogging through mazes only to lose your last life just as you’re about to down that frustrating boss can require a herculean effort to choose “Continue” instead of “Fuck This.”
• You can find little 1-Up dolls scattered throughout the world to help the lives situation, but there are two problems with this. First of all, unlike the heart and magic containers that permenantly boost the amount of life or magic you have, the 1-Up dolls do not permanently increase your total number of lives. They just give you an extra life to be snatched away by a jerkass Ironknuckle or a misjudged jump. Secondly, some of the dolls are on obtainable after a long sojourn across the world and fighting legions of creatures that might possibly lose you one of your lives anyway. So these, like the lives system to which they are related, are completely arbitrary.

Stuff I Liked

I hate fighting Ironknucles. I don’t hate them, just fighting them.

• This game is challenging. The Ironknuckle enemies in particular can be a real struggle, and in some case come across as more challenging than some of the ‘boss’ characters. There are a couple bosses you can defeat just by jumping repeatedly on their head (provided you have the ‘downthrust’ maneuver) and Ironknuckles will just raise their sheilds as you sit there hopping up and down on them like a flea on a hot griddle. What I like about these foes and the overall difficulty curve of this game is that it’s consistent, gradual and, as I said, challenging.
• Like the previous game, the ‘temples’ are laid out in a fairly linear fashion that help you figure out where to go next. The map is vast, and the environments are varied but it doesn’t get confusing. Like many modern games, the optional items (’side quests’ if you will) require a little digging, but the construction of the temples and their connection act as a guide on their own without the need for a FAQ or online guide – neither of which existed in 1989.

Stuff I Loved

Yes. Yes you are.

• This was the first Zelda game and one of the first console RPGs to have NPCs that gave information, support and even quests as you progressed through the game. Instead of defeating just destroying monsters to earn new powers, you need to do some tasks that might seem menial to learn new magic spells. Some of the inhabitants of the town are interested in helping you while others just want to go about their business. And some young ladies even invite Link into their homes to restore his health. Of course older women do it too, so it’s not as sexy as it sounds.
• There are some good musical bits in this game, for a relic of the 8-bit era. The temple music in particular stands out. It’s been recycled a couple times for the Smash Brothers franchise, and it’s some of my favorite music from the Zelda series.
• Despite being laid out completely differently from the original Zelda, it feels like high fantasy adventure through and through. It established a lot of the tropes similar games follow to this day, and actually holds up after all of the years. I recently fired it up through the collector’s edition on the GameCube, and it wasn’t just nostalgia that had me enjoying it. To this day, it’s a solidly built, engrossing, challenging and very fun game.

Bottom Line: If you find yourself frustrated by the convoluted plots and overhyped CG of modern games, fire up the Adventure of Link. It’s a refreshing trip down memory lane that’s still a blast to play.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

I think it’s safe to say that just about anything can be adapted into a film. Even in this little obscure corner of the Internet, quite a few adaptations have been reviewed as they’ve passed through my mailbox or browser. Starship Troopers is the adaptation of a novel. The Mutant Chronicles adapted a tabletop role-playing game. In The Name of the King had something to do with the video game Dungeon Siege . …I think. These adaptations run the gamut of being generally faithful to their source material, to preserving the spirit of the original while rewriting a good portion of it for one reason or another, to bending the franchise over a rail and gleefully going to town while making obscene gestures at the fan base. Wanted falls into that middle category, adapting a comic book for the big screen in way that might not be terribly recognizable to the comic’s fans but is still charged with enough of the original’s spirit to not descend into an incoherent disappointing mess. Like X-Men: The Last Stand did. I still have nightmares…

If anything can disperse the aforementioned nightmares, it’s this. ‘Wanted’ indeed.

Wanted was a short-run comic book series penned by Mark Millar about a down-on-his-luck office schlub named Wesley Gibson who has his hum-drum life of corporate drudgery interrupted by a sexy foul-mouthed assassin named Fox who informs him that his father, the greatest killer of super-beings who ever lived (appropriately dubbed ‘The Killer’) has died and left his son a substantial fortune. To earn it, Wesley must embrace his destiny of super-villainy, overcome years of self-deprecation that anybody who spends any time in a cubicle can tell you is a side-effect of office work and kill a whole lot of super-heroes. There are a lot of super-powers thrown around the pages of Wanted, but Wesley’s power is, simply, making people stop breathing. With bullets. Lots and lots of bullets.

The film adaptation does away with the super-hero motif, making it more a straight-forward badass action flick and less an examination of what a super-powered world would be like if the super-villains had won the seemingly endless struggle between good and evil. Wesley is still an office schlub, Fox is still hot, and there are still lots and lots of bullets. However, instead of joining a fraternity of super-villains, Wes joins a fraternity of assassins who use their work to ensure the tapestry of fate does not come apart at the seams. They get their orders from a magic loom. And no, I have no idea how that thing works.

I wish I looked that good working a desk job.

Much like the comic book, this movie is less about the “what” and more about the “who.” Wesley as a protagonist is someone with whom just about anybody can relate, and like his blonde comic-book counterpart, we actually find ourselves cheering for him as he breaks free of his corporate shackles, learns to curve bullets and embarks on a journey to discover who he really is, because that quiet mousy pushover in that cubicle is not him, or who he wants to be. This journey of self-discovery is a bit more violent than most, but it’s still a journey worth taking.

The other thing Wanted has going for it are moments that worked just as well in the comics as they do on the screen. There’s the moment where Wesley shoots the wings off of flies, moments where he lashes out against his co-workers, the moment where his pseudo-mentor Morgan Freeman drops the F-bomb and the moment where Angelina Jolie as Fox walks around dressed only in her tattoos. Some new elements that take the place of super-villainy have moments of their own, like the moment where Wesley curves a bullet for the first time or uses a car in a very interesting way to get a shot on his target. They’re the kind of moments that make me smile, even upon reflection.

Angelina Jolie and the luckiest car in the world.

The biggest problem Wanted suffers from is that these moments are not necessarily directly related to one another. They are, instead, strung together with a plot that has all of the tensile strength and cohesion as a slightly frayed string of dental floss. In losing the super-powers, Wanted also lost a lot of its color and charm. The graphic novel had me rolling or cheering just about every other page. The film manages a few laughs and a smile or two, but isn’t quite the same. It is, in essence, the generic corner store version of your favorite soda pop – it’s still fizzy and tastes kind of similar, but you can tell the difference.

Seriously, hearing ‘Red’ drop his Precision F-Strike on us is worth the price of admission.

Wanted wavers a bit on the line between recommended watching and something you should skip. What puts it just barely in the positive column is the very self-aware nature of the film. Unlike some other adaptations out there, it’s ashamed of neither its source material nor the idea of taking the piss out of itself. Cleolinda Jones, in the preface to her Wanted in 15 Minutes, says that this film is “outrageous and stupid and funny and knows it“. James McEvoy is having just as much fun here as he did playing Mr. Tumnus in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, if not more. Of course, in Narnia he didn’t have the chance to make out with Angelina Jolie. I had fun watching Wanted, and reading the graphic novel again afterward was even more fun in light of this adaptation, which makes it a success for me and earns a recommendation. It’s not the greatest badass action film out there – Shoot ‘Em Up is a better self-parody of the genre – nor is it the best comic book adaptation film to date. That honor belongs to Iron Man and the only thing endangering it is coming out on May 7th. Because if anything is going to dethrone Iron Man, it isn’t going to be Wanted – it’ll be Iron Man 2. And I cannot wait for that.

Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.

“Somewhere… beyond the sea, somewhere… waiting for me…”

I mentioned in my review of the first BioShock that Rapture is a living, breathing entity. One of the biggest impressions made by its sequel is that the underwater city didn’t just up and disappear after the conclusion of the first game. Rapture marched on without us, and when we return to it, the city is both instantly recognizable and possessed with the feeling that something has gone horribly, horribly wrong.

…Okay, Rapture wasn’t that great a place to live to begin with, at least when we’re first introduced to it. But whereas in the first game the Splicers felt like a disorganized and individualistic mob of gibbering pseudo-zombies driven mad by their psychic powers, here they have been given purpose, direction and even promises of redemption. There are still forces struggling to control Rapture and maintain the flow of the precious material known as ADAM that functions as the life-blood of the city.

Into this volatile mix of elements comes Subject Delta, a prototype Big Daddy awakened from hibernation. Unlike the other not-so-gentle giants, Delta can use plasmids and shares a bond with a particular Little Sister. Like Jack, the protagonist of the first game, we as Delta are presented with both overarching obstacles to overcome and the means, through our choices and actions (or inactions), to change Rapture forever.

Since the introduction of Something in the Sea, I was looking forward to this release. The first game did a fantastic job building atmosphere, telling a story and actually having underlying themes and concepts that extended the game beyond yet another exercise in shooting bullets at things until they fall down. So how did the sequel fare?

Stuff I Didn’t Like

“What’s that? There’s a lack of innovation? NOOOOOOOO!“

BioShock, for all of its echoes of, callbacks to and inspiration from System Shock 2, broke new ground in the realm of console shooters. Its narrative complexity, philosophical grounding and unique aesthetic set it head and shoulders above others in the genre, most of whom are trying to capture the money-making magic of Halo. BioShock 2 feels much less innovative. While there isn’t anything wrong with taking what worked in a successful title and attempting to improve it, the feeling that we’ve been here before can water the enthusiasm of the player somewhat. The first half of the game, beyond the novelty of Delta’s abilities as a Big Daddy, feel awfully similar to most of the preceding title. There’s something about the story’s structure and pacing that feels somewhat “safe”, at least at first. It’s difficult for me to fully articulate why this bothered me. Reinventing the wheel isn’t necessary when making a sequel, after all.

Anyway, the only thing persistent from the first game that really continued to bug me as I played was the knowledge that what Yahtzee calls “that side-tracking shit” was going to get pulled on me any time the objective at hand seemed simple to complete. In fact, my wife and I both quoted the Zero Punctuation review of BioShock many, many times as I played through. The main antagonist in BioShock 2 is female which makes it feel even more like she’s SHODAN with skin on. Again, this is a minor complaint, and to be honest it’s really the only complaint I can make.

Stuff About Which I’m Ambivalent

A new section in my reviews. Shocking, no?

So I dove into the multiplayer that I spent some time saying we didn’t need and I’m ambivalent about it. I don’t love it but I’m also a bit surprised in that I don’t loathe it. As much as I appreciate its attempt to mix up the online shooter formula with trials, unlockable loadouts & items and something that vaguely resembles a story available through your apartments’ radio announcements and audio logs, it’s still an online shooter. There’s some fun to be had as you combine plasmids with firearms and especially when you stumble across a Big Daddy suit, but I stand by my initial feeling that it’s a little tacked on.

Stuff I Liked

Gives new meaning to the phrase “Drill, baby, drill.”

First of all, you’re a Big Daddy. You’re a towering, ponderous, super-strong giant in an armored diving suit and your melee weapon of choice is a huge drill. There’s nothing about this concept I don’t like. Now, if you’ll recall, in the first BioShock Big Daddies can be taken down by either our silent protagonist or a mob of Splicers. What differentiates you from those other unfortunate Big Daddies is the fact you have (at least I’m hoping) a functional frontal lobe. Tactics actually come into play in this game beyond “chase down the bad guys and set them on fire”, which is something I’ll discuss in the next section.

The slight changes to the weapons loadout work well. Having the drill & rivet gun definitely add to the “You’re a Big Daddy now” feeling, and wielding a double-barreled shotgun made me wonder how Bruce Campbell would fare in this situation. A chainsaw isn’t that far removed from a drill, after all. Anyway, there’s also the fact that you can use your plasmids at the same time as your other weapons, which not only saves time in switching from one to the other but also allows for some of that creative thinking stuff. The game actually rewards you for being creative and switching things up with the research bonuses.

While the voice-acting isn’t quite as immersive as that of the first BioShock, it’s still quite good, especially when it comes to the characters of Eleanor and Alex. I’ll stop my train of thought at that station because I don’t want to spoil it for you. Finally, the plumbing system from the first game is replaced with a much more straightforward mini-game for hacking. Unlike the replacement systems for decryption and bypasses in Mass Effect 2, it’s far less tedious and a bit more challenging to hack something, and it’s quite rewarding when you pull a hack off while under enemy fire.

Stuff I Loved

…Oh God.

“You might stop fearing death,” said a member of TV Tropes about the games Vita-Chambers, “but that doesn’t stop you from being afraid.” No character drives this point home more than the Big Sisters. Originally planned to be a single recurring villain, the Big Sister is an extremely elite sort of antagonistic creature that really, really doesn’t like you messing with her pint-sized dress-wearing barefoot counterparts. Unlike the huge and often passive Big Daddies, Big Sisters actively seek you out, chasing you through Rapture and using combinations of lithe acrobatics, highly evolved plasmids and a wicked sword-like ADAM extraction needle to encourage you to stop. The knowledge that you can pop out of a Vita-Chamber nearby after she hands you a severe ass-kicking never stops the blood-curdling screech they emit as they track you down from being terrifying.

The game tells you to “Prepare yourself” when the Big Sister is coming for you. Thankfully you can channel your fear into those preparations by laying traps, hacking security systems and loading up on more effective ammunition. BioShock 2 rewards creative thinking, as I’ve said, and this includes setting up some very nasty surprises for enemies coming your way. Both when dealing with a Big Sister and watching over an adopted Little Sister as she gathers ADAM from a corpse, the best way to ensure your survival and conserve your resources is to examine the area, plot out possible routes of approach and trap them accordingly. The dead strewn about Rapture lets you pick and choose where your gathering operations take place, and on more than one occasion I’d come into a room with a vent and smile, because I knew exactly where I’d be meeting the Big Sister. This didn’t make the experience of fighting them less harrowing, for me, and I played on Normal difficulty. I suspect future playthroughs will have me cursing more and voiding myself less when the screaming Big Sister comes at me out of a haze of fire and terror.

This brings me to the Little Sisters.

Maybe my paternal instincts kick in hardcore when I see one. Maybe the team at 2K have really made them more sympathetic over the years. Maybe I’m just a pussy. However, when the Little Sister looks up from the broken body of “Mr. Bubbles” only to smile brightly at you, and in some cases hop up and down excitedly (“Are we going to be together now, Daddy?”), there’s no way in hell I can bring myself to tear them apart for the sake of holding a flailing sea slug in my hand. And killing Little Sisters, besides guaranteeing one of the games ‘bad’ endings, would deprive you of some very funny and rather heartwarming lines of dialog.

For example, carry a Little Sister on your shoulders, then zap a Splicer with the Electro Bolt plasmid and/or pelt them with bullets from the machine gun. “Look, Daddy!” the Little Sister cries with glee. “He’s dancing!” And if you’re in the middle of a gathering operation, and one of the Splicers gets to your Little Sister, rush over with your drill in full spin. As you reduce the would-be pederast to little bloody chunks, the Little Sister proclaims “Nobody messes with my daddy!” Finally, there’s the “Daddy? You always save me from the monsters” line when you pick her up after a harrowing battle, and the very soft and heart-felt “Thank you” spoken to you after some of them crawl into their vents after being rescued.

Again, maybe it’s just me. Maybe you’ll go into this game with the intent to rip every single one of these toddling terrors to shreds. That’s your call. For me, protecting and rescuing the Little Sisters added depth to the game and really pulled me into the experience. We learn a lot more about them, what they go through in the rather horrific process that creates them and how they see Rapture. Especially after those experiences, harvesting them for their parasites rather than setting them free seems as cruel an act as anything perpetuated by the game’s villains.

BioShock 2 isn’t just BioShock with a fresh coat of paint and a few cool new weapons. It’s not entirely different, either, and if you haven’t played the first game you might feel a bit lost, confused or even disinterested. Fans of the first game are in for a treat, and while it doesn’t really push the envelope in any way, it does what the first game did very well and, in some cases, better. In a world where sequels are often an ever-extending litany of disappointments in light of the original title, BioShock 2 does what good sequels always should.

Bottom Line: You may want to play the first game before picking this one up. But even if you don’t, in my opinion, it’s worth your time, it’s fun to play and it still tells a good story that has something going on besides loud gunplay and teabagging. Buy it.