“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.

Hope you survive your visit.

Like my review of Mass Effect, this is in preparation for my acquisition of Bioshock 2, which was released in stores yesterday. Now, I know a whole lot of people are all over this sequel and you’ve probably already moved on yourself, but until I too have gained enough of that arbitrary capitalist-fuel bank-managed digital data called “money” – because, let’s face it, most wealth is measured in 1s and 0s than it is in bullion these days – I’m still playing older games since I can’t afford the new ones. Except Star Trek Online.

Yes, I know that makes me dull, shut up already.

Our story begins in 1960 with a spectacular plane crash. The protagonist, Jack, is the only survivor. Amazingly, at no point does the perspective shift away from that of Jack, keeping us immersed in the experiences of living through a traumatic event, struggling to survive in the vastness of the ocean before we pick up anything resembling a weapon and the discovery of the vast underwater city known as Rapture. Once we descend into the hidden metropolis, accompanied at first only by the chilling introduction of the city’s themes and philosophy by Andrew Ryan, we are confronted with an environment both alien and familiar. There’s something special about Jack, and only by surviving the experience of wandering through Rapture and encountering its inhabitants will the truth be revealed.

Stuff I Didn’t Like

What? Pipe Dream? Rapture runs on Windows 95?

• I know the game has a water theme going on, being at the bottom of the ocean and all, but circuitry is still circuitry even in a vaguely steampunk setting. Did the hacking system really need to be a clone of Pipe Dream? I mean it’s nice for all of the gibbering Splicers and menacing Big Daddies to wait for me to finish rearranging the flow of water (or whatever it is) to hack a turret so it’ll tear them to shreds, and it looks as good as anything else in the game, but considering how much of the game is focused on the action, including this kind of simplistic puzzle-solving is, to me, a little cognitively dissonant.
• Speaking of action, this game is billed as a ’spiritual successor’ to System Shock 2. I loved the hell out of System Shock 2, and not just because it was an immersively atmospheric shooter. There were elements of role-playing as well, from the beginning where you picked your branch of service to the specialization that came from collecting cybernetic modules. If you wanted to use the BFG 9000, and weren’t a Marine, you’d better’ve hoarded those modules since the start, mister. In BioShock, on the other hand, Jack can pick up and use any weapon or psi-power (“Plasmid”) he finds in Rapture no matter what it might be. A Chemical Thrower is every bit at home in his hands as the magical heat-seeking bees that live there after you pick up a particular Plasmid. It keeps the game flowing in an action-related sense but it could have added another layer to the game.
• The Vita-Chambers that restore you to life are another hold-over from System Shock 2. However, in the previous game you had to find missing components on the level in question and install them at a specific location in order to essentially unlock a spawn point. In BioShock, Vita-Chambers are sprinkled liberally throughout Rapture, and using one doesn’t cost you a dime, while bathroom stalls charge you for their use. In an objectivist utopia, you’d think that a machine that does something so otherworldly as bring the dead back to life would cost you a fortune. But no, you just pop out of the thing after that Big Daddy stomped your face into the floor.

  Jack: “MY TURN NOW, BITCH!”

  Me: “Okay, now I’m kinda bored.”

• There’s a moral choice system at work in the game, but your choices are “Savior of the Universe” and “Absolute Bastard.” There’s no room for you to be a normal, flawed guy just trying to survive.
• The third act of the game is kind of disappointing, for me.

Stuff I Liked

“Why’s he shooting at us, Daddy? I just wanna play with him!”

• The inhabitants of Rapture are a varied and interesting bunch. It comes to a point where you can pick out what’s waiting for you around the corner if you listen for a moment. The sound design in BioShock is top-notch. Like the aforementioned predecessor, a big part of the atmosphere is in the sounds made by the structures and creatures. Also, like Fallout 3, there’s some soundtrack dissonance to be had as something swing-era and gentle plays while you’re backing away from the Splicer hurling obscenities and bullets at you as you attempt to defend yourself. And the occasional public announcement really adds to the somewhat disturbing atmosphere.
• The undercurrent of Ayn Rand’s philosophy running throughout the game makes the experience even more interesting. I’ve been trying to avoid spoilers, so I’ll just say that this feeling lasts for a very long time, up to and including your encounter with a pivotal character in Rapture’s history. After that encounter the game moves into its third act which, as I said before, kind of let me down.

Stuff I Loved

Rapture itself makes up for a lot of shortcomings.

• I’ll begin my gushing with the art direction. A lot of games rendered for current consoles look good, but BioShock’s setting, characters and sequences all feel remarkably fresh and hauntingly nostalgic at the same time. There’s an old-fashioned sensibility about Rapture, the clothes people wear there and even the weapons you pick up that really reinforce the period feel of the game.
• The storytelling in this game is outstanding. From the overall arc of the plot (even if it does waver a bit at the end) to the characterization of major NPCs, the game is written extremely well. If the art and sound design weren’t enough to draw people in, the plight of the people who speak with Jack and the emotions they convey drive the point home and yank us into the experience.
• Jack begins as your standard-issue silent protagonist. But the more we get into the game, the more we realize that he is a fully-realized character, and there’s that one sequence that helps us feel moments hesitation and even fear despite facing down Big Daddies and surviving quite a while in Rapture’s hostile environment. He many never say a word, but we get to know Jack pretty well, and our connection to him begins to extend beyond his role as a player surrogate.
• The Big Daddies and Little Sisters. Not only are these folks icons for the entire game and its dissonant themes and mood, but they’re extremely well realized characters that, again, need very little dialogue. We never see the face of a Big Daddy, as they convey emotion through body language and whale-like sounds alone. Little Sisters, barefoot in pretty dresses, are all the more menacing for their unassuming appearance, especially when they start screaming for our blood when we open up on their colossal protectors. We need them, though, and the mysterious substance they collect from the dead, and as much as you might hate them and choose the ‘Harvest’ option every time, seeing them sobbing over the inert body of a Big Daddy, for me, tends to give a moment’s pause. How much is survival worth? Is it enough to merely survive, or should we struggle to do something more, to be better than an animal vying for the right to exist? It’s a question that is posed to the player without a single mention of such a line of thought in any of the written or spoken messages in the game. Then again, that could just be me.

Bottom Line: I adore BioShock. In spite of the things I don’t like about it, the little bits from System Shock 2 that could have made the game even better, this is a solid, well-produced and fantastic shooter that manages to be more than just another run-and-gun title. It’s got something to say. It’s actually about something. And that’s more than most shooters could ever hope to claim.

If you haven’t bought it already, it’s worth the money.

With work kicked into high gear since the departure of two friends, this week’s IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! has unfortunately been delayed. I do, however, have some good news to share related to my nascent career as a writer.

I responded to an advert from Polymancer Studios which said they were looking for writers and would-be writers for a new publication related to tabletop gaming. I suggested a column about creative DMing, full of tips for the guy or gal behind the screen aimed at keeping things exciting for the players, from villains with deep motivations to the inclusion of politics in the lands through which the players travel. Polymancer liked the idea, and contacted me about coming aboard as a regular columnist.

Now that alone would be enough to excite me, but then Sandra from Polymaner said this:

I looked over your blog “The Blue Ink” and I liked what I read, would you consider writing for one of our fiction publications as well?

Would I? You bet your ass I would.

I looked through my little bits of fiction, teased out possible ongoing plot threads and character growth and finally settled on Captain Pendragon. Sandra showed it to the others at Polymancer, and…

We like your idea and would love to see this serialized as part of Polygraff’s content. How does that sound to you?

So, yeah. Watch this space. Good things are happening, slowly but surely.

In other news, if anybody wants to sketch the characters or settings in the aforementioned story, feel free. I can picture these folks and technology in my head but I can’t draw to save my life.

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Adaptations are a good way to cull an established audience from one medium and transplant them into another to generate more revenue and attention for a given work. Just look at the success of The Lord of the Rings, Iron Man and even Twilight. Novels, comic books, even toys have had some success moving from some iteration of the living room to the big screen. Tabletop games, on the other hand, have had a rougher time, and given the disappointment of The Mutant Chronicles, it’s not getting easier any time soon. The film stars Thomas Jane, Ron Perlman, Devon Aoki, Sean Pertwee, Anna Watson and John Malkovich.

“We’ve got the Punisher, Hellboy, a ninja whore, an elf princess and Cyrus the Virus. We can’t miss!”

The year is 2707. Cataclysmic events on Earth have transformed it into a wasteland, where what resources still exist are fought over by four mega-corporations: Bauhaus, Capital, Imperial and Mishima. An artillery exchange between two of these forces causes the unveiling of an ancient, massive and evil machine that turns the dead and dying into vicious mutants. The horde of the machine’s creations spill out onto the world and soon it’s apparent that conventional warfare can’t stop them. Brother Samuel (Ron Perlman), a senior member of a secret religious order on guard against the emergence of the mutants, assembles a small squad of brave men and women to travel into the heart of the machine and put an end to its evil. In exchange, the volunteers are given visas for family or loved ones to depart the Earth for one of the mega-corporations’ colonies on Mars or beyond. To keep a promise made to a battlefield brother, Sergeant Mitch Hunter (Thomas Jane) volunteers for the holy suicide mission, despite the fact he’s the polar opposite of Samuel. While the warrior-monk is courteous, penitent and hopeful, the soldier is apostate, sarcastic and brutal. Still, before the end Mitch shows that he’s a good man, or at least good enough to be chosen by God.

“Right, so my motivation for this scene is ‘Finish it so I can go back to pretending to whore myself instead of doing it for real.’ Got it.”

From my perspective, The Mutant Chronicles had a lot going for it. The aesthetic is an interesting mix of World War I and post-apocalyptic steampunk, and it works in giving the film a feel that is at once unique and familiar. The cast is, by and large, character actors who turn in good performances. The film’s opening sequences, with Ron Perlman’s always excellent narration followed by the trench warfare scene, seemed to indicate the movie was aiming high and might hit the mark. And there’s also the fact that you have Anna Watson and Devon Aoki together in the same flick. It can’t go terribly wrong, right?

“Devon, I don’t know if they’re going to go for this.”
“Anna, honey, you’re a luscious action babe who doesn’t talk. Trust me. They’ll go for it.”

Unfortunately, as the film goes on, the CG gets progressively worse, the writing takes a bit of a nose-dive and every character killed off takes some of the viewer’s enthusiasm with them. The ending is somewhat predictable, there’s no major character growth or even much character exploration, and the novelty of the aesthetic wears off once the team is in the old city and it becomes another expedition into your standard-issue dark rocky corridors. A lot of this, in my opinion, can be chalked up to bad direction. The director, Simon Hunter, makes the mistake of trying to focus on the spectacle rather than the story. Now, in this case, the story isn’t that great either, but it bears mentioning that even movies with huge budgets in comparison to The Mutant Chronicles fall into this insidious trap.

Let me take you on a tangential example. Say you have a couple of script-writers. They write two different scripts, which get made and released in the same year. One is lambasted by critics despite being a commercial success, and the other is lauded by audiences and the majority of critics alike. Logically, this cannot be the fault of the writers alone. Yes, both scripts have some issues and similarities in style that can have critics calling both films “poorly thought-out and kinda stupid.” However, the first film in our example is directed by someone who is known – perhaps even infamous – for distracting the audience from the weaknesses in the story with massive explosions and slender, panting actresses. The second is directed by more of an auteur, his visions on both the small and big screen noted for their innovation, strong characterization and level of mystery. The latter focuses on the characters, the situations they are in and works to have the audience invested in what happens to them. The former, on the other hand, goes the “tits and explosions” route. The Mutant Chronicles isn’t quite that blatant, but it does fall into the former category.

That’s a shame, really. There are good things about the film, and while I did feel it was overstaying its welcome towards the end, I didn’t consider having watched it a complete and utter waste of time. If nothing else, it’s reinforced my opinion that the good things about a film, be they actors, the script or the overall concept, can be let down when they’re put in the hands of someone inexperienced or incompetent. I’ll elaborate more on these points in tomorrow’s post, but for now, I will say this. If you like any of the listed actors, or want to see a dark future where capitalism is shown to be pretty damn evil, or if you like the idea of steam-powered flying machines, queue up The Mutant Chronicles in Netflix. On the other hand, if you’ve played the tabletop game, you might want to skip this. You might find things to like about it, but on the other hand, you might be like those fans who went to Stark Trek this summer and declared it RUINED FOREVER.

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.

I don’t want to be the kind of writer who blames an abstract personification for their shortcomings. I know for a fact that I need to work on my time management and maintaining motivation & energy when I get home from the day job, so that my writing can continue and I’ll have more pebbles to toss. Still, I do bring up my muse from time to time. In this case, it was me saying the following to a co-worker this morning: “You know, sometimes I love my muse, and sometimes I want to choke the bitch.”

In addition to managing my time better, I need to focus on one project and see it from start to finish. I did that for my entry into the Escapist’s video contest, and the result was… well, we’ll see tomorrow, I guess. In the meantime, the other projects on my proverbial plate are worth discussing. Just to see where I am.

Lighthouse

It’s been about a week since I seriously plugged away at this, and I really need to get back to it. I keep seeing scenes and hearing dialog in my head. These things need to get committed to paper. I might hash out a synopsis of the remaining parts of the story, maybe an outline, over the next couple days, then put my nose to the grindstone over the weekend to try and push towards the conclusion. The sooner I get it done, after all, the sooner I can begin the Great Agent Hunt.

Jovian RPG

I’d like to think I’ve established the fact that everything’s cooler in space. However, it’s been a while since I’ve spared even 15 minutes to brainstorm ideas for this game. I need to work on making sure it has appeal and is easy to pick up and play. That means the rules can’t be too abstract, the characters should be diverse and colorful and the setting should have something unique about it. Given the reaction to the fiction that inspired this project, I think the latter two are somewhat covered. So I have numbers to crunch and charts to assemble, and more fluff to write. But it’s in space, so it’s cool.

Farraday

Speaking of space, my viewing of both episodes and commentary on Star Trek has lead me to be inspired to write something in that universe – specifically, in JJ Abram’s iteration of the universe. The USS Farraday, a Kelvin-type science & survey vessel, is departing a deep space station on its way to Earth to be refitted or decommissioned. Since this will be her last flight, the crew has a relatively easy assignment: mapping the Mutara nebula. However, when they arrive and start the work, microsingularities (teeny tiny black holes) begin to appear within the gaseous cloud, and odd communication fragments are picked up. Investigating, the Farraday becomes more and more trapped in a veritable storm of weird phenomena, and ends up getting blasted across the galaxy. The captain is killed, the ship’s damaged and there isn’t much food. The first officer, a man who had been considering command but felt reluctant to take that last step before getting just a bit more experience, is thrust into leadership and has to find a way to get the Farraday and her crew home. It’d be like a mix of Voyager and Enterprise – hopefully, without the suck. Now, I know this would technically be fan fiction, but I find myself going back to the ideas I have for it. It’s strictly a back-burner thing at the moment.

Iron Kingdoms

As my wife has mentioned, there’s an Iron Kingdoms tabletop game coming up. I will be playing a gun mage, Cezar Varias, who’s looking for his father and exploring his potential as an adventurer, alchemist and possibly a warcaster. I spent some time last night fleshing out his character, which might appear here as a Canned Goods post, and as the adventures get underway, I suspect some ‘journal entries’ might be good both to keep track of what happens and for entertainment value. And the more back story and development I give the character, the more my wife can screw around with the poor guy. Not that she’d ever do such a thing.

What am I talking about? Of course she would.