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Bioshock Trilogy Review / Retrospective. (2007 - 2013)
4 months ago
Would you kindly read the review?
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Bioshock is a series that needs no introduction.
Bioshock (2007) is easily one of the best immersive sim games you can play just because of how the developers wern't sastified with just making a first person shooter set in an underwater city. They wanted you to feel like you were trapped and isolated in a failed underwater utopia brimming with story and style.
As you know, Bioshock 1 takes place in the underwater city of Rapture in 1960, a libertarian utopia dreamed up by the cartoonisly evil oil tycoon Andrew Ryan at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean built using 1920's Art Deco and Greco-Roman architecture styles. As you can expect, Rapture is already fallen the moment you get there after a plane crash lands you near the lighthouse with a ship that takes you underwater to Rapture. After an impressive tour of the city, you are greeted by a poor guy getting torn to pieces by a crackhead with hooks for hands in a dark room just to illustrate how fucking gone Rapture is.
Honestly, i'm gonna stop explaining the story here because this is a game that you have to really immerse yourself in because you can tell that NOTHING is wasted in this game. While some other games have throwaway rooms and corridors just to spawn enemies or give you supplies, Bioshock has no such thing. Every part of the level is there for a reason and it shows through the environmental storytelling or puzzles for you to solve for extra loot or a tape recorder. The story as a whole is basically told through the environment and its about how Andrew Ryan is the biggest hypocrite who embodies the "Rules for Thee but not for me" brand of libertarian ideology and it shows.
And it is for that reason that the game's writing falters in quality after the climax.
After you kill Andrew Ryan, the next villain is Frank Fontaine who fails to command the same presence that his counterpart Ryan does. Ryan is a villain because he is a flawed bastard who wanted to create his own world while Fontaine only exists to be a moustache twirling villain. Rapture was built, controlled, and destroyed by Ryan's own hand while Fontaine is just the opportunistic cockroach who only exists to be the true final boss. The last two missions of the game feels like Fontaine is playing with you and it just gets annoying because Fontaine doesn't really evoke a presence compared to Ryan (and Cohen) with all the gloating he does. Fontaine is just there to fill the void Ryan left when he died and the same problem goes with Sofia Lamb of Bioshock 2 so it feels like hes just there to fill a role instead of being a part of a world. I feel that Fontaine would have worked better as a pragmatic villain who minces no words and knows what he wants to be an effective foil to Ryan.
The gameplay itself is full of jank which make sense, its basically trying to modernize the immersive sim genre by improving upon the framework established by System Shock 1 & 2. It plays like a Half-Like with physics and the ability to carry all of your weapons at once but the twist is that you gain the ability to use Plasmids. Plasmids are superpowers granted to people by injecting the miracle drug ADAM which rewrites one's genetic code to provide superpowers. In simple terms, its basically magic you cast whether it be fireballs, ice blasts, electro bolts, etc. ADAM plays a major role in the downfall of Rapture as ADAM is an addictive substance so ADAM withdrawals causes your body and mind to deform in grotesque ways turning you into splicers, lunatics who only care about getting their next hit of ADAM to fuel their superpowers.
Which is the main game play loop of Bioshock 1 and 2. You explore rapture using plasmids in creative ways to solve environmental puzzles and take out Splicers. You also have to figure out how to take down Big Daddies, monsters in diving suites who act as protectors for Little Sisters, brainwashed little girls who drain ADAM from corpses so they can continue to produce more ADAM. The Big Daddies function as challenging minibosses who make their presence known and you CANNOT take them down without proper planning and utilization of tools at your disposal. You have to kill them anyways as the Little Sisters can be rescued or harvested to get more ADAM to make yourself stronger.
You also get your standard roster of weapons being the standard melee weapon, shitty pistol, always useful Thompson, shotgun, grenades, etc. each weapon has access to 2 special ammo types designed to exploit enemy weaknesses or set up traps. The weapons can be upgraded and each upgrade carries the same art deco style Bioshock is going for ensuring that all weapons really feel like they belong there. The main issue is that the pistol quickly becomes useless by the time you get to the climax so you're better off getting all your weapon upgrades for the SMG and leave the final 2 upgrade stations for the pistols.
Of note is that this game lets you build your character using gene tonics that give you passives that improve your performance. You can even build yourself to become a wrench murderer killing splicers in one or 2 hits with your wrench. It is HILARIOUS.
Bioshock also has some major flaws though; Hacking is useful in Bioshock because you can hack machines for cheaper prices or hack turrets to make them fight for you but the actual minigame is so fucking TEDIOUS. The minigame is basically a pipe puzzle where you have to sort out pipes to make the energy flow from point A to point B and it quickly becomes boring. Even worse is that the game throws in trap tiles that make you fail the minigame but what makes this even worse is that you can end up with hacking puzzles that are unwinnable. Yes, unwinnable because you don't have the right parts to solve the puzzle or there are a set of trap tiles surrounding the end of the puzzle making it impossible to solve. You're better off installing a mod that skips hacking in its entirety.
Bioshock also tries to implement a morality system by giving you the option to rescue little sisters which reverses their brainwashing and genetic modifications but gives you less ADAM while harvesting little sisters is just basically murdering little children for ADAM. It goes without saying that rescuing should be your only option of dealing with Little Sisters because you get unique plasmids and ADAM gifts later on to make up for the ADAM lost via rescuing. Furthermore, the difference in total ADAM gained between recuing and harvesting is just 300 ADAM and at that point, you already have your plasmids and gene tonics you need for your build so what's the point with all the extra ADAM you don't need? Harvesting is just being cruel for the sake of being cruel.
Bioshock also has a feature where you can research enemies to get damage bonuses and plasmids/gene tonics but its so tedious as you have to keep the subject alive while spamming pictures of them. Researching just adds nothing to the game and you should mod it out if possible.
Overall, Bioshock 1 is a game that lives and dies by how well the gameplay and story is interwoven together. Bioshock's gameplay loop would not exist if every single gameplay mechanic was tied to the story and vice versa. It is the perfect blend of immersive sim elements and you owe it to yourself to play Bioshock.
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So with Bioshock 1 setting the bar so damn high, how can Bioshock 2 (2010) improve upon this? The simple part is that you improve the gameplay and just add more worldbuilding.
Bioshock 2 takes place 8 years after the events of the first game in Rapture after the death of both Ryan and the true villain where you play as Subject Delta, a Big Daddy who has to reach his Little Sister or else he dies of loneliness. The Little Sister in question is Eleanor Lamb who is the daughter of Rapture's top psychologist turned cult leader Sofia Lamb who seeks to implement a collectivist utopia using Eleanor as the conduit. Its basically a long-drawn custody battle between you and Sofia over Eleanor.
Bioshock 2 maintains the stellar worldbuilding standard set forth in Bioshock 1 as it introduces even more districts chock full of lore as you learn how the city intended to work as a libertarian utopia but falls apart in reality. The best examples are basically Ryan Amusements which is a propaganda centre disguised as an amusement park to scare kids away from leaving Rapture and Pauper's Drop which are slums showing how the poor lived in Rapture away from the rich areas. Again, the environments and worldbuilding are so beautifully done ensuring that each and every level really does feel like a mini story in itself.
The problem is that the story is just very meh as Sofia is just a parasite in Ryan's city who took advantage of the power vacum to instill her utopia. She is meant to be emotionless and calculating which she does but her presence leaves a lot to be desired as she is overshadowed by the mini-stories and bosses you deal with that tell far more compelling stories. You even have the option to spare or execute the minibosses based on the cases they present to you as you go through the levels but the final choice is dependent on your actions throughout the game. IDK I just never really felt close to Eleanor and Sofia is just... there until the ending. In Bioshock 1, you FELT Ryan all throughout the game as his city was HIS vision alone but Sofia has nothing to lay claim to in the decaying Rapture, benefiting of her status as a Parasite in Ryan's eyes.
For Sofia to work, I think that you should have been in a different setting altogether as part of a collectivist utopian dystopia so that you actually see Sofia's ideas play out in practice and experience what it would be like. That way she can establish herself as a creator and you tasked with surviving and fighting your way out of Sofia's city as opposed to fighting your way out of Ryan's city. Nothing in Bioshock 2 screams "I, Sofia Lamb, built this for my ideals." but Bioshock 2 screams "I, Sofia Lamb, Hijacked this for my own ends." and it suffers for it.
The gameplay though is a MASSIVE improvement. The gameplay and story are integrated so well because you move and behave like one. You make thunderous stomping sounds while walking and jumping, you're taller than the splicers you lay waste to, and you're strong enough to carry guns that average 1.5m in length and 60 lbs average with one hand while casting plasmids from your free hand. You can now dual-wield guns and plasmids so you don't have to equip spells to use them, you can just cast them freely and it works WONDERS. This game is basically telling you to mix and match plasmids even more and the guns are now all useful including the standard rivet gun. A LOT of the guns now feel bulky and powerful in your hands as they should be and are far more unique such as the rivet gun replacing the pistol, the speargun replacing the crossbow, etc. You can even do a drill-only run if you wanted to using the right combo of Plasmids and Gene Tonics.
You also get a new gimmick when dealing with Little Sisters such that you can escort them to corpses and protect the girls as they drain ADAM from corpses which makes all the defensive plasmids and tools much more useful this time around and it pays off. You still have the shoehorned moral choice of choosing to kill or not kill a Little Girl and like the first game, the difference is minuscule at only 200-ish ADAM if you choose to recuse / harvest all of them. Naturally, your only option is to rescue each and every single one of them.
Hacking is vastly improved as its a simple "stop the meter in the green section" meaning that the minigame now takes a few seconds compared to how long the hacking minigames were in Bioshock 1. It is so, so, so much better this time around. Researching also comes back in an improved form but it is still tedious and you're better off modding out the researching minigame if you can.
Overall, i would treat Bioshock 2 as a continuation of Bioshock 1's lore with a VASTLY improved gameplay loop and so many QoL changes that it feels like a breath of fresh air. I would also give the Minerva's Den DLC a run for your money as it has a pretty good story and nails all the beats just right with a new plasmid and gun to try out. I wish that the devs had stuck to their guns and left the Machine Gun out of the DLC basically challenging the player to use single-shot weapons and work around that but that's just me.
And if you did like Minerva's Den, then Gone Home should be on your list of games to play as it was made by the same dev team.
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If Bioshock 1 and 2 are games made by a team confident in their development vision and convictions that wanted to say something with their games, then Bioshock Infinite (2013) is made by a team of cowards who wanted to say something but pussied out at the last minute.
I honestly think Bioshock Infinite is the weakest and worst game in the series that basically killed it off. It fails at creating a compelling believable stylistic world, fails at providing varied combat, fails at even providing a compelling story, and fails to be Bioshock at its core. It says everything but ultimately says nothing of value in a boring world full of wasted potential.
Bioshock Infinite takes you back to the 1910's where you play as Booker Dewitt, a man with a gambling debt so large that he has to go to the flying theocratic utopia of Columbia led by Rev. Comstock to rescue his daughter from him. The world of Columbia is basically MAGA as it is inspired by the Antebellum and the Jim Crow era of American history with rampant racism against fucking EVERYONE including the Irish, dickriding Jesus and God so hard, and nationalism so feverish it makes Super Earth shed a tear.
To its credit, it nails the feeling of being an Americanized dystopia so well in the first few hours.... and then forgets what it's supposed to be after the 4rd hour. You go through a lynch mob wanting to stone an interracial couple at the start to seeing washrooms for whites and coloureds but then the game forgets about the world they just built by the time they get to the halfway mark. Infinite fails to even immerse you in their world as Bioshock 1 had you living and surviving in the Rapture like a survival horror while infinite just has you moving from scene to scene; never giving you a chance to be part of the world.
Infinite fails to capture the vibes of being trapped inside a flying city as everything feels so open that the risk of falling to your death feels trivial. The civilians you fight in Columbia lack the insanity and tragedy that splicers suffer from as a result of their ADAM withdrawal as they are just regular soldiers you shoot in every CoD game with some heavies thrown into the mix. You never get up close and personal with the special types of enemies such as the Handymen or the Igniters and when you do, there's practically no lead up showing what they're capable of or even a proper mini-boss against them.
Cumsock is the worst of the bunch as he's supposed to be this game's Andrew Ryan but the flying city of Columbia lacks the personal touch from Cumsock. Furthermore, he just only shows up in a few cutscenes, drops some cryptic bullshit, and then fucks off. The voxophones (audio tapes) are even worse as Bioshock 1 and 2 gave them subtitles. Infinite.... removes subtitles from them. Making them pointless to listen to. The relationship between Elizabeth and Booker is decent at least though they themselves get stuck in the convoluted mess that is Bioshock infinite's lore and plot twists.
There's another character that shows up as Daizy Fitzroy who is a black freedom fighter who ends up being there just so the developers can say "both sides bad" as she represents the bloodthirsty Bolshevik revolutionaries / terrorists that you end up fighting later on in the game. I really dislike her as a character because as said before, she and her faction is only there to present a false sense of nuance and she only exists for a few scenes so you never get the chance to build up a relationship between Fitzroy and Booker just like with Cumsock and Booker. So, so, so, much wasted character just to say "both sides bad". If you're going to go there, have the fucking balls to make Booker and Elizabeth suffer from both sides PERSONALLY so the player feels deeply uncomfortable with what they're doing. Bioshock 1 & 2 made you fall for traps where you watch a splicer ramble about how they;re gonna fuck you up as you go through carefully crafted levels that build up the villain and you see what they're capable of. I should walk out the game feeling like a cynical bastard disillusioned by both sides, not just seeing them as set dressing for a generic shooter. If you're gonna take inspiration from the Bolsheviks, the Reign of Terror, and Pol Pot then make us live as a civilian watching those atrocities unfold in front of us.
To me, bioshock has always been a game about the world. The story that is going on is secondary to the worldbuilding and lore presented and that's where Bioshock excels in but infinite fails with how convoluted the world is with characters that make you feel nothing, the plot means nothing, the world means nothing, and your actions don't matter.
And the gameplay suffers from this as it just becomes a halo ripoff. You lost your ability to carry all your weapons as you are forced with a 2 weapon limit. Your gene tonics have been replaced with gear which you only get 4 slots to play with in the whole game compared to the 18 slots you got in Bioshock 1&2. No more physics objects you can use to win fights, no more metroidvania-like environmental puzzles, no more hacking, no more visual changes to the weapons as you upgrade them, and so on. What really sells this as a halo ripoff is that you also get a shield bar in addition to your health bar. No more morality choices that affect the story. Sprinting is added to the game. Nothing works and everything suffers for it.
The levels are all linear save for one level near the endgame being "Emporia" that plays like a traditional bioshock level. It is the ONLY one that's there in game. You get the tool called a skyhook that you can use for Glory Kills and to ride the skylines but more often than not, you want to hunker down and take care of enemies at range. The level design feels too open as i keep running past massive open spaces with barely any cover to work with and very few levels have the charm. I first played Bioshock when i was in middle school and i can recall all of the names and vibes of each place by heart but I couldn't even tell you what all the levels in Infinite are. I guarantee you that I will forget about "Emporia" by the time 2026 or 2027 rolls around. Thats just how forgettable this game is.
You do get vigors which act as your plasmids but most of them are just variations of stuns and you don't get the chance to mix-match. You can just go the whole game by treating vigors as grenades especially because vigor upgrades are so expensive that it's not worth it as you'll be using weapons far more often to kill and as such, weapon upgrades are more important.
You have Elizabeth who fights with you in battle but she throws you supplies and opens up tears which give you more combat options but it just felt like a gimmick that's just like: "neat".
I'm going to end it here, Bioshock infinite is a game that lacks any form of conviction as it just copies halo, fails to say anything, fails to build up an immersive world, and fails at being Bioshock at its core. Its a competent shooter but it is NOT Bioshock at all.
And please don't play burial at sea. The rectconning the DLC does is criminal and you have FORCED STEALTH FUCK THAT SHIT.
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Bioshock is a series that is meant to be played multiple times. I played them when I was a naive young teen and but playing them recently as a adult cynical bastard actually made the games even better. I was able to listen to all the audio tapes and put myself in the world. I was able to read in between the lines and get what the scene was talking about. I was able to understand the themes and how they interacted with each other to tell the story of Andrew Ryan's Rapture. Truly, Bioshock 1 & 2 aged the best.
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Bioshock is a series that needs no introduction.
Bioshock (2007) is easily one of the best immersive sim games you can play just because of how the developers wern't sastified with just making a first person shooter set in an underwater city. They wanted you to feel like you were trapped and isolated in a failed underwater utopia brimming with story and style.
As you know, Bioshock 1 takes place in the underwater city of Rapture in 1960, a libertarian utopia dreamed up by the cartoonisly evil oil tycoon Andrew Ryan at the bottom of the Atlantic ocean built using 1920's Art Deco and Greco-Roman architecture styles. As you can expect, Rapture is already fallen the moment you get there after a plane crash lands you near the lighthouse with a ship that takes you underwater to Rapture. After an impressive tour of the city, you are greeted by a poor guy getting torn to pieces by a crackhead with hooks for hands in a dark room just to illustrate how fucking gone Rapture is.
Honestly, i'm gonna stop explaining the story here because this is a game that you have to really immerse yourself in because you can tell that NOTHING is wasted in this game. While some other games have throwaway rooms and corridors just to spawn enemies or give you supplies, Bioshock has no such thing. Every part of the level is there for a reason and it shows through the environmental storytelling or puzzles for you to solve for extra loot or a tape recorder. The story as a whole is basically told through the environment and its about how Andrew Ryan is the biggest hypocrite who embodies the "Rules for Thee but not for me" brand of libertarian ideology and it shows.
And it is for that reason that the game's writing falters in quality after the climax.
After you kill Andrew Ryan, the next villain is Frank Fontaine who fails to command the same presence that his counterpart Ryan does. Ryan is a villain because he is a flawed bastard who wanted to create his own world while Fontaine only exists to be a moustache twirling villain. Rapture was built, controlled, and destroyed by Ryan's own hand while Fontaine is just the opportunistic cockroach who only exists to be the true final boss. The last two missions of the game feels like Fontaine is playing with you and it just gets annoying because Fontaine doesn't really evoke a presence compared to Ryan (and Cohen) with all the gloating he does. Fontaine is just there to fill the void Ryan left when he died and the same problem goes with Sofia Lamb of Bioshock 2 so it feels like hes just there to fill a role instead of being a part of a world. I feel that Fontaine would have worked better as a pragmatic villain who minces no words and knows what he wants to be an effective foil to Ryan.
The gameplay itself is full of jank which make sense, its basically trying to modernize the immersive sim genre by improving upon the framework established by System Shock 1 & 2. It plays like a Half-Like with physics and the ability to carry all of your weapons at once but the twist is that you gain the ability to use Plasmids. Plasmids are superpowers granted to people by injecting the miracle drug ADAM which rewrites one's genetic code to provide superpowers. In simple terms, its basically magic you cast whether it be fireballs, ice blasts, electro bolts, etc. ADAM plays a major role in the downfall of Rapture as ADAM is an addictive substance so ADAM withdrawals causes your body and mind to deform in grotesque ways turning you into splicers, lunatics who only care about getting their next hit of ADAM to fuel their superpowers.
Which is the main game play loop of Bioshock 1 and 2. You explore rapture using plasmids in creative ways to solve environmental puzzles and take out Splicers. You also have to figure out how to take down Big Daddies, monsters in diving suites who act as protectors for Little Sisters, brainwashed little girls who drain ADAM from corpses so they can continue to produce more ADAM. The Big Daddies function as challenging minibosses who make their presence known and you CANNOT take them down without proper planning and utilization of tools at your disposal. You have to kill them anyways as the Little Sisters can be rescued or harvested to get more ADAM to make yourself stronger.
You also get your standard roster of weapons being the standard melee weapon, shitty pistol, always useful Thompson, shotgun, grenades, etc. each weapon has access to 2 special ammo types designed to exploit enemy weaknesses or set up traps. The weapons can be upgraded and each upgrade carries the same art deco style Bioshock is going for ensuring that all weapons really feel like they belong there. The main issue is that the pistol quickly becomes useless by the time you get to the climax so you're better off getting all your weapon upgrades for the SMG and leave the final 2 upgrade stations for the pistols.
Of note is that this game lets you build your character using gene tonics that give you passives that improve your performance. You can even build yourself to become a wrench murderer killing splicers in one or 2 hits with your wrench. It is HILARIOUS.
Bioshock also has some major flaws though; Hacking is useful in Bioshock because you can hack machines for cheaper prices or hack turrets to make them fight for you but the actual minigame is so fucking TEDIOUS. The minigame is basically a pipe puzzle where you have to sort out pipes to make the energy flow from point A to point B and it quickly becomes boring. Even worse is that the game throws in trap tiles that make you fail the minigame but what makes this even worse is that you can end up with hacking puzzles that are unwinnable. Yes, unwinnable because you don't have the right parts to solve the puzzle or there are a set of trap tiles surrounding the end of the puzzle making it impossible to solve. You're better off installing a mod that skips hacking in its entirety.
Bioshock also tries to implement a morality system by giving you the option to rescue little sisters which reverses their brainwashing and genetic modifications but gives you less ADAM while harvesting little sisters is just basically murdering little children for ADAM. It goes without saying that rescuing should be your only option of dealing with Little Sisters because you get unique plasmids and ADAM gifts later on to make up for the ADAM lost via rescuing. Furthermore, the difference in total ADAM gained between recuing and harvesting is just 300 ADAM and at that point, you already have your plasmids and gene tonics you need for your build so what's the point with all the extra ADAM you don't need? Harvesting is just being cruel for the sake of being cruel.
Bioshock also has a feature where you can research enemies to get damage bonuses and plasmids/gene tonics but its so tedious as you have to keep the subject alive while spamming pictures of them. Researching just adds nothing to the game and you should mod it out if possible.
Overall, Bioshock 1 is a game that lives and dies by how well the gameplay and story is interwoven together. Bioshock's gameplay loop would not exist if every single gameplay mechanic was tied to the story and vice versa. It is the perfect blend of immersive sim elements and you owe it to yourself to play Bioshock.
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So with Bioshock 1 setting the bar so damn high, how can Bioshock 2 (2010) improve upon this? The simple part is that you improve the gameplay and just add more worldbuilding.
Bioshock 2 takes place 8 years after the events of the first game in Rapture after the death of both Ryan and the true villain where you play as Subject Delta, a Big Daddy who has to reach his Little Sister or else he dies of loneliness. The Little Sister in question is Eleanor Lamb who is the daughter of Rapture's top psychologist turned cult leader Sofia Lamb who seeks to implement a collectivist utopia using Eleanor as the conduit. Its basically a long-drawn custody battle between you and Sofia over Eleanor.
Bioshock 2 maintains the stellar worldbuilding standard set forth in Bioshock 1 as it introduces even more districts chock full of lore as you learn how the city intended to work as a libertarian utopia but falls apart in reality. The best examples are basically Ryan Amusements which is a propaganda centre disguised as an amusement park to scare kids away from leaving Rapture and Pauper's Drop which are slums showing how the poor lived in Rapture away from the rich areas. Again, the environments and worldbuilding are so beautifully done ensuring that each and every level really does feel like a mini story in itself.
The problem is that the story is just very meh as Sofia is just a parasite in Ryan's city who took advantage of the power vacum to instill her utopia. She is meant to be emotionless and calculating which she does but her presence leaves a lot to be desired as she is overshadowed by the mini-stories and bosses you deal with that tell far more compelling stories. You even have the option to spare or execute the minibosses based on the cases they present to you as you go through the levels but the final choice is dependent on your actions throughout the game. IDK I just never really felt close to Eleanor and Sofia is just... there until the ending. In Bioshock 1, you FELT Ryan all throughout the game as his city was HIS vision alone but Sofia has nothing to lay claim to in the decaying Rapture, benefiting of her status as a Parasite in Ryan's eyes.
For Sofia to work, I think that you should have been in a different setting altogether as part of a collectivist utopian dystopia so that you actually see Sofia's ideas play out in practice and experience what it would be like. That way she can establish herself as a creator and you tasked with surviving and fighting your way out of Sofia's city as opposed to fighting your way out of Ryan's city. Nothing in Bioshock 2 screams "I, Sofia Lamb, built this for my ideals." but Bioshock 2 screams "I, Sofia Lamb, Hijacked this for my own ends." and it suffers for it.
The gameplay though is a MASSIVE improvement. The gameplay and story are integrated so well because you move and behave like one. You make thunderous stomping sounds while walking and jumping, you're taller than the splicers you lay waste to, and you're strong enough to carry guns that average 1.5m in length and 60 lbs average with one hand while casting plasmids from your free hand. You can now dual-wield guns and plasmids so you don't have to equip spells to use them, you can just cast them freely and it works WONDERS. This game is basically telling you to mix and match plasmids even more and the guns are now all useful including the standard rivet gun. A LOT of the guns now feel bulky and powerful in your hands as they should be and are far more unique such as the rivet gun replacing the pistol, the speargun replacing the crossbow, etc. You can even do a drill-only run if you wanted to using the right combo of Plasmids and Gene Tonics.
You also get a new gimmick when dealing with Little Sisters such that you can escort them to corpses and protect the girls as they drain ADAM from corpses which makes all the defensive plasmids and tools much more useful this time around and it pays off. You still have the shoehorned moral choice of choosing to kill or not kill a Little Girl and like the first game, the difference is minuscule at only 200-ish ADAM if you choose to recuse / harvest all of them. Naturally, your only option is to rescue each and every single one of them.
Hacking is vastly improved as its a simple "stop the meter in the green section" meaning that the minigame now takes a few seconds compared to how long the hacking minigames were in Bioshock 1. It is so, so, so much better this time around. Researching also comes back in an improved form but it is still tedious and you're better off modding out the researching minigame if you can.
Overall, i would treat Bioshock 2 as a continuation of Bioshock 1's lore with a VASTLY improved gameplay loop and so many QoL changes that it feels like a breath of fresh air. I would also give the Minerva's Den DLC a run for your money as it has a pretty good story and nails all the beats just right with a new plasmid and gun to try out. I wish that the devs had stuck to their guns and left the Machine Gun out of the DLC basically challenging the player to use single-shot weapons and work around that but that's just me.
And if you did like Minerva's Den, then Gone Home should be on your list of games to play as it was made by the same dev team.
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If Bioshock 1 and 2 are games made by a team confident in their development vision and convictions that wanted to say something with their games, then Bioshock Infinite (2013) is made by a team of cowards who wanted to say something but pussied out at the last minute.
I honestly think Bioshock Infinite is the weakest and worst game in the series that basically killed it off. It fails at creating a compelling believable stylistic world, fails at providing varied combat, fails at even providing a compelling story, and fails to be Bioshock at its core. It says everything but ultimately says nothing of value in a boring world full of wasted potential.
Bioshock Infinite takes you back to the 1910's where you play as Booker Dewitt, a man with a gambling debt so large that he has to go to the flying theocratic utopia of Columbia led by Rev. Comstock to rescue his daughter from him. The world of Columbia is basically MAGA as it is inspired by the Antebellum and the Jim Crow era of American history with rampant racism against fucking EVERYONE including the Irish, dickriding Jesus and God so hard, and nationalism so feverish it makes Super Earth shed a tear.
To its credit, it nails the feeling of being an Americanized dystopia so well in the first few hours.... and then forgets what it's supposed to be after the 4rd hour. You go through a lynch mob wanting to stone an interracial couple at the start to seeing washrooms for whites and coloureds but then the game forgets about the world they just built by the time they get to the halfway mark. Infinite fails to even immerse you in their world as Bioshock 1 had you living and surviving in the Rapture like a survival horror while infinite just has you moving from scene to scene; never giving you a chance to be part of the world.
Infinite fails to capture the vibes of being trapped inside a flying city as everything feels so open that the risk of falling to your death feels trivial. The civilians you fight in Columbia lack the insanity and tragedy that splicers suffer from as a result of their ADAM withdrawal as they are just regular soldiers you shoot in every CoD game with some heavies thrown into the mix. You never get up close and personal with the special types of enemies such as the Handymen or the Igniters and when you do, there's practically no lead up showing what they're capable of or even a proper mini-boss against them.
Cumsock is the worst of the bunch as he's supposed to be this game's Andrew Ryan but the flying city of Columbia lacks the personal touch from Cumsock. Furthermore, he just only shows up in a few cutscenes, drops some cryptic bullshit, and then fucks off. The voxophones (audio tapes) are even worse as Bioshock 1 and 2 gave them subtitles. Infinite.... removes subtitles from them. Making them pointless to listen to. The relationship between Elizabeth and Booker is decent at least though they themselves get stuck in the convoluted mess that is Bioshock infinite's lore and plot twists.
There's another character that shows up as Daizy Fitzroy who is a black freedom fighter who ends up being there just so the developers can say "both sides bad" as she represents the bloodthirsty Bolshevik revolutionaries / terrorists that you end up fighting later on in the game. I really dislike her as a character because as said before, she and her faction is only there to present a false sense of nuance and she only exists for a few scenes so you never get the chance to build up a relationship between Fitzroy and Booker just like with Cumsock and Booker. So, so, so, much wasted character just to say "both sides bad". If you're going to go there, have the fucking balls to make Booker and Elizabeth suffer from both sides PERSONALLY so the player feels deeply uncomfortable with what they're doing. Bioshock 1 & 2 made you fall for traps where you watch a splicer ramble about how they;re gonna fuck you up as you go through carefully crafted levels that build up the villain and you see what they're capable of. I should walk out the game feeling like a cynical bastard disillusioned by both sides, not just seeing them as set dressing for a generic shooter. If you're gonna take inspiration from the Bolsheviks, the Reign of Terror, and Pol Pot then make us live as a civilian watching those atrocities unfold in front of us.
To me, bioshock has always been a game about the world. The story that is going on is secondary to the worldbuilding and lore presented and that's where Bioshock excels in but infinite fails with how convoluted the world is with characters that make you feel nothing, the plot means nothing, the world means nothing, and your actions don't matter.
And the gameplay suffers from this as it just becomes a halo ripoff. You lost your ability to carry all your weapons as you are forced with a 2 weapon limit. Your gene tonics have been replaced with gear which you only get 4 slots to play with in the whole game compared to the 18 slots you got in Bioshock 1&2. No more physics objects you can use to win fights, no more metroidvania-like environmental puzzles, no more hacking, no more visual changes to the weapons as you upgrade them, and so on. What really sells this as a halo ripoff is that you also get a shield bar in addition to your health bar. No more morality choices that affect the story. Sprinting is added to the game. Nothing works and everything suffers for it.
The levels are all linear save for one level near the endgame being "Emporia" that plays like a traditional bioshock level. It is the ONLY one that's there in game. You get the tool called a skyhook that you can use for Glory Kills and to ride the skylines but more often than not, you want to hunker down and take care of enemies at range. The level design feels too open as i keep running past massive open spaces with barely any cover to work with and very few levels have the charm. I first played Bioshock when i was in middle school and i can recall all of the names and vibes of each place by heart but I couldn't even tell you what all the levels in Infinite are. I guarantee you that I will forget about "Emporia" by the time 2026 or 2027 rolls around. Thats just how forgettable this game is.
You do get vigors which act as your plasmids but most of them are just variations of stuns and you don't get the chance to mix-match. You can just go the whole game by treating vigors as grenades especially because vigor upgrades are so expensive that it's not worth it as you'll be using weapons far more often to kill and as such, weapon upgrades are more important.
You have Elizabeth who fights with you in battle but she throws you supplies and opens up tears which give you more combat options but it just felt like a gimmick that's just like: "neat".
I'm going to end it here, Bioshock infinite is a game that lacks any form of conviction as it just copies halo, fails to say anything, fails to build up an immersive world, and fails at being Bioshock at its core. Its a competent shooter but it is NOT Bioshock at all.
And please don't play burial at sea. The rectconning the DLC does is criminal and you have FORCED STEALTH FUCK THAT SHIT.
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Bioshock is a series that is meant to be played multiple times. I played them when I was a naive young teen and but playing them recently as a adult cynical bastard actually made the games even better. I was able to listen to all the audio tapes and put myself in the world. I was able to read in between the lines and get what the scene was talking about. I was able to understand the themes and how they interacted with each other to tell the story of Andrew Ryan's Rapture. Truly, Bioshock 1 & 2 aged the best.
