NOW PL AYING
THE GAMES WE LOVE RIGHT NOW
BIOSHOCK 2 is almost forgotten, but it doesn’t deserve to be
BioShock 2 is the Shock that time forgot. Nestled between its beloved big brother and infinite discourse generator little si… ah, sibling, it’s a game that seemed to vanish as soon as it appeared when it released all the way back in 2010.
So, naturally, with Cyberpunk and Elden Ring loaded up and ready to go on the brand new Steam Deck I brought home for Christmas, I spent the entire time playing this instead.
SYSTEMIC RISK
Why is it so forgotten? Well, for one, Sofia Lamb – the game’s main villain and, as endless audio logs inform you, a figure of apparently immense presence on Rapture’s political stage who somehow never merited a mention in BioShock 1 – just doesn’t have Andrew Ryan’s swagger. She’s part of the game’s desire to do System Shock 2 again: replacing Ryan’s paranoid objectivism with collectivism in the same way System Shock swapped out the singular SHODAN for the hivemind of The Many.
But System Shock 2 was smart enough to keep SHODAN along for the ride anyway, while Ryan’s ghost only lingers in BioShock 2 through audio logs and the decayed remains of his cult of personality. Lamb and her quasi-religious collectivism just can’t fill the void he leaves behind.
And yet I spent a solid week and a bit playing the thing to completion. Why? Because BioShock 2 is a dark horse. Get away from the ideology stuff that can’t be as interesting as the first game or as baffling as the third, and there’s plenty to like in Rapture’s second outing.
LETS YOU WIE
