It’s been pretty slow around here at My Sci-Fi, mainly because March was a super busy month for me.  But don’t worry, I’m dedicated to keeping new content hitting this site regularly, and to make sure that happens, I’ll be expanding the range of topics even more.  A few days ago I talked a little bit about sci-fi video games, after a little thought I realized I might as well throw some game reviews into the mix.

I’ll start with my latest gaming experience, BioShock 2.  This is the sequel to the hugely successful 2007 game.  In the first installment you were Jack, an “innocent” survivor of a plane crash that just happened to put you right on top of Rapture, an underwater “utopia” created by Andrew Ryan.  After descending in a submarine, you find Rapture is in a state of utter decay and chaos after rampant genetic splicing of peoples genomes and a power struggle between Ryan and an industrialist named Fontaine.  You are enlisted by a man named Atlas to fight against Ryans “tyranny.”  The next 20 or so hours of gameplay consist of unending bone-chilling visuals, goose-bump inducing music and scare-you-out-of-your-seat moments that made BioShock an instant classic.  Did I mention this was set in 1960?  So imagine that classic 50′s look, underwater, dark and creepy.

Unfortunately, the first game was too much to live up to.  BioShock 2 is set eight years after the first, but Rapture looks pretty much the same, you’re introduced to characters that you’d never heard of from the first game, despite the antagonist being key in the downfall of Rapture.  Whereas BioShock might have made you (ie me) have to stop playing after an hour of unendurable creepiness, the sequals scary moments don’t live up to the ones you’d previously experienced.  The soundtrack is still spot on though, during an entire sequence of the game, you’re subjected to the most gut wrenching, nails-on-the-chalkboard music that it caused me to have to turn the music volume down almost completely just so I wouldn’t get too freaked out.  There are still moments of heart-pounding tension followed by rushes of blood to your extremities as you watch splicers (read bad guys who are addicted to genetic manipulation) poor from every nook and cranny to try and kill that poor little girl harvesting ADAM (material needed to fuel genetic alterations) from dead bodies.

Aww... how cute, the little girl is going to stab a giant needle into that corpse!

One of the best gaming moments came from the original BioShock, that very first time you are confronted with the decision to either free, or kill, a little girl who is under control of a parasite that lets her collect the ADAM.  Both have its rewards, but this decision goes beyond game changing, it’s a moral dilemma.  Bioshock 2 adds another level to these same decisions, no longer are you just a bystander in Rapture.  You’re a Big Daddy, the monstrous protectors of the Little Sisters (as the harvesting girls are called).  So when you find one of these girls, they put their trust in you to protect them, do you keep your oath to do so, or dispose of them to get more ADAM.  It’s actually a very hard decision every time you’re faced with it.

As a sequel, it might fall a little short, but BioShock 2 is still a great game.  The plot is a bit thin and hard to swallow at times, but the gameplay makes up for it.  As far as sci-fi goes, these games are riddled with social critique, borrowing from several philosophies of society that came to a direct head in the submarine world.  In fact, the underlying issues around Rapture, while secondary to gameplay, are key to understanding the complexities of the plot.  Not only that, but they add an intellectual side to the gaming, which pushes the BioShock series into the realm of science fiction that rings true with the old classics.