5punk

I've just gotten to Dionysus Park, but I'm mostly liking what I'm seeing.

Good
Nice new areas, as I briefly played MP first, I was worried it might be a rehash, as the two levels I saw in that were based on areas I recognised from the first game.
The little sister choices are way better than the first one, as are their comments to you. "He's dancing, Daddy"
The way you find the little cart of presents is great, although none have matched the awesome first one you encounter.
Hacking's no longer a colossal pain in the arse, the darts are an inspired idea. It's also more fun because you can still be attacked, and because you get the bonus hack option. Haven't found one I couldn't do first time yet, though.
I think I used traps once in the entire first game, now they are great, making your own little Trapsville for when you know it's going to kick off.
You can trap the health machines. Repair bots and turrets.
You're a Big Daddy, Fuck yeah!

No So Good
You don't get a lot of story - everywhere so far has been "Go here because it's the next place to go" not so much why you should, only breadcrumbs on who you are and no "Where were this lot in the first game?" Some NPCs that's weren't behind glass would be nice.
If you have a favourite gun (mine's the rivet gun) ammo can be a bit short, you can get money and buy some, or switch types/guns, but it's just an unneccesary break in your progress.
You shouldn't really need to look down and have two button presses to loot the corpses, and it's even more silly when the spawn limit renders the drops as ammo crates. You almost always want to pick up everything you're able to.
The drill sucks. By which I mean the drill charge, when it can bust a big load of rubble out of the way, but not some flimsy planks of wood in a half-destroyed wall.
The little sisters are too cute, I liked how they looked more evil in the first game.

FatherJack wrote:The drill sucks. By which I mean the drill charge, when it can bust a big load of rubble out of the way, but not some flimsy planks of wood in a half-destroyed wall.

Annoyed the fuck out of me that did.

I fucking love the drill charge, it's just a shame it doesn't break the environment in fact I'm pondering using the tonic which ups it's power even more but restricts you only to it, the hack tool and plasmids.

Dr. kitteny berk wrote:


Annoyed the fuck out of me that did.

Me Three!

Right, I didn't bother with logging in on the title screen, figured I'd have less nuisance from gwfl. WRONG. So I make it through three or four maps when I want to quit the game, so there, I can't save, right, no problem, I'll log in. Right, I logged in and it sent me all the way back to the title screen because my login status changed.

Fuck off Microsoft.

Nice. So "offline mode" means you have to play the entire game in one sitting.

You can actually create an offline (local) profile, but it's very well hidden under the create new account option. It doesn't require a password and it seems to remember that you have one even if you start the game offline, so I imagine it works pretty well. Once you convert it to a Live account though, I have no idea what happens, but you can have as many offline profiles as you want since it doesn't require a CD key.

if you have used an offline gfwl account before it will automatically use that by the seems of things, did for me otherwise i wouldve bin pissed off i couldnt save and never touched this again

Also, save often, stumbling upon a CTD right at the end of a map is bad.

Baliame wrote:Also, save often, stumbling upon a CTD right at the end of a map is bad.

had a fair few CTDs, which was a pain in the arse.

I got an almost ctd right at the end of the place where you start to fight the brute slicers. But my system recovered after a few seconds of hideous buzzing and a spakky screen.

I know for a fact my old c2q and 8800 would have binned it sharpish, loving the new upgrades.

HereComesPete wrote:I got an almost ctd right at the end of the place where you start to fight the brute slicers.

That's where I got my first as well, after I left that apartment. Wasn't happy since I haven't saved at all since I got off the train.

Alright, here goes. The game is so much worse than the first one. Let's start with the story - not one plot twist, most of the stuff, at best, mildly surprising. (I mean ) The ending was more satisfying, there are actually (for those who want to find it out themselves). Regardless of which ending you're headed towards, , which I liked.

Eleanor's certain lines change depending on which ending you'll get, but (well, for my ending) they felt pretty forced. Otherwise, her voice was a pleasant thing to listen to, in fact quite Bioshockishly all voice acting was very well done, sport.

The game has a mainstream difficulty ramp: quite challenging at the beginning, which goes slightly upwards but then it realizes its altitude is too high and it crashes into the ground not too long afterwards. I mean I thought they would balance this after the first game: early game, a level's difficulty really depends on one thing, the amount of dollars lying around, because you only last as long as you have fuel or rivets, and first aid. First aid's pretty rare, there's maybe one health station per section.

Late game, the emphasis moves onto first aid, but they're lying around every corner, health stations to hack around every bloody corner, and you have 11 different guns and 62 different plasmids which instantly kill your target, but you don't even need that, sit in a corner and spam insect swarm until the whole map is devoid of splicers. The difficulty further decreases when you get your launcher - I immediately spent all the Power to the People I found on it, and boom, you have a launcher that launches cluster bombs that don't hurt you. Needless to say, I found my first harvest WAY more challenging than the "ending fight".

Even That's probably where the difficulty goes negative.

The problem lies in the opponents, mostly, because in Fontaine Futuristics, I was fighting the same Big Daddies as in Pauper's Drop. In Persephone, I was killing the same splicers as in bloody Ryan Amusements. I mean okay, killing 3 splicers with machine guns is challenging with a 1/15 tank of drill fuel, it's not with a cluster bomb launcher.

And the game is very short. Even if you explore - I did all harvests with all Little Sisters, I found all Power to the People, and I found . I researched all subjects, even security and big sisters. And all that in half a day, maybe even less. And even then there's little point starting over, the saves probably don't carry , the only difference between the endings is , regardless, .

The game is poorly ported onto PC as well, 2K was given a perfectly functioning engine (UT3 never crashed on me), which Bioware could perfectly modify to suit their needs (Mass Effect never crashed on me), and they managed to fuck it up so hard it crashes around every corner, even though they had 72 studios working on it (maybe incorrect, I counted all the 2K logos before the intro sequence but I'm pretty sure I forgot 2K Tajikistan). It also has the same fault as Mass Effect - when it tells you to do something it refers to the original hotkey instead of the one you set for it, pretty annoying when your original use hotkey is first aid.