Return to Rapture ... again

As with the un-remastered BioShock 2, the worst thing about BioShock 2 Remastered is that it just isn't as interesting as the first game. Especially in its opening levels, which lean very heavily on the implicit appeal of Rapture and the Big Daddy/Little Sister motif, offering very little intrigue of their own.

To wit, I started playing it shortly after finishing BioShock Remastered and didn't muster enough interest to return to it for almost six months.

And - frustratingly - also like the 2010 version, BioShock 2 Remastered suffers from console-first design. Hacking is dumbed-down. There's no UI for quickly switching between weapons or plasmids. If you have a gamepad plugged in when the game starts, the keyboard just doesn't work. I feel almost grateful that there are graphics options at all.

While the core gameplay is still engaging enough, and the remaster does add some appreciated graphical polish, there's nothing to really do about BioShock 2's biggest problem: Andrew Ryan's story was better.

To lazily quote myself from about seven years ago:

Once it gets going, BioShock 2's combat is fun -- but as in the first game, it isn't really enough to make the game great. What made the first game great was the freshness and mystique of its atmosphere, which simply can't be bottled up and re-released.

Progress: Dionysis Park