Competitive gaming bores me. One might consider it due to the participants typically involved, which would be true. I’ve been known to play Unreal Tournament 2004 during LANs where there is a plethora of friends in the room. There is an interaction there, and it’s a friendly one. If I turn a corner in the game only to get flakked in the face I can shout “Andy you dick!” and the whole room will laugh. All the players know what happened, and there’s a good chance everyone even knows who Andy is. At the end of the day (or by the start of it) no one cares who wins, it just matters that we’re a bunch of people involved in one gaming experience.

For me, the best moments were during rounds of Invasion. In this game mode you and your friends are forced to hold off wave after wave of monstrous creatures until everyone is dead. Sound familiar? That’s because this would later become Horde mode in Gears of War 2, another favorite of mine. Only Invasion didn’t have an end as far as I was aware. Even when the game was set to spawn everyone with insta-gib (one-shot kill) weaponry we’d be forced to stare down impossible odds.

Yet it was the teamwork that I loved the most. Even if you were out of the round you could cycle through your friends still in the game, warning them of enemies coming from behind, above, below and so on. All of us were in it together, trying to make sure we could survive for as long as we could. If even one of us died that decreased all of our chances of survival.

There have been games that I’ve enjoyed such as Shadowrun and Team Fortress 2, but the lack of friends in the room or to play with in general has always made the experience grow stale. So what if I beat a bunch of random strangers across the nation? Some people just aren’t as good at games, and then there are those that are able to trounce me flat. Add in the players that take advantage of exploits at every corner (hello Gears of War and Modern Warfare players) and it all becomes quickly tiresome. Without the camaraderie the charm is lost.

Yet competitive multiplayer is perceived as being profitable. That animal instinct that exists inside all of us believes in competition in some manner, and for most young males it comes out in sports or, in this new digital age, video games. Instead of spitting on your hand when two teams line-up to high-five and say “good game”, players now tea-bag the corpse of another as a form of saying “aren’t I the better man?”.

Yes. You are the better man at pressing buttons or kicking plastic balls around. Good for you. I’m sure President Obama will be calling you to say congratulations. Why not treat yourself to a nice meal at the Olive Garden?

Putting multiplayer into a game typically means budget and resources have to be pulled from the single player game. As such, people were very upset that Bioshock‘s sequel was getting the competitive treatment. Why would they do that? Rapture is about story and exploration, not about tea-bags, douchebags and various other types of bags about the Internet. “No, it’s okay!” 2K Games cried out. “We’re having a different studio do the multiplayer!” This alleviated fears somewhat, but no one saw the purpose in putting multiplayer into Rapture. The first game was all about the isolation, exploration and story. Why would you wreck that by throwing players into a frantic world of dog-eat-dog?

Yet the multiplayer is, somehow, the best part of the whole damn game. I’ve enjoyed the hours spent blasting plasmids into other player faces while snatching a Little Sister than I had wandering the isolated halls of Bioshock 2‘s Rapture.

How did they do it? What did Digital Extremes do that could possibly make me enjoy playing competitively with complete strangers? At first I didn’t know myself as I’ve never felt the itch to jump back online for multiplayer. Not unless there was a co-op component that allowed me to play with friends.

Well, the simple fact is Digital Extremes built a multiplayer game that focuses on elements aside from being the winner. The draw of Bioshock 2‘s multiplayer is story and, ingeniously enough, ADAM. The second you boot up the multiplayer you’ll be drawn to a prologue that establishes the setting. Yes, the multiplayer has a setting. Everything in Rapture is starting to go to Hell as Andrew Ryan battles the frustrated followers of Atlas. Joining in the fight, you are chosen by Sinclair Solutions to help test new products out on the battlefield.

This is where rank and ADAM come in. The higher in rank you climb the more weapons, plasmids and upgrades you obtain. You also unlock audio recordings for each of the characters, though not nearly as many as would have been desired (only three per character, and there are only about six or seven characters to choose from). So how do you climb rank? By collecting ADAM. How do you collect ADAM?

Well, this is where Digital Extremes could have simply done what games like Modern Warfare do. Base it completely on your performance fighting other players. Fortunately they didn’t take such a route. In keeping with the Bioshock spirit, Digital Extremes threw in various ways to gain the most valuable genetic substance in Rapture. The easiest is to simply find vials of it strewn across the level, very small but hidden out in the open. They are easy to pass by without notice, but often enough you may pick up some vials without realizing they were even there. They are plentiful enough that players don’t need to start gunning for them greedily, especially since you can still be vulnerable while trying to obtain them.

However, players can also hack turrets surrounding the maps, lay traps at vending machines or even research dead bodies across the map in order to gain ADAM. Simply press a button and you start to hack it. No lame mini-games required, just a short time of vulnerability is the trade-off. The turrets and trapped vending machines will provide help on the battlefield while research grants a damage bonus to your opponent. Of course, it is possible to lose these boons if you’re not careful. A vending machine can be frozen so the trap never triggers, only to be reset by another player. Same goes with turrets. If you are killed by the player you’ve been given a damage bonus to it will be lost.

Naturally players can also gain ADAM by killing foes, as usual, but even if you don’t get a lot of kills yourself all isn’t lost. You also gain ADAM for assists, so you can merely act as support for an entire game and still rack up a good amount of value by the end of the match.

Players are also given trials to complete, which can both enrich and hurt the experience. Being forced to get x number of kills with certain plasmids or weapons can feel like a chore more often than not, but sometimes the trials also help teach the player strategies for those weapons or plasmids. Ultimately they are best obtained when the player isn’t trying too hard to get them. Overall while they certainly reward ADAM, the amount they award is small in comparison to how long it takes to reach a new rank.

The remaining methods of gaining ADAM vary based on the different game types. Survival of the Fittest and Civil War are your typical Deathmatch and Team Deathmatch, pitting players against other players in a frenzy of combat. To make things interesting a Big Daddy suit will randomly spawn in the map somewhere, and first player to put it on is transformed into a Big Daddy. This makes them one big target for all the players of the game. While the Rivet Gun is certainly powerful as well as the proximity mines and stomp attack, the lack of regenerative health or plasmids makes the player quite vulnerable. A good player can last a long time as a Big Daddy whereas a reckless one won’t take much time to take down at all. The greatest bonus is simply the amount of ADAM gained from putting the suit on. However, whoever gets the last shot on the Big Daddy will also gain such a boon.

Of course, this also rewards players for simply having good timing or even luck. While a skilled player can survive long enough against a Big Daddy, using other players as distractions while they bide their time to take them down, usually it goes to whoever happens to be the one lucky enough to have more health than the Daddy. Same goes to whoever puts on the suit first. Instead ADAM should be rewarded based on how long you managed to survive in the Big Daddy suit, or perhaps a 20% bonus to ADAM gained while in the Big Daddy suit. As to taking the Big Daddy down, merely give everyone a small bonus for damage dealt. Any attack done on a Big Daddy should reward players. That way whoever deals the most damage gains the greatest reward.

Another similar game type is Last Splicer Standing, a form of team deathmatch without respawns. If you die you are out of the game for good. This is possibly one of the more interesting game types as everyone sticks to cover a lot more and is ultimately more careful. The smallest mis-step can cause you to be out of the game for good. This is also a fun game for a quick five minutes of fun or so, as the matches rarely ever last too long.

Turf War is another typical sort of multiplayer game type based off of King of the Hill. There are roughly three sections on a given map for teams to try and take over, and whoever has the most territory for the longest time wins. Nothing too new or different here and the Big Daddy makes its appearance as usual.

Perhaps most rewarding are the ADAM Grab games, both in free-for-all and team formats. Aside from the usual rewards players also gain ADAM by holding onto the Little Sister. Even a small amount of time is bound to give a decent amount. Whoever holds onto the Little Sister the longest, with a maximum of three minutes, wins the round. Yet frequently these matches can be a close running amongst all the players, and some can even get themselves dug into a tight enough corner that merely getting to them is almost suicide. It merely depends on the type of player. Plasmids that may seem worthless in other game types may often enough prove useful here.

The final game type is Capture the Sister, where one team is tasked with protecting a Little Sister while the other must kidnap her and take her to a chute. These matches most often end in stalemates or by a small margin of one or two points, which makes them incredibly fun but also with few victories to praise. One player on the protector’s team is spawned as a Big Daddy, and as usual the difficulty of taking them down always depends on the sort of player they are.

Each match type only allows up to ten players, with the exception of ADAM Grab which limits it to six. This choice to allow only a few players manages to be one of the greater decisions, as games are never too chaotic. It allows for a perfect balance.

In fact, the multiplayer seems to be a huge balance between various types of play styles. Your average competitive gamer will certainly get plenty of value as well as a unique experience based on the plasmids, but players that usually don’t like to compete can find more supportive roles as well. Even if you just want to unlock the story elements you can join a map and hack the turrets to rank up. I’ve seen it myself in a game where two players sat there hacking a single turret back and forth to boost rank. Of course, that merely made them a bit of a waste of space, but it’s better than players being able to rocket jump from one side of the room to another.

Whether the game is fully balanced between weapons and plasmids or not I couldn’t tell you. To me, it seems as if everything has a use and it is only worthless based on the player. I am terrible with the crossbow, for example, but have gone against a handful of players that are excellent with it. The upgrades for the different weapons allow for great customization to your play style, as do the many tonics unlocked. The game grants three load-outs so you can set them up based on whatever type of match you are playing in. While certain plasmids seem more frequent than others, in particular shock and incinerate, there are some players that know how to properly use some like Houdini and Cyclone Trap.

The key is that I’ve yet to encounter anyone blatantly doing anything they shouldn’t be capable of. There are no splicers capable of leaping across the room by using Aero Dash and the shotgun at the same time, or capable of firing off the pistol without needing to reload, etc. None of the game-and-fun-breaking glitches that inhabit the more popular multiplayer titles exist here. The only real problem is some performance hitches on occasion, such as frame rate drops, something that can’t always be blamed on the developer. Early on in release the multiplayer consistently experienced freezing issues after a half hour or more of play time, yet that seems to have subsided recently. Maybe the stress on servers has relaxed or 2K has fixed it, but it no longer seems to be a problem.

So for most players the multiplayer is great. Hell, I have a great time dropping into it once in a while, something that’s never really happened before. Yet that doesn’t stop the game from having some problems, especially since not all gamers are created equal.

I know it may seem like a minor thing, but forcing players to get achievements/trophies in public or ranked games is unfair. Some players enjoy multiplayer, but they don’t want to play with complete strangers. Can you blame them? Look at all the exploits being taken advantage of and foul-mouthed screaming over microphones that occur in other games. Sometimes starting a private match with some of your friends is a much more ideal scenario than jumping online, yet you can only get the achievements for playing against strangers.

The benefit, at least, is that anyone can get most of the achievements pretty easily over time. Before I even hit rank 15 I had gotten all the multiplayer achievements except the ones for reaching the higher ranks. It may take longer for some players and less for others. Yet if a player knew they could leisurely play with friends where the chances of getting those achievements were higher, wouldn’t it only make the game more fun for them? After all, a game should never try and be fun on their terms. It’s a fact not everyone will enjoy a game, but a good designer knows how to appeal to as broad of an audience as possible. By limiting who can get achievements and how, that goal is ruined.

Of much more vital importance, however, is the decision to leave out system-link or split-screen play. It is becoming commonplace for split-screen to become a dying art. For some reason no one thinks people like to invite friends over to play games and have fun, even though some of a gamer’s best memories likely involve him and his friends or siblings mashing on controllers side by side. I imagine that having two people looking at different parts of a map on a single console is too stressful, which I’m not sure is a fault of Microsoft/Sony or the game developer at this point.

Yet there is no justifiable excuse that can be given for leaving system-link out. Most game systems have to hook up to a router anyway, so it shouldn’t be too much trouble including code to work on a local network instead of forcing players online. Can no one conceive the concept that people just may want to bring TV’s and game systems to another person’s house for a giant LAN party? Isn’t that, in fact, what made the original Halo so big? Being able to hook up four systems so sixteen people can play together is pretty much what caused this giant boom in competitive multiplayer gaming in the first place. The biggest since Counter-Strike and StarCraft 2 at least.

So removing that ability does…what? How does that benefit gamers or 2K in any way? Sure, the game will still sell, but I’ve always been told by my father that there’s a difference between doing a job right and “just good enough”.

Otherwise, the only thing I would have loved to have seen was an Invasion, Horde or Firefight style of game where players had to guard a Little Sister against increasingly difficult waves of foes. Start with Splicers, move up to fending off the occasional Big Daddy mixed in, and then start throwing Big Sisters at them. All those traps and plasmids would be put to some real work then. Unfortunately, because Digital Extremes and 2K Marin each worked on different aspects of the game, this would not likely have worked out well. The multiplayer as it is plays incredibly different to the single player to the point they are almost different games. Yet to include such a game mode that would take advantage of the enemy A.I. and trap plasmids would have taken resources from 2K Marin.

I would love to see such a game type patched in or even offered as a download, and I know a good number of people that would be more inclined to purchase the game if such a mode existed. Yet it is doubtful 2K will warrant the cost as being worth the time and energy.

Oh well. It is a good possibility there will be a Bioshock 3 as foolish a concept as that is, but maybe they’ll include such a game type there.

On the whole, the multiplayer in Bioshock 2 is what makes it worth the full price tag. If you are only going to play the campaign then honestly, I’d give the game some time. I’d still say rent it first and make sure you hop online and give it a spin. You may be like me, someone that just can’t get sucked into the schoolyard testosterone games of competition and thus ignore it most of the time. Yet Bioshock 2 wasn’t built with those chumps in mind. It was built in a way that anyone can hop on and find something to come back to. Even the boosting of your rank is like trying to level up in an RPG. You may get enough ADAM in a match that you think “oh, just one more and then I’m done” so you can advance. Once you’ve finished, however, you get just enough that you might be able to rank up in yet another match. Soon enough you’ll find yourself as addicted to ranks as the in-game personalities are addicted to ADAM.

Which is all the more fitting for a game set in the dog-eat-dog world of Rapture.

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