Pardon the lack of pictures for filler. I'm out of town on my laptop and this is just a rant blog anyway. And I'm pissed cuz I took my PS3 with me out of town and forgot my damn audio cables.

I love how everyone is freaking out about Bioshock 2's rumored new content like it's somehow going to ruin the franchise in every way possible. Lets quickly review what's (according to rumor) apparently new in the game, shall we;

--Cooperative Play
--Soviets
--Big Sisters
--A Zoo
--Spliced dogs, rhinos, etc
--Hackable robots

Okay seriously DToid, I dont know what to say to you all except what the fuck? Explain how any of these ideas are bad, and then justify how you'd rather like having a copy-paste of the first game except with a slightly different story and a slightly different main character. I personally think these new ideas are something well needed to add at least a few fresh ideas into Bioshock because we all need to face facts here... the first Bioshock was in almost no way an original game what so ever. In fact the original Bioshock is probably in my top 3 of the most overrated games of the last decade, and I'm glad there taking steps in a different direction.

Bioshock 1 basically pulls a ton of ideas from other games and doesnt necessarily utilize them better than its inspirations, seemingly taking the most influence from System Shock 2 (there openings in my opinion are near identical) while also functioning as a mild 'Fallout under the sea'. It had a passable storyline which was decent but nothing life changing. Plasmids gave you generic powers that we've seen utilized to the same degree, and better, in Ratchet and Clank titles and other games stemming all the way back to Mega Man. And the game pretty much stole the gravity gun right out of Gordon Freeman's hands and couldn't even use it to the same fulfilling potential. Tie these "inspirations" in with generic AI enemies that always strafe just enough to get out of your line of sight, and FPS controls that are on the tad sluggish side and you have a game that is just a mixture of old flavors.

Now *gasp* the sequel is trying new things?! HERESY!

First thing; Soviets, Commies, Reds. Okay, so everyone was totally okay with Zombies appearing in Call Of Duty, but having Soviets discover rapture right during the heart of the Cold War is a terrible thing? What the shit? It makes sense. During the Cold War the US and Russians had so many subs in the sea that if they all fired their payloads the world would have been destroyed three-fold, how is it not plausible that neither side would have found Rapture? The city wasn't exactly small or anything and it was kinda well illuminated in the ocean, any sub that isn't piloted by Hellen Keller clones wont have a hard time finding Rapture if they're relatively close. And now we have enemies that might actually think and not be stupid charge-at-you-bots like in the first game, and would actually use the same powers you have against you.

The next thing is the lack of the Big Daddy. Seriously, are you all dense? Big Sisters are simply going to be Big Daddies with a new fucking character model placed on them and that's going to be it probably. The Big Daddy/Sister/Pope/Cousin/Uncle is the staple of the franchise, do you seriously think they're going to fuck with that beyond giving them a face lift and new name?

The other big thing everyone seems to have their panties in a bundle about is cooperative play. Okay, why is this suddenly such a bad thing? Even though coop has been around for quite awhile it seems to make every game apparently so much better (it took Left 4 Dead and turned it into a goddamn GOTY candidate somehow) apparently applying it to Bioshock is somehow bad? Explain to me how bad it would be if the game sets up difficult puzzles that require two people to apply different plasmids simultaneously to trigger some kind of action, or double teaming a Big Sister using some bait-and-attack tactics? Even though I despise how Bioshock just takes ideas from other games, it has one of the better potential cooperative problem solving setups around. I've heard complaints like Rapture isn't an atmosphere that would keep its intensity with a buddy beside you... Well I dunno I've heard the words atmosphere and intensity tossed around alot with Resident Evil and I didn't hear anyone complain about either of those being ruined when Sheva was introduced.

The only thing I agree about is that the whole 'spliced animals' thing sounds a little iffy. Unless they refine the gameplay a little bit from the first game, that could actually turn out to be a little bad.

Read this last part because its important
Okay I realize that while re-reading this I probably sound like a dick. But ugh, I'm sorry but half of these new ideas honestly sound good and seem to work well with the "ideas" that Bioshock uses. I just dont get why everyone's creating a shit storm about the game trying a few new things out. Like I said, I think these ideas sound good and will try to bring new things into the game. However, if the sequel does suck because of these things then perhaps Bioshock will simply be a fluke (thus giving me a personal satisfaction in regards to not liking the first game.)

End Rant
Have a good weekend everyone!