by Levi Buchanan
January 8, 2010 - At CES this week in Las Vegas, showgoers have the chance to go hands-on with BioShock 2's multiplayer mode at a special trailer sponsored by IGN and Sprint. The multiplayer network is powered by Sprint's brand-new 4G technology – which did not fail once during my afternoon play session with seven other players.
BioShock 2's multiplayer is set one year prior to the events of the original game. You are caught in the civil war that unfolded during the fall of Rapture. Chaos reigns over the failing utopia as survivors from the disaster fight for control, if not survival. Since the setting is Rapture in the midst of the war, all ten maps are pulled not from BioShock 2 but the first game. During my play sessions, I quickly recognized locations, like Neptune's Bounty, although since multiplayer is earlier than the events of BioShock, the underwater paradise is not yet in a state of decay. But it sure has been beat up. 2K Marin has also opened up new pieces of these familiar settings and adjusted the architecture for skirmishes involving up to ten players. For example, corridors have been widened.
The maps are huge – so large that there were occasional stretches during play when I did not see another player. Of course, these slower moments gave me a chance to seek out shortcut opportunities like blasting holes through weak walls or hack machinegun turrets so they fire upon your opponents.
While you play as a Big Daddy in BioShock 2's single-player game, the multiplayer mode stars a human cast. Players choose from a variety of outfits befitting Rapture residents, from socialites to scientists to even college football players. You customize your player not just with a general get-up, but also masks and melee weapons. I tossed a pair of bunny ears on my scientist, slapped a rolling pin in his hand, and sent him out into Rapture to fight for his very life.
Customization does not stop with appearance and melee weapons, though. You establish three different loadouts for your hero to switch between after dying, each with a pair of weapons and a duo of plasmids. Weapons include pistols, machineguns, rocket launcher, grenade launchers, and even a lethal crossbow. Combining the strengths of these weapons with your choice of plasmids is how you truly get ahead in multiplayer. Paralyzing an enemy with the Electro Bolt plasmid attack gives you a chance to take aim and deliver a crossbow bolt right to the forehead. The Aero Dash plasmid lets you close the gap between you and another maniac and then blast them straight in the chest with the shotgun.
Talking to Lead Programmer for Multiplayer Jesse Attard at CES, he expressed a genuine (and pleasant) surprise over the different combinations of weapons and plasmids that new players were trying. He also marveled at how players were instinctively figuring out little tricks with plasmids and the environment, such as hitting a waterfall with Electro Bolt to turn it into a death trap. Nobody had stumbled upon Attard's personal favorite, though, which is setting a stack of books on fire with Incinerate and then flinging them at a group of enemies with Telekinesis.
But as powerful as a shotgun and twin plasmid powers makes you, nothing quite compares to the Big Daddy suit which appears somewhere in the level two minutes after the match begins. When you nab the Big Daddy suit, you can no longer use plasmids, but you have access to a powerful rivet cannon with unlimited ammo, a supply of six proximity mines, and a stomp attack that stuns all nearby enemies. While stunned, it's easy to either plug them in the head with the cannon or drop some prox mines at their feet. If you are destroyed while wearing the suit, it disappears for another two minutes and then pops up somewhere else on the map.
One of the coolest tricks, though, is researching fallen foes. After dropping an opponent, stand over their corpse and take a photo (which actually eats up several seconds, leaving you vulnerable). This research grants you a damage bonus against that specific player. It's no minor award. Couple the damage bonus with a grenade to the chest and you are a killing machine. The only way for the other player to remove the damage bonus is to kill you. You can research multiple opponents to maintain lots of damage bonuses.
Though I mentioned some silent spots in BioShock 2's multiplayer mode due to the stage sizes, when players do converge, the battles are great fun. I enjoyed learning from the plasmid-weapon combos of other players, even though such lessons often came at my own expense. I think the plasmid combos will help set BioShock 2's multiplayer apart from the pack, as there were multiple occasions in Modern Warfare when I wished I could unleash lightning bolts on rivals. Well, not really. But after today's play, I just might.
