I really can't imagine anyone preferring the story in BS2. It was radically altered toward the end of development, which shows in the final product as it feels very thrown together and haphazard. I did like the idea of showing extreme socialism though, to combat the extreme capitalism of the original.

Can I ask why BS3 was not part of the discussion/comparison ? Mind you I didn't play BS3 at all. I just read somewhere that between some gameplay footage and the actual game which was released a couple of years later, there was several lots of differencies.

Point is : If I enjoyed BS1 enough for 3 playthroughs, BS2 for 1 playthrough .... should I get the third at some point ? Please no spoilers AT ALL and no need to divert the whole thread. I actually like this thread because I weirdly have a lot of issues remembering anything clear about BS2 (past the first couple hours, there is a lot of fuzziness in my mind).

I assume you mean Infinite, which is really a new thing. If you consider System Shock 2 the first of these kinds of games, think of Infinite more as Inifinite Shock, rather than Bioshock: Infinite.

It's a great game, but it is a lot more linear. Like Bioshock and Call of Duty had a baby.

All I remember from Bioshock 2 is that I played it for half an hour years ago, didn't like it for some reason and never came back to it.

Simple, really: Bioshock 2 was exploring themes that are not all that common in videogames, and the little sister bit was quite simply brilliant. Story in the original Bioshock was ... Well, it was the story from System Shock 2 with a new twist added on top of that. When I have played the original Bioshock, I felt overwhelmed by the twist - it was amazing. Yet, I have felt utterly underwhelmed by most of everything else, story-wise.
I thought that too actually, but only for the tutorial areas - after that, levels finally open up quite significantly, and I have liked it just as much as the original. Perhaps even a bit more, Rapture is much more dissolved in 2, the entire place is basically falling apart. I loved the postapocalyptic twist.
That's the thing tho, wasn't it? How many games with the particular theme that BS2 is exploring have you seen? All BS1 has is a single twist, nothing more really. I belive the reason why it was so powerful was the fact that we have visited Rapture for the first time, but it's still the same place in the second game - and let's just say I'm fairly resistant to the 'first time shock effect'. Also, I have preferred DA2 to DA1 and I absolutely don't see how the first game was a masterpiece :-P
Do get it, just.... Don't play it for the gameplay.

I honestly felt like Bioshock was at its best before the big twist. Everything after that climactic reveal just felt ... somewhat lackluster to me. That's what I emphasize that aspect of the game so much. Bioshock 2 really had no need of that, and so I felt the game felt more like an experience that was complete in itself. >_>

Neither of those games is bad or anything. I just think that Bioshock 2 did some things better than its predecessor just as your role in the world and your impact on it and Eleanor, whereas the first Bioshock game did the awesome job of establishing this new world.

On the story stuff just agree to disagree. On this level design stuff though, I don't mean "more open" I basically mean better paths, more interesting fight locations, stuff like that. The levels in BS2 felt more like mazes and slapped together rooms, rather than carefully planned areas. I'm not really sure how else to explain it.

I liked the themes they picked... amusement park, poor area under the foundation, prison, etc... but the way the actual corridors were designed left me cold.

The biggest issue in both games is that combat isn't very good. All you do is look at the enemy's healthbar and that's not exciting. Weapons feel like they have no impact and so feels boring to use. BS1 had much better story and villain and better level design but BS2 had slightly better combat and I liked the interaction with the little sisters better.

Both are decent games that where overhyped as fuck - according to Metacritics BS1 is one of the best games ever made and that is complete horseshit.

I recently finished a BioShock marathon of all three games back to back, subjecting them all to very detailed scrutiny. So it's time for a micro-essay on why I competely disagree with you! It does quite a few things better (namely: gun variety, plasmids, hacking, tonics, simplifying a lot of the nonsensical and clunky complexity that plagued BioShock – dumbed down my arse), that's without doubt. The people who made it understood BioShock really well, and saw what needed fixing. But it's still a pale shadow compared to the original, and here's why:
The story sucks. And what's worse, the narrative design sucks.

You see, the main reason why I hold BioShock and BioShock Infinite in impossibly high esteem is the originality of their storylines and the meticulous design of their plot. You hear people claim that BioShock was a reskinned SS2 and in many ways it was, but all it took from it in the story department was one plot beat. Everything else was new, spectacular, surprisingly deep and (obvious Rand influence aside) very original. A story of pride and rampant individualism, of the ugly side of human nature, exploring the pitfalls of one particular way of thinking, and most of all, a story about parenthood, the main theme that beautifully binds every single aspect of it together if you stop to think about it ("All BS1 has is a single twist, nothing more really." – how you disappoint me, Fenixp). But more than that, this story is delivered with surgical precision.

Every single level in BioShock has a core theme (as in "idea", not just "setting"), and one or two supplementary themes, which are very carefully selected to gradually tell the entire story and include a few story hooks for things that come later (Welcome to Rapture – introducing objectivist utopia > Medical – splicing and its effects, Rapture's technical and social problems > Neptune - origin of ADAM, introducing Fontaine and Rapture's cop-and-smuggler underbelly > Arcadia - Ryan and his ruthlesness, introducing Atlas… and so on). Infinite does the exact same thing with the careful progression of its themes (introducing exceptionalist utopia > racism > Elizabeth > jingoism > etc.). What does BioShock 2 do?

Well, nothing. BioShock 2's story is blatantly unoriginal. First one was about extreme individualism, so let's go with extreme collectivism instead – alright, even though that's a rather obvious choice; religious cult fixated on a miracle person/child/artefact – unless that's your springboard to get to something stronger than that (wink, wink), that's pretty banal (and for me, BS2 triggered some pretty funny Dead Space 2 flashbacks). It also turns ADAM into universal plot hole filler much more so than BioShock did (Fontaine's transformation, silly as it was, had a fairly reasonable in-universe explanation, and a very neat Rand shoutout behind it; Lamb's plan doesn't have anything at all). They definitely understood the core themes, and tried shaking them up a little, but fell completely flat. There isn't much to the story and it's told in just about the most boring way possible. BioShock 2 is just a random collection of levels, focusing on different settings, but without any real structure to it. You can't do a close reading of BS2 (and trust me, I tried), because there simply are no interesting deep themes to focus on – just one bland thread running from beginning to end. One or two really nice ideas (the theme park ride, what Rapture looks like to a Little Sister) don't do much to help that.

To sum it up: it plays better, but it doesn't have anything of what made BioShock such a fantastic achievement. It's quite competent, but it didn't manage to raise above a me-too experience. Ultimately, it's just so pointless; the game simply had no good reason to exist. Perhaps as a multiplayer-only title, to benefit from the objectively better gameplay.

BioShock Infinite did well to throw away so many things (because oh so much was broken in BioShock) and focus on the narrative instead. Because honestly, BS and BSI are quite possibly the most exquisitely crafted narratives I've ever seen in gaming. BS2 isn't anywhere near that.

Post-script: I really think BioShock's famous drop in quality in the third act wouldn't be nearly as bad if the level just after that (Apollo Square) wasn't easily the worst in the game, combined with the really sudden increase in enemy hitpoints. There is still an awful lot of clever things going on after the reveal, it's just that the gameplay takes a massive hit. I feel Infinite has a similar problem in the Finkton Proper levels.

@Stinging
See, that's exactly it: the story, environments, characters - in Bioshock 1, everything was so meticulous and carefully placed.

Bioshock 2....just never was like that AT ALL.

@Bazilisek
Thanks for that awesome post.

That's a really well written review, and it explains much better than i could why i never wanted to touch this so called sequel at all.

My 2 cents:

Yeah, BioShock 2 played great. But to me BioShock 1 was the greater experience - maybe not in the gameplay itself, but in the story, and its setting. And yet, even with BioShock I initially felt a bit disappointed. It was hailed as a "spiritual successor" (God, I hate that term) to System Shock 2. And yet, to me it wasn't. Yeah, I can see that some of the ideas seemed similar, but here's the thing: With System Shock 2 I felt I was the only survivor, the only one alive. Of course, there were mutants, monsters, but the space ship felt "dead". Rapture feels alive - okay, the inhabitants are insane, crazy, lunatics, but they are alive. To me, Dead Space feels more like System Shock 2 than BioShock did (and this has nothing to do with the fact that the story takes place in a space ship). Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that I'd rather play Dead Space than BioShock, since as far as gameplay is concerned I prefer BioShock.

Now if only I could get the gameplay of BioShock2, the storytelling of BioShock 1 and the feeling of Dead Space combined into 1 game... Now that would be System Shock 3!

I really enjoy Bioshock's combat.

Come at me, bros.

Because it's better at actually being a fun game? Well... That's as good reason as any I guess :-P
Yeah, Dead Space always felt much more like System Shock to me than Bioshock ever did.
You know what, you're completely right. When you focus on storytelling, the original game is the better one. Reading and re-reading the post, I can't find anything wrong with what you have said. Thing is, its story never had nearly as much impact at me as it did at other people, so all I actually can look at is gameplay. Knowing that, I do believe it's quite easy to understand why I'd like the second game more for gameplay alone.

I have Bioshock 1 but haven't gotten around to finishing it yet (too many games syndrome). What I have played I quite enjoyed. Really do need to try and play through it to completion at some point.

As for Bioshock 2, I'd like to play it, but GFWL is just not acceptable for me. At least Bioshock 1 had its DRM (Securom) removed from the Steam version, and Bioshock Infinite is Steamworks which is also acceptable as I do use Steam (I may consider getting Infinite at some point but I'm in no rush).