Bioshock 2: Minerva's Den
I dropped Bioshock 2 before reaching the half of it. The gameplay was too tiresome with the mechanic to protect the little girl over and over, battling waves upon waves of splicers. Fortunately, the DLC dropped that tiresome mechanic. I played till near the end and dropped it. Watched the final battle in video and counted it as beaten.
There isn't much to say. It is Bioshock 2 with some new enemies, guns and powers. It plays exactly like Bioshock 2. The plot revolves around a scientist who is trying to find a cure for the ADAM sickness which caused the downfall of Rapture. You are yet another Big Daddy with yet another plot twist to find out your origins and who is really guiding you through radio calls.
When I played this DLC I couldn't help it, but notice that the enemies are kind of lacking in depth. They don't do much beyond firing at you. Bioshock did something good with different ammo types and customization with the genes. However, I felt that they could have done so much more with the environment. I don't know if the engine was a limiting factor, but things like brutes throwing debris at you or opportunities for you to shoot down a piece of the environment to crush enemies below. Shooting at pipes to trigger flooding or creating steam bursts. That kind of thing.
I really like obstacles such as having to melt ice with fire. Bioshock presents customization, while at the same time many things seemed redundant. You are never really required to use all the available options. I think that enemies setting the player on fire, using electricity on water to stun the player or freeze him would had been too much annoying. Sometimes I wonder why didn't they add some resistances to the splicers or give them some armor to make the combat more challenging.
When I played Bioshock Infinite I could see why they've dropped the complexity of the genes and different ammo types per weapon. It's a much more accessible game with simpler to grasp mechanics. But at the same time it felt that part of Bioshock's charm lies in such systems.
