Gosh how they weigh me down

I'm going to throw a Molotov of an opinion into the internet echo chamber and say what every professional critic would get crucified over.

I think Bioshock 2 is a better experience and game than the original Bioshock was and the forthcoming Bioshock Infinite will be.

There, I threw it out there with more being verbs than necessary.

To support my claims, I must note Bioshock 2 serves as an interesting companion piece for 2009's FEAR 2.

In my FEAR 2 analysis, I noted that entire plot revolved around coping with a teen pregnancy. Now, in Bioshock 2, we find 2k Marin studios exploring the concept of fatherhood through the eyes of my, admittedly still childish, generation and the rapidly aging baby boomer population.

As with all my game examinations, spoilers follow below.

In Bioshock 2, players assume the role of a prototype mechanical monster known as "Subject Delta". As both a knowledge hold over from the previous game, and something newcomers pick up on rather quickly through countless radio transmissions, Delta's one of an underwater metropolis' security forces known as a "Big Daddy".

Bioshock, in a move to complete divorce it from any sort of real world locales, takes place in an city called Rapture somewhere under the sea. Created by an amoral capitalist as a place where the strong survive and the weak would perish, Rapture quickly fell apart during a massive civil war, which players discovered their part of in the previous title, over a new wonder-drug harvested from dead called Adam.

To get more Adam, the brilliant capitalists have created a new child workforce of preteen girls called "Little Sisters". These girls, locked in a constant high by Adam as players discovered by the player, are eventually harvested through their own Adam.

The games, nor the original developers at Irrational Games, never fully explain why they chose little girls exclusively as the plighted group rather than little boys or a mix of the two. Probably because the insinuation of molestation and murder you get while attempting to murder them for Adam would sit well with the ESRB, despite the developers cop-outs with a "red out" screen. So murder of girls is a-ok, just don't touch boys. Thanks for the morality lesson Irrational.

Nevertheless, the duty of the "Big Daddy" system lies in protecting these little girls through a maximum application of lethal force when needed.

You, arising from a decade long coma, find your city in ruins and the girl you swore to protect nowhere to be seen.

Due to the fact you're a horrible abomination of science in the face of God, you ignore the fact that so many years have lapsed a sent of on a quest to find the little girl you once held so dear.

You soon discover that your little girl who you're seeking to reunite with is actually the daughter of a noteworthy capitalist's political enemy, a socialist known as Sophia Lamb.

Mocking your every gun-toting attempt to stop her at first, the messiest metaphorical custody battle north of the Mason-Dixon line, Lamb eventually falls into a complete despair upon discovering that her own teen daughter would prefer to see you succeed. Based upon your interactions with other characters throughout the game, the final moments of your life with your former "Little Sister" determine how she reacts to her birth mother.

The climax of the game, then, isn't so much your escape from the city of Rapture but a final moment of "separation anxiety" between a man and his daughter. She realizes, over the course of your merry misadventure, that the two of you are both sins of science that cannot, and will not, function together in the real world.

Nevertheless, she figures, your spirit- and the last memories off Rapture itself- can live on through her above ground.

Unlike the previous game, which hamfistedly touched upon issues of "free will" through a false sense of player agency, Bioshock 2 asks players to assume a father role under the worst of circumstances.

As a father, you cannot- and must not- break the bonds of love and protection to your children. More importantly, however, you must learn of the final sacrifice in self for the child.

Throughout the game you'll constantly save, or destroy, other lost Little Sisters along the way but must always fight against the mysterious "Big Sisters" hell-bent on stopping you from doing either such thing to the girls.

These creatures, fast, agile and basicly unknowable to the player double as the representation of your daughter's own progression into puberty. As a father, your fights with the big sisters become your own struggles with accepting your fading control upon your daughter and her decisions.

At the end of the story, when you realize that you're actually a reharvested man from the world above, you and your little lost Lamb come to a conclusion that necessitates your demise: Your unholy bond can never exist outside the city that bore it but it's alright.

This effort to cope with yourself as a father when dealing with your child undoubtedly touches upon many of the parental concerns facing my aging generation.

Your children, though influence by you, are ultimately their own persons as well. Thus, no matter how hard you may fight to protect" them against what you see as "evils" in the world, their battles will ultimately fall on their shoulders alone.

So is Bioshock 2 merely the right game in the right time for my life? Probably, but that won't stop me from naming it one of the best games to come out of 2010.