Personally I am not a fan of the multiplayer. Granted it was created by a different team then the single player, I somewhat wish they would've used the second team to polish up the single player instead. I mean seriously, the hilarious bad AI in some sections and glitches make me cringe. For example on the first page someone complained about setting traps and such because the enemies spawn in the same room and don't come through entrances. I personally never had to deal with this problem because I learned early on that strapping on the chameleon gene tonic and just standing there, the enemies will run in circles screaming about the girl but never actually touch her. I'm not kidding they would run around the little sister and do nothing if you stay hidden, hell half the time they either despawn or get stuck in a random spawn point. Seriously go to the section where Gil is in the tank and use chameleon on that section, enemies will spawn in a hole in the wall above the entrance and will never leave there, I even got a big sister to spawn up there and all she did was sit there the whole time and never left it.
Also I feel that the single player was a bit easy...I got 45/50 achievements after a single play through (missing 9-iron because I didn't know it existed, and gathering all basic plasmids because I failed at math and thought I could by the last one but was short 10 ADAM). Heck I didn't even know there was an achievement to beat the game without dying and I managed to get it. Plus the drill tonics are absolutely overpowered when combined with drill mastery and elemental vampire.
Onto Multiplayer, I really don't think it has any lasting power, right now it is a fun little time sink but the problem is once everyone maxes out there level, every other person will be a carbon copy of each other. Everyone will wield a grenade launcher primary, machine gun secondary, have ignite/frost or aerodash for plasmids (depending on how much the velocity increase affect the grenade launcher); revive, deadly trap, and increased recovery or eve saver. I think multiplayer fans will flock back to more polished multiplayer games like tf2, MW2, or whatever their poison is. And the casual multiplayer fan will become disinterested at being constantly killed grenade launchers and move onto the next single player game.
I'm really curious as to how much time and resources went into the multiplayer, it really seems like something that was just thrown together, hell they reused maps from the first game, and several of the guns are completely useless. The game encourages you to use plasmid combos but considering the fact you can't cast switch plasmid and cast again quickly it really isn't helpful. Even then most combos won't instant kill a person. For example if I splash some one with geyser and then throw a bolt at them they will instantly die from the electrocution because they were wet. But if I try to use the winter blast + areo dash like the game recommends the person will merely take a bit more damage, it is never a 1 hit kill like it should be. Most of the times I have to winter blast, switch to areo, dash and then melee after to get a kill, but this puts me in terrible danger because the winter blast will most likely make the person notice me and the dash will put me point blank in front of them to just get blown away.
Telekinesis is pretty useless, granted you can throw a mine back at a big daddy for lots of damage, this is a pretty rare use of a plasmid. Simply throwing random items into players really doesn't do a ton of damage. Granted if you hit some one you get a minor stun effect. The problem is that the game enjoys picking up tiny cubes of concrete in a lot of areas which miss a lot. You occasionally find the lovely but incredibly rare red barrel and get a nice multi kill but even then carrying it around to find people to use it on will drain your EVE obscenely fast. With the same amount of EVE you could've done a ton more damage to players. Another downside to telekinesis is that you might get the clever idea to trigger a booby trapped vending machine and use telekinesis to pick up the trap bomb, hey it 1 shots players who activate it right? So in theory it should kill any player I throw it at right? Wrong, it does pretty much the same damage as a single grenade, hell even if you kill someone with it, it counts as a grenade launcher kill...
Houdini, is another lame plasmid, ooo you get to be invisible, shame you make a humongous red cloud when you enter and leave it which just leads to plasmids and grenades being fired in your general direction and 9 times out of ten you will get hit by the splash damage. You might as well be a TF2 spy with a deadringer that constantly rings. The effect is also fairly short and really isn't that useful for getting behind enemies or running away. I personally thought a great combo for grabbing a little sister would be houdini and areo dash. Sadly going invisible from a safe distance to grabbing the little sister your EVE will be gone and you'll have no way to dash out.
The Elephant Gun, Cross Bow, and Pistol these were weapons designed to take people out at a distance...but the zooming is so inaccurate and clunky. Why not make these the sniper type weapons they were intended to be? If you can't zoom and kill some one with them you might as well just grab a shotgun or machine gun because their effective distance is pretty much the same.
Another problem I had is general damage, in a lot of game if you manage to get behind 2 or 3 enemies you usually can mow them down and get a multikill, this really isn't the case here, since pretty much every other gun requires several shots to take down a single target, half of the time you can get a second target by finishing the ammo left in your current clip and switching to your second gun and using a plasmid, but by the 3rd guy you're pretty much out of luck your clips are empty and you have to reload, by then the 3rd guy (assuming he isn't brain dead) will blast you away. This just feels odd to me and it really doesn't reward a player for flanking enemies. Flanking also becomes a pain because everyone moves at a brisk pace with no need penalty for running/jumping while shooting, thus there is really no stopping point like in other games where a person has to aim and shoot thus allowing you a window of time to run up behind and gun/ melee them down.
Onto melee, despite there being a variety of melee weapon types they are pretty much the exact same thing and the types are just for appearance sake. Which is sort of a shame, I think they really could've made each melee weapon unique. For example the cane could've had a stun or aoe type of swing, whereas the kitchen knife could've been a quicker single target attack, the candle stick could've set a person on fire with each swing...etc. Another odd thing with the melee is that it takes several swings to down a person, in a lot of multiplayer games the melee is a fairly strong thing to use, usually giving an instant kill or severely hurting the other player. Instead the melee here is pretty much spamming it as fast as you can (which makes you look like some sort of crazed machine) to kill a person before they just blow you away with their gun.
The turrets are also pretty bad. I rarely see anyone get killed by them, especially since literally every other plasmid defeats a turret. Electricity? Check. Water? Check. Ice? Check. Fire? ...Check... Invisibility? Check. Hell you can pretty much walk up to a turret and as soon as you start hacking it, it stops attacking you. Why not make them more dangerous like in the single player and make them an actual challenge to fight over? Instead they just turn into easy ADAM points. On the same note the trapped vending machines are pretty laughable, as soon as a realized I could just run past one and live through the explosion I rarely died to them again.
I really think if the team focused more on making bioshock 2's multiplayer a unique experience they could've had a truly great game. Instead it comes off as a generic shooter that, as I stated, will most likely be forgotten soon. Why not focus on class types, or an upgrade system? They made a claim saying that is was like Modern Warefare 2's system, but it barely resembles it. I think they should've let players spend ADAM to upgrade plasmids or weapons. Or have stronger versions of plasmids and weapons be opened through the trials. Also they could've made the avatars fairly unique. One of them is a football player, maybe give him a slightly faster movement, or a stronger melee but make since he is a jock maybe his plasmids are weaker or he has a smaller eve bar. Or have the fat aristocrat have more healthy since he is meaty but make him move slower. The magician should get a plasmid buff but be worse at using weapons...the possibilities are endless.
Also, why have a single version of the big daddy suit? The current one is ok, but people have quickly learned that you can pretty much kill the big daddy obscenely fast if you unload into him while the person is suiting up or if he has no support just pelt him with charged plasmids from a distance or run around him while shotgunning him in the back. I think it would've been cool if they added a drill type big daddy, or gave another type a spear gun, or another of the various single player weapons. Hell throw in a big sister suit, let players be a really fast character that has no real distance attacks but instead has to run up and melee people.
Also why are there no alternative ammo types? How about instead of getting bonus damage from research (which is actually really really strong) you get alternative ammo? I think it would be cool if I researched someone and was able to throw out some bolt traps on a cross bow, or have a clip of anti personal ammo.
While pretty much all of what I said is negative I think there is some fun to be had, like a few people I played with mentioned, "the game is meh, but it has somewhat of an addictive quality that just makes me want to play a little bit more." It is good mindless fun but the novelty just wears off too fast.
And speaking of other players why is there no push to talk? Instead it just picks up when people breath into their mics (on the PC) and I spend half the time muting people because it either picks up every single breath for half the people while the other half you can't hear at all despite them trying to yell into their mics to be heard.
Edit: On a side note am I the only one who feels like
when playing capture the little sister? Seriously the way she resists makes me feel dirty...
