I don’t like “the story” in Bioshock 2. So, I’m making up my own story, for the purposes of enjoying the game’s gameplay offerings unhindered. The story of Bioshock 2 is now that of a Big Daddy, one of the lumbering speechless antagonists of the first game, freed from a lifeless existence of doting on a little sisters, now on a joyful quest for booze, cigarettes, and cash.

Why don’t I like the story? Well, as is only typical of my writing of articles when, and only when, I have something about which to bitch, I’ll tell you. Ever hear the phrase “A story is only as good as its villain?” Well, the antagonist in Bioshock 2 is hollow – an uber-communist, and diametric opposite of Andrew Ryan’s uber-libertarian – and not a character in her own right, as Andrew Ryan was; everything she is is propped up by what he was – she’s just a bad parody.

2K Marin would have better served us had they resurrected Ryan as some horrific ultra-libertarian-cyborg juiced up on adam rather than offer up this pathetic anti-Ryan that we must endure in Bioshock 2. Yeah, I know, cyber-resurrection isn’t all that realistic, considering the ’50s time-frame in which the game takes place, but we’re dealing with a setting in which the protagonist is able to shoot bees, which emerge from little holes in his forearm, at his foes – let’s not tie our hands with realism. Hell, Ryan could’ve just made his return via vita-chamber; no cybernetics or DNA-altering required – you know, like the first game’s protagonist did HUNDREDS OF TIMES (if you managed to die hundreds of times.)

To be fair, this new development team that worked on Bioshock 2 (there was a team-switch, in case you didn’t know) couldn’t have topped Ryan. However, they could’ve went in a different direction rather then back to the ideological-extremist well. I like the first game but I played it already; if I wanted to play it again, I would do so and not play a sequel that could very easily have been released as an expansion or downloadable content.

I won’t spoil the rest story for you. I don’t like it. It sucks. The end. I will say, though, that there isn’t a whole lot to spoil. The gameplay is very solid however. I won’t go very much into it because, if you played the first game as I’m sure most of you reading this did, you probably have the cognitive capacity with which to imagine what it’s like to play as a very large man wearing an old-school diving suit who punches people with a massive drill and shoots rivets at folks who piss him off. Hell, you were probably the victim of much drill-punching and rivet-shooting whilst playing the first game – that is until you figured out, as I did, that you can kill a Big Daddy fairly easily by tripping his bulky ass down a flight of stairs using the oh-so-fun crossbow and electric-trip-wire bolts, after, of course, lighting him on fire and electrocuting him – man these guys had it rough, come to think of it.

Some other minor complaints of mine are that they took out a few of the things that gave the game some personality: no more pipe-hacking, no clowns celebrating your usage of the item vending machine, no Mexican-bandit-themed sound effects at the ammo vending machines. However, some of the cool new things like plasmid combos, the ability to lay down turrets, and the ability to drill the hell out of splicers, do some to make up for what’s missing; there’s also multiplayer, which I have not tried yet.

Buy? Rent? Destroy?

Rent this mutha’. Unless you have a hankerin’ for some plasmid-shootin’, punk-drillin’ multiplayer; in which case, buy it if you feel that aspect of the game may have some longevity.

I’ve waited so long for my dreams to come true. I’m just kidding, that was too dramatic. But the news really was swell. THQ, or Relic, or whoever is in charge of press releases, announced the other day the title of their new expansion for the innovative and popular RTS Dawn of War II along with several screen shots and a short teaser trailer. Chaos Rising will grace the computer game landscape in Spring 2010, tentatively anyways. The way the video game business is these days with pushing release dates back en masse it could very well come out Christmas 2011. But I digress.

The story, can’t forget the story, is set in the same system as Dawn of War II (the system containing the Blood Raven Space Marines Chapter’s recruiting worlds) wherein a world long ago swallowed into the Warp reappears. Several cadres of armed to the teeth Angels of Death are sent down to investigate and low and behold there’s some good old Chaos Space Marine action waitin’ for ‘em. Avitus, Tarkus, Thaddeus, Davian Thule (now Dreadnought) and, of course, the voiceless Commander (Insert Name Here) will encounter their age old enemies in the form of the Black Legion. One can only hope Abbadon the Despoiler will make an appearance.

Chaos Rising will implement several good ideas I and several other Warhammer 40,000/Dawn of War players have had. Whilst playing the Chaos Space Marines in multiplayer mode, the player will have available to them all four of the Dark Gods of Chaos (Khorne, Tzeentch, Slaneesh, and Nurgle) to choose from. This means, as I infer from the teaser (Bloodletters), that the player will get specialized units to choose from depending upon which God they chose (I.E. Bloodletters of Khorne or Horrors of Tzeentch or Plaguebringers of Nurgle) and different bonuses. This is, however, a claim made before the release date and an inference made from a short teaser, but I can hope. As always, the other factions (Space Marines, Orks, Tyranids, and Eldar) will receive a number of new units; how many, I can’t say, but I’m sure it’ll be one or two per.

ALSO! As a final thought before I forget, Chaos Dreadnoughts! They weren’t in the original Dawn of War or the expansions for Chaos to construct, but the banner picture for the expansion’s official website contains, front and center, a Black Legion Dreadnought.

And now it’s right here!

Alright, collaborate and listen to me talk about Champions Online. My brother and I got into the beta but that wasn’t the end of it. Remember how you were all happy when Mount Doom exploded at the end of Return of the King and then you were all like ‘wait…what happened to Mister Frodo and Sam?’. That’s kinda how the beta was. I pre-ordered the game, got the key and everything, downloaded the client, and everything was free and clear! Then I had to patch the game and let me tell you, I’d rather be shot in the leg than go through that again. I won’t delve into the innumerable amounts of problems the patcher had but it mostly consisted of a folder mix-up leading to a 3.6 GB download just for the patch and a constantly failing patch server leading to disconnect after disconnect. So let me lay it down for you, really long day of intermittent success that ended at 3 in the morning with an up and ready game to play. But, by that time I didn’t feel like playing.

Then tomorrow came. I woke up at the crack of noon and rolled out of bed to play Champions. It was all fun, the best part of course being character creation. There are tons of costume pieces, maybe even more than City of Heroes (Cryptic’s last venture into super hero MMOs) and you don’t have to wait 20 levels to get a cape! But I didn’t make a cape guy despite my elation, I made a bad ass robot who shoots equally bad ass bolts of energy and has a shoulder-mounted mini-gun. He’s that big billy bad ass at the top of the post. So I did a run through of the opening scenario and the desert zone that follows. I picked up the jet boots flight power, which is cool if you don’t mind the bad maneuverability. Then I made some triflin’ witch doctor bastard with a skull head.

I gave him a mix of the magic and supernatural power sets which turned out really good and thematic. I picked up earth flight with him, its pretty self explanatory. You fly around on a hunk of whatever you were standing on at the time, you do it in the city you’ll get a rebar-filled concrete chunk, and if you’re in Canada you’ll fly on a snowy chunk of stone. And then, as I told my friends I would, I made Broly.

You might not know him, so if you don’t I’ll just throw this explanation at you: 350 lbs. of shit your pants flying at Mach 4 shooting energy balls that destroy planets. Surprisingly, it worked out well. They had all the pieces necessary to make him and if they didn’t I found something real close to it. The ability to customize the color of your powers (and where they shoot from, for some) make making original guys a possibility.

The only problem I found through all my character creating adventures (minus the expected beta bugs) was taste-based. I’m not a Silver Age comics guy, I’m more of an Ultimates guy, where Hulk gets to eat people. So, obviously, I was a bit disappointed when I walked through fields of campy dialogue, enemies, and villains. It’s made bearable by the bad ass game play but if you like Silver Age stuff. you’ll love this game. In my honest opinion, I like the cast of villains and heroes for City of Heroes/Villains better.

The game comes out September 1st, pre-order customers get a head start (myself) and you should buy it if you like comics or superheroes in general. This game gets my GOOD stamp.