SOME SPOILERS BELOW THROUGHOUT, WITH THE MOST OBVIOUS BEING MARKED APPROPRIATELY (although if you haven't played Bioshock 2 at all by now, ... come on, really?).

No doubt by now every avid Bioshock fan here at the Mag has been made aware of the add-on to Bioshock 2 that came out well over a year ago, not long at all after the original game's release, entitled Minerva's Den, and I'd like to take the time to tell you all about it, if I may indulge in my extended writing as usual.

I don't know if the PS3 works in this same way, but it's pretty obvious Microsoft intends to milk every last cent it can out of XBox players with a variety of add-on features to all games, some interesting and helpful to gameplay, most others utterly useless and clearly gimmicky. ... But Minerva's Den is a separate game altogether, rather than an enhancement of gameplay: a sort of "side story" to Bioshock 2 in the same way that the Separate Ways mini-game is akin to original Resident Evil 4 game. (I'm not sure what these kinds of "side" games are called officially.) It is approximately three hours long, assuming you know what you're doing - about as long as it'd take you to run a normal playthrough of one disc in Resident Evil 2, perhaps - and takes you to an entirely different area of Rapture than the original game does, from the perspective of another Alpha series Big Daddy known simply as "Subject Sigma" to Dr. Tenenbaum and the associated villain, with a different cast of characters, a different time period (I think) than Bioshock 2's, and an entirely different conflict surrounding them.

If you Bioshock 2 players here are thinking this is a sure waste of your 15 dollars like most other add-ons, and that's why you haven't bothered with it so far, I have decided to write about this tonight to assure you that it isn't, at least in my opinion. I have found Minerva's Den to be a surprisingly engaging story-driven experience with a pairing of silent, one-willed protagonist and shockingly memorable villain who has an understandably begrudging connection to the former that fondly reminds you of the same substance of central-character pairing that is in the original Bioshock 2, and gives you the same satisfying and challenging experience of fighting multi-layered hordes of Splicers and Big Daddies that Bioshock 2 does, except with a new breed of Big Daddy - called the Lancer - and a new laser weapon that you may actually find preferable as a basic means of defense to fall back on, to even your stock drill arm.


The "Lancer" Big Daddy

To begin, it took me a bit more time past my first playthrough of Bioshock 2 to see that its seemingly emotionally and musically detached setting and dialogue throughout the game - up to the point at the very end where you finally reunite with Eleanor and make a last-ditch attempt at escape - is actually superficial, and there is a clear and understandable motivation behind Dr. Lamb as the villain that clashes very well with what you as the Big Daddy protagonist discover to be a willfully chosen bond of filial love with your human daughter Eleanor, after all. This helps you to appreciate not only the dire circumstances of the last thirty minutes or so of the game as you fight to your last breath to ensure yours and Eleanor's survival, but also appreciate how wonderfully well-developed Dr. Lamb is as the villain who makes every attempt to not only keep Eleanor in her cage, but break you and her biological daughter both of any thoughts of humanity and self-awareness that ends up being your salvation in the purposes of the story. How she thinks and acts, her intentions, are obviously crazy and senselessly wrong as all hell, and yet you see where she isn't morally bankrupt at the same time, and Eleanor's mad scientist mother no doubt believes in all of her heart that what she is doing is right. At the end of it all, if you chose the way of hero rather than self-preserving and vengeful murdering bastard in the story, then you are satisfied with the end result, whereupon you see the fruits of your strife to hold onto your humanity and good samaritan ways in the middle of the battlefield, through Eleanor and the contingent of Little Sisters you saved. What I like most about Bioshock 2 is just that; you see how your heroic actions pay off in many ways, and it was easy for me to become emotionally invested in my bond with Eleanor when I was guiding her in the law of kindness and self-sacrifice by choice, but the game also lets you know full well how much of a true asshole you are if you chose the Grand Theft Auto path, instead. I know I was talking about the original Bioshock 2 there, but my point is, it's amazing enough how I get all of this out of Bioshock 2 as a relatively short game (let's say seven to nine hours) in the action/horror-ish first-person-shooter department, and yet Minerva's Den does just as good a job in immersing me in its environment, story, and web of character interactions and motivations when it is only about a third as long a game.

The main selling point here is the story of Minerva's Den. You are a Big Daddy - a brother of the protagonist in Bioshock 2 - also from the Alpha series known as Subject Sigma to returning character Brigid Tenenbaum, our favorite sympathetic reformed mad scientist, and debuting villain Reed Wahl, a shrewish and paranoid little pasty cracker of a man who talks with an infuriating hiss in his speech ("ssssssuuprizzzzzzzzze, Sssssigma!"). Also with Brigid to guide you through the perils of Minerva's Den is our mentor character Charles Porter, who is/was a personal rival of Reed's. In the story,


Charles Porter,


Reed Wahl,


Brigid Tenenbaum, and ... 30's/40's actress Geraldine Fitzgerald? ..... Aha.

Of course, as always with those like Tenenbaum who have seen in the end just how anachronistic and doomed-to-failure a society that Rapture is, you see that your ultimate goal in the story is escape, escape back to a more humane world above the ocean that isn't run solely by a self-loving anarchist and doesn't so easily pave the way to self-destruction by catering to every selfish human desire. (If you haven't figured it out by the end of Bioshock 1, Rapture is actually a cruel wasteland that operates solely on the principal of survival of the fittest and fulfillment of personal want at any cost. It sucks to live in that place and still be human being in his right mind, so every hero by the end of each game has no greater desire than to be free of the hellhole.)


I mean, Andrew Ryan's values and beliefs that led to Rapture's creation kind of say it all.


Once you lay claim to The Thinker for Porter and Tenenbaum, you engage in a pitched grudge match with Reed himself, who is a tougher Splicer than you might be inclined to believe, and on your way out of the Den in the ensuing silence to meet your two guides and leave to the surface, you manage to piece together the clues found in the various crucial audio diaries you've found throughout the story to initiate what has to be the greatest, most moving and convincing voice acting performances in all of video games. Again, like the characterization web that ties Subject Delta, Eleanor, and Dr. Lamb together, that which you see develop in Subject Sigma, Charles Porter, and Reed Wahl also runs deeper than you may at first realize, and paves the way for giving us some of the best and most meaningful character developments and acting performances we've seen in the history of emotionally-invested gaming, ... and somehow all the while also satisfies our cheap and (I often wonder) inescapable need as human males to engage in explosively violent combat with ghastly humans-turned-monsters and big scary robots with giant drill arms and laser cannons. ^_^ There's a lot of fun to be had with trying out various combinations of conventional weapons and plasmids on opponents, lots of dark and effectively disturbing scenery and atmosphere to be seen (such as one room illuminated only by the outside lights of the city where Reed has scrawled out a threat to you on the wall with some dead Splicer's blood), and audio diaries giving interesting exposition behind Rapture and its history as well as endearing recordings of Charles Porter's interactions with his late wife that managed to make me care more about the relationship of these two in just a few paragraphs of dialogue than some RPG's can in their entire twenty hours or so of game time (... because for the life of me I'll never understand why Tifa or Princess Garnet waste their precious time).


.... I think he means business, Siggy.

Now, don't get me wrong; this isn't such a new gameplay experience that I won't say Minerva's Den is pretty much the same as playing more of Bioshock 2, but this is exactly what you want if you weren't satisfied at the end of Bioshock 2 in the way that you wish the ending hadn't come this soon - you wanted more!

So, please take this as an official recommendation from me. I can't say I don't understand if you've become so jaded with Microsoft's shameful plug of add-ons to milk more money out of the faithful XBox owners that you can't help but automatically turn your nose up at this, but I hope I've managed to convince Bioshock fans here to be willing to open their wallet just one more time. Honestly, I think Minerva's Den stands just fine as its own game, had it not been made as a simple and short spin-off, even in a day and age where games are seemingly expected to last more than just a couple of hours and have something of a developed story with plenty of cut scenes or the like to represent it.