TL;DR – Bioshock 2: Minerva’s Den is a short but sweet experience that perfectly captures all of the strength’s of the base game. Even if it also captures many of the annoyances I had with Bioshock 2, I do think it’s arguably the peak of the entire game and is well worth playing if you missed out on it back when it was new.
Quick Note – If you own the Remasters or the Bioshock Collection – which are now the only versions available for sale on PC and modern consoles, then you already own Minerva’s Den. It’s entirely separate from the main game and is buried away in the main menu behind Downloadable Content.
I’ll be honest when I say that Bioshock 2: Minerva’s Den is a game (well, DLC) that I’ve been meaning to play for a very long time. Most of the discourse around this modest DLC for the game is overwhelmingly positive and as someone who really enjoyed both BS1 and BS2, I knew that I would play it one of these days but that day never came. So here I am around a decade later finally stumbling into what is arguably the best part of the entire Bioshock saga, which is definitely not what I expected to write when I first started playing it. In fact the initial impressions I had for Bioshock 2: Minerva’s Den weren’t particularly positive, as it seemed to just chuck Subject Sigma (your character) into a new area for no particular reason and the gameplay was… pretty much identical. Sure there are new areas which look nice and I appreciate the attention to detail that some of the splicers have received, with their new models that have a distinctly lab-tech/researcher appearance. Yet it initially all just felt like a somewhat random addition of more content. Almost as if the publishers at 2K cracked the whip and forced the various development studios to cobble together a DLC that could be sold to fans quickly, on the back of BS2’s positive reception. Now I’m not certain as to what the context was for the creation of this DLC behind-the-scenes, but without wishing to spoil anything I’ll just say that these fears were put to rest by the DLC’s conclusion and that the developers have done a surprisingly good job of integrating this short little expansion into the narrative of the base game.
But I guess that sort of narrative nuance is about what you’d expect from the Bioshock games, at least from that moment in time. Bioshock 1 had received exceedingly good reviews after all and the criticism of Bioshock 2 was essentially “it’s good but too similar” which basically means it was a great game that just lacked the same impact as it’s predecessor due to being less of a novelty. Now if you were of a critical mind, you could also make the same criticism of Minerva’s Den as it really is good but exceptionally similar to the base game. When you start Bioshock 2: Minerva’s Den you are back at square one, because this is an entirely separate section of content which means that you don’t have the plasmids, tonics or even weapons that you’ve been accustomed too. This means that you have the same progression as you do in the base game, as you go from lighting bolt and drill through to the same end-game loadouts that you had towards the end of Bioshock 2, just without nearly as much time to get acclimatised. As a consequence the gameplay can feel a little rushed, as you have access to all of the same weapons, ammo, plasmids etc but you have a fraction of the stages. This means that you end up with levels that have 6 little sisters with their big daddies wandering around, alongside an almost constant trickle of new weapons or upgraded weapons of your existing ones. Things can therefore feel a little overwhelming, as you’ll get an upgraded weapon, then there’s a little sister around the corner, then within 10 minutes you’ve also found a new weapon and two new tonics before you could even consider spending that new Adam you’ve acquired. But considering the limitations that the guys working on this DLC had due to the low price and corresponding shorter duration of content on offer, I still think the pacing is perfectly fine. If anything I’m impressed that they were able to squeeze everything from the base game into this expansion, especially considering that there are some new toys of Delta to mess around with.
And these new toys are mostly pretty enjoyable, including that snazzy little laser gun you can see in that screenshot above. While none of them are overpowered and there aren’t too many of them, they’re enjoyable to use and most of them are good enough that you’ll be using them as much as your favourites from the base game. The Ion Laser itself is one of the first weapons you find in the DLC and it deals a healthy stream of constant damage, with cheap ammo that lets you keep that death beam blazing for plenty of time between reloads while being much more accurate than the machine-gun. There’s also the Gravity Well plasmid which is essentially a throwable black hole that sucks in the bad guys and then causes a large explosion, which is incredibly useful for the myriad situations in the DLC where you’re getting rushed by a group of angry splicers. Last and admittedly least there are two “new” tonics that are introduced in Bioshock 2: Minerva’s Den, firstly you’ve got the Drill Dash tonic which effectively acts the same as the research bonus from the base game as you can’t use the research camera in this DLC. Secondly there’s the “Master Protector” tonic, which increases the duration of each little sister gathering section but also increases the amount of Adam you receive per gathering session. The catch with this latter tonic is that you also need to have the Protector Trials and have received every star within that DLC mode. So if you don’t have it (which is unlikely unless you’re playing the PS3/360 versions) or more pertinently haven’t got 100% completion in it, then you can’t access this tonic. In hindsight only getting 1 weapon, 1 plasmid and (maybe) 1 tonic isn’t a huge selection, but two out of three are nice additions to the game and so it’d be churlish to complain.
But perhaps you’d be forgiven for complaining about the new enemy types, as there are a handful of them and they almost all function as upgraded versions of existing enemies. You’ve got a new type of Brute Splicer, who is on fire and is thus immune to flame damage and who unleashes a burst of flame around him when he takes melee damage. Then you’ve got three new types of security bots, a melee bot with a cattle prod, a variant with the Ion Laser that you were enjoying so much and finally a variant that makes effective use of a grenade launcher to injure you, itself and pretty much everything in between. You’ve also got the return of the Winter Houdini splicers from the first game, who have learned a new little trick which causes them to disable any friendly bots you’ve hacked until you manually re-activate them. Finally there’s a new type of Big Daddy in the former of the lancer, which is a beastly tank to deal with and can dish out as much damage as he can take. Fortunately he’s dependent on consistently dishing out the damage without any big surges in lethality or abrupt melee charges, meaning that you can abuse the terrain and/or use multiple mini-turrets and security bots to whittle him down. The “new” design for this enemy is also great and it’s nice to see that the DLC made use of the concept art that was included with the collector’s edition art book for the base game.
And that’s about all you get, to be honest. While the three new levels are each fairly lengthy and packed with audio logs, safes and various enemies the whole experience isn’t much of a revolution. You still have the same tendency to end up backtracking through areas you’ve just cleared but where the enemies have respawned and you won’t be able to access weapon upgrade stations or research bonuses. You’ve still got the same Adam gathering “activity”, the same Big Sister fights if you engage in that Adam gathering, mostly the same enemies to deal with and largely the same weapons, plasmids and tonics with which to deal with them. I guess there are also some Vacuum bots that you can smash for loot, but this is basically more Bioshock 2 with a sprinkling of new content (including a little quasi-asteroids mini-game that you can play in the second level). The main drawn of Bioshock 2: Minerva’s Den is the new narrative, centred around Subject Sigma who turns out to be a key figure in the story of at least one character from the base game and who has his own engaging little plot-line. I will say the villain of this DLC is pretty fun and even if he is a total wankstain, he is an engaging antagonist even if he doesn’t have the same depth as Ryan, Fontaine or even Lamb. But then again, he is spliced up to the eyeballs so it’s not entirely his fault – plus he continues the series tradition of slightly weird and out of place boss fights.
In summary Bioshock 2: Minerva’s Den is a nice little slice of Bioshock 2 that has it’s own well written storyline with some links to the campaign of the main game, alongside just enough new enemies and equipment to keep things from feeling like a total retread. The new stages are a pleasant continuation of the base game and offer a reasonable amount of hidden treasures without being excessively long or overly short. The pacing is handled well and while some features are missing, they’re not hugely missed and I feel like adding in research requirements and weapon upgrades would have made this DLC feel too bloated. Instead it’s the goldilocks of DLC, just enough to feel fresh without having so much that if feels alien. Just long enough to fit a self-contained story without being so long that it stretches itself short, and just tied enough to the main game to feel like an extension of the narrative without being so connected to the base game that it wouldn’t fit into the overall story. It’s a great little chunk of extra Bioshock 2 and it doesn’t fall for either the Bioshock 1 trap of having the engaging villain step aside halfway through or the Bioshock 2 trap of erring too much to the first game. Instead Bioshock 2: Minerva’s Den is in a sweet spot between all of the ways it could have gone wrong, making it a great example of restrained game design and one experience that I would recommend to anyone who has enjoyed any of the Bioshock games (or even just games in general).