2K has done a fantastic job with Bioshock; their efforts to create a
FPS, lite RPG and adventure game hybrid have paid off. Unfortunately
it's only available for the PC and the Xbox 360 however. I have not
played it on the PC but both games are the same content wise. Bioshock
is also a single-player game only but the case says it has XBL
functionality. I think this is a mistake as there is no online
component in the game. I do believe that 2K should of made the game for
all platforms though, because any hard-core gamer should experience
Bioshock for themselves.
Under the Atlantic Ocean lies the underwater city of Rapture and it
surely ain't no merry Atlantis. Instead of hot Mermaids there are
deranged human splicers, super engineered big daddies and creepy little
sisters, which roam this utopian city gone wrong. Andrew Ryan, an
ideologist who rejected the views of the world, built Rapture in the
1940's as a haven for artists, scientists and people searching to
escape the censoring and moral confines of regimes on the surface.
Designed as the end of the funnel that which only good things come out
of, Rapture's lifespan ironically didn't last long, as the mess down
there rivals my desk draw clutter. Vices on the surface plagued the
people of Rapture just as badly; greed, corruption, selfishness… these
worked in tandem with limitless ethic guidelines in scientific fields
and together they twisted the underwater world into a hellhole. If
you're like me, watching human nature at its finest is fascinatingly
addicting.
You start as a faceless protagonist named Jack… yup, just you and your
status of joe schmoe farmhand. While on a flight over the Atlantic
Ocean something terrible happens. What happens next is that somehow the
plane crashes and you're thrown into the oceans icy grip of doom. You
resurface to look at the remains of the aircraft and see an ominous
lighthouse nearby, which is beautifully emphasized by a bright full
moon and some elegant nighttime clouds. Needless to say the moment you
step onto the lighthouses steps you will feel this rush of excitement,
curiosity and eeriness crawl around your frail little body. I wrapped
myself in my favorite quilt and took a swig of my V8 splash (loaded
with antioxidants of course) before heading into a journey that I would
never forget.
Mentioning anything further about the plot would be a crime. Bioshocks
plot should be experienced as a virgin to the game, so just know that
it's simple on the outside, but incredibly complex as well. The story
is told through real time radio conversations with other people in
Rapture and by picking up and listening to pre-recorded audio diaries
strewn about. So one can follow the immediate plot, which is like a
dull dandelion, or if you pick up the audio diaries the plot unfolds
into a gorgeous maze of roses bushes. There is a ton of back-story and
a lot of interesting characters that you will feel connected to, even
though you'll have only seen a small portrait of them and listened to
their voice. Thankfully the voice acting is great and the characters
ethnic accents sound natural, wunderbar.
Gameplay in Bioshock is a bit of an unclassifiable and indefinable
smorgasbord of ideas. After you enter Rapture you'll be set on a linear
pathway. Each section of the city you visit has much more to it than
just the road paved by the guiding yellow arrow on the top of the
screen though. Exploration isn't encouraged by the game but scrounging
the world from ceiling to floor isn't only fun but you'll have more
opportunities to grab items and whatnot. Sure there are also times when
you must go fetch items and do a tad bit of backtracking, but these
don't do anything to harm the games flow. Plus you have a handy dandy
palm-pilot that used to belong to the Jetsons. It can pull up a menu,
which basically knows everything about everything. It also has a map
with labeled beneficial outlets, stores all the audio diaries you pick
up, will tell you where to go and what to do if you get stumped and can
make you cup of decaf real quick. Where the hell did Jack get this
thing?
One thing about Bioshocks linearity is that it feels like it's being
forced, the game wants you to go through a level only once. If you
don't deal with every little sister (more on this later) on a level and
try to go to the next area, a warning message will pop up saying that
there are still little sisters in this current level. Not only is that awkward but it feels artificial. Also if
you return to an area it feels dead, I mean items don't respawn, there
will be far less enemies and I even think that the graphics are scaled
down a bit on return visits, maybe that was just me.
Bioshock boasts some neat weapons and abilities though. For example,
once you pick up a camera you can use it to takes photos of enemies.
These photos will add to your research level for that enemy and with
every research level gained you get attack bonuses against them,
usually a damage increase. Also nearly every mechanical contraption in
Rapture, from vending machines to security robots, can be hacked.
Hacked machines are beneficial to you, vending machine prices lower,
security cameras will ignore you, locked doors will open, hacking is
awesome. Hacking is carried out by a simple mini-game on a 2D plane
where you create a pathway using pipes in order to lead a flowing
liquid from one point to another. I found the mini-game to be laughably
easy throughout the whole game; maybe that's why I think it's so great.
Your arsenal in Bioshock is pretty sweet, I mean freaking sweet. You
have traditional straight-up firearms, a wrench for up close fighting,
customizable genetic tonics and innovative offensive plasmids (sort of
like magic spells). Conventional peashooters are swell and they have
multiple ammo types and obtainable enhancements, but the plasmids steal
the show. From blasting enemies with lighting, introducing them to
angry swarms of bees, dousing them in flames and even setting them upon
each other, plasmids will be your best friend.
Naturally you'll rely on your plasmids more and more, but near the end
the game temporarily takes away your ability to choose your equipped
plasmid and gives you any random one. This will throw most players on a
loop and they'll have to be extra alert and smart in combat. On my
first time through Bioshock I thought it wouldn't be so bad without
control of my plasmids for a bit, got into a brawl with some splicers…
got my ass handed to me. But I learned just how much plasmids
overshadow guns the farther you get into the game.
Using plasmids costs EVE, essentially your magic points to keep it
simple. You can find or buy EVE hypos throughout the city, basically
syringes filled with the EVE recovering blue juice. To use plasmids
however you must find them scattered about or buy them at Gatherers
Garden shops and buying them costs ADAM. ADAM is the genetic currency
of Rapture (I can't really say much about it without spoiling the
game); everything revolves around it. If ADAM is the most significant
element of the ecosystem in Rapture, then little sisters are the
keystone species.
Little sisters are… tiny female siblings… not really actually, but just
know that they are essential to the game and they smell funny. These
girls, whom are protected by big daddies, travel through Rapture in
hope of collecting ADAM from dead bodies and keeping the ADAM flowing
in a cycle through the city. They also play a role, actually the only
role, in Bioshocks' plots "moral choices". Big daddies protect little
sisters, you can leave the duo alone and they will return the favor,
sounds great right? An enemy that won't attack you unless you do it
first, but here's the catch. To get ADAM you must either harvest or
rescue little sisters, the former kills the girl and yields more juicy
ADAM, while the latter nets you less ADAM but the girl lives to sing
another day. Wait the catch ain't over yet, if you want to
harvest/rescue a little sister you have to kill their big daddy
guardian first. These behemoths can be tough cookies and you'll have to
lay out a plan to take them out without getting whomped yourself.
Actually getting whomped (dieing) in Bioshock is not only hard to do
but holds no penalties. The game is easy overall, even on the hard
settings, and it gives you so much money, ammo and med packs, you
simply can't use them at the rate the game gives them to you, so expect
to leave a lot of items just laying around. Anyways, death in Bioshock
is more like a temporary setback. When you hit the bucket you are
revived back at the last Vita-Chamber you passed, these tube thingies
are automatically activated when you pass them and require no money or
anything to use. But everything you've done in the game is done and
done; say you're fighting a big daddy, you get him down to half health,
but you die. After you are revived in the Vita-Chamber you can go back
and find the same big daddy and he will be at half health still, so
you're really just being sent to a new location. This revive system is
however, very well explained and implemented into the games plot
ingeniously; so it's not exactly a player specific crutch.
Let's go back to Bioshocks arsenal though; besides kick ass plasmids
and clunky looking but effective homemade firearms you can equip
multiple tonics. These are passive upgrades and fall into three
categories. Physical ones are ones that beef you up, Combat tonics let
you add an extra texture to your attacks and Engineering ones ease the
process of hacking (not like it needs to be eased at all).
Not all tonics are really that useful however and some are obviously
better than others. But you can heavily customize them to suit your
play style. If your low on ammo or you like to get your enemies to
fight each other, equip the Enrage plasmid (makes enemies attack one
another) and the tonic Natural Camouflage (cloaks you when standing
still). Maybe you're having a tough time in close quarters combat? Put
on the tonics Wrench Jockey (ups wrench damage) and Bloodlust (you get
some health and EVE with each wrench hit) then. While these lite
customization options are great, it feels a little underwhelming after
a while. You'll easily settle into favorite strategies, formulas and
attack patterns for different situations. I rarely changed my Combat
tonics, but I was swapping my Physical tonics right up to the credits.
Plus some things just simply won't get the job done at times thereby
forcing you to use the proper abilities, but it's still fun to change
up your genetic code and experiment.
Sightseers rejoice, because Bioshock looks fantastic. It takes place in
the 1950's and it captures the look of that time period. From retro
style neon signs, billboards with stippled pop art, and broken
jukeboxes playing tunes by folks like Perry Como… it feels like it's in
the 50's through and through. In addition to capturing the interior
décor style nearly half a century ago, Bioshock looks creepy and is
very atmospheric. Seeing as Rapture is a twisted pile of ethics,
dementia and craziness, at times you will feel the despair and
hopelessness in the fallen city. Dead bodies just laying everywhere,
magnificent blood splatters covering whole walls (sometimes-even
spelling out messages), mutilated corpses on gurneys and some top-notch
dust clouds and lighting, you can't but help feel a little unsettled by
Bioshock.
The game is pretty dark by default but there's a brightness slider so
you can fix it. It uses the Havok physics engine but I can't say that
the engine is that good. You'll lightly bump into a crate only to watch
as all the items fall off as if a rhino charged into it, but the engine
does a fine job in the end, especially when it shows items being
realistically scattered about after an explosion. There are some other
faults in the presentation though. There is minor texture pop-in, Jack
has no shadow, the game can just go on the fritz sometimes and do this
spazzy jump, which is rare though, and ragdoll death animations look
really poor. The game runs smoothly though overall, oh and the water…
looks absolutely amazing.
Audio is handled deftly with a semi horror-y soundtrack with quick
crescendos and swells for suspense, plus a sweet sad little violin
ditty kicks in for those frowny face parts. There's a plethora of
licensed songs that will play in the game as well, these help build the
setting a lot. Hearing Bobby Darins rendition of "Somewhere Beyond the
Sea" start-up as your fighting a big daddy is something you got to
experience. Also as mentioned earlier voice acting is top-notch.
Sound effects are a mixed bag. Guns sound especially awesome; the
pistol has a really nice mechanical whirring twang and the rocket
launcher reload sounds very appropriate, given the fact that it looks
like it's built from a vacuum cleaner and shells are made from coffee
cans. Some plasmids don't stand out but they all get the job done; it's
just that some don't sound that great while others do. The sound of
using Incinerate isn't as satisfying as it should be for example;
instead of a nice robust crackling "FWOOM" it's just like a generic
skimpy "bwoosh" sound. But some sound really nice when you equip them;
there is nothing like the hard sharp "kreeg-whump" of Winterblast and
the radio scrambling "wee-oo wee-oo" of Security Bullseye.
There is one last thing that you must understand before playing
Bioshock. It is not a horror game first and foremost. It has many
horror elements, and it certainly feels like a horror game at times but
it is not designed to freak you out, but it will. The frights in
Bioshock mainly are from pop out scares, like splicers jumping out of
wall fridges, the lights going off and the dead body you just saw not
being there when the lights come back on. It's not meant to offer
continuous frights. Instead it's more a long-term mental horror game;
it shows you how a society with brilliance but without limits will go
down the drain. Also no matter how unified your city is, there will
always be moochers and con men out there just waiting to jack the city.
A common theme of utopian philosophy and some Machiavellian
justifications helps glue everything together and create a unique world
of ideals.
Overall though Bioshock is a marvelous gaming achievement; not only in
its hybrid gameplay design and free form customizable combat, but its
artistic and technical bounds in visual standards, great plot that's
portrayed perfectly and its high level of polish make it go even
farther. If you have a PC that can run it or a Xbox 360, you need to
check out Bioshock.
