Most shooters have the same formula you'll see at least once. Generic hallways, barely developed characters, overly-used stories, and lack of innovation. BioShock does what those shooters don't. BioShock is a game that you'll want to play for the beautiful environments in Rapture, unique and strange characters, interesting story, and the innovation of how the game lets you play.
You play as Jack who is a lone survivor of a plane crash in the middle of Atlantic Ocean during the 60's. You go to the only surface in the ocean, which is a tower that takes you to a u-topia called Rapture. Rapture was made by Andew Ryan, one of the antagonists fo the game who wanted to be free of the government, religion, and other things he morally hates. Throughout the game, you go through a destroyed, messed up u-topia (made somewhere in 1940-1950) and find a way to get out of the place. Rapture has splicers, which are citizens of the city who radically became different due to having too much of Adam. The 4 types of splicers are interesting, but thankfully you don't run into a Houdini as they are the most annoying. Adam is the source where you can go to a "vending machine" called Gatherer's Garden. There, you can get new plasmids, tonics, upgrades, and such. There's also the typical money system you can use to get ammo, supplies, and many more. Eve is how many needles of Adam you have. What's interesting a lot in the game to me is the U-Invent system where you can get Auto Hack Tools and such from things like Kerosene, Rubber Bands, Empty Hypo, and such. The plasmids is the better equavilent to weapons in the game. My personal favorite would be Target Dummy, Telekenisis, Winter Blast, and Electro Bolt. Most plamids are okay but don't do that much damage (and yes, I know you can upgrad them up). Tonics aren't really that interesting and for some reason, I felt that they really don't do much of a significant change to my character. That said, alll of this is really interesting and worth just trying them all out, that is if you can catch 'em all.
For example, you can use the target dummy in a place where there is a mine. A thugging splicer would try to go to that and smack it, but instead it gets punk'd big time. You can use Winter Blast on enemies to freeze them for a small time to give you a chance to change weapons and such. Using the environment such as doing a "Toaster in the Tub" move, throwing dead bodies at enemies (they lose a lot of healths for some reason from you just doing that), and such. Doing all of this is really fun to experiment with.
You have a service radio where you get messeges from usually 3 main identities. One is Andrew Ryan who constantly but not annoyingly wants to stop you at all costs from ruining his city. There's Atlas who helps you out while going through Rapture. Last but not least is Tennabaum, a "Mother Goose" who regrets of making little girls into something beyond weird.
The little girls/little ones/little sisters are protected by Big Daddies (Rosie or Bouncer) and all they do is to collect Adam to survive. Later on in the game, you find out the reason why there are Big Daddies for these little girls. The shocking twist played out by posters around an orphange gives you a reason why you should be selfless but the game doesn't force you. Atlas over the radio wants you to kill them, while Tennabaum begs you over the radio not to kill them and make them back to their normalcy. The highlight of the game is going face-to-face of who you really are which is definately staggering since no other game I've played has done that. Well, maybe Pac-Man (Harvest the Ghost, or Let Him Kill You?). The morals you choose throughout give you in the end 2-3 endings. Your reward of killing is more of Adam with a side of guilt (heh heh). Your reward of saving is less Adam but sometimes gifts from Tennabaum such as doubling more Adam and the smile of your face looking at little sisters be happy and run off to hide. Big Daddies carry a lot of money and mission-related items once you killed them.
The weapons like tommy guns, pistols, shotguns, crossbows, and many more are really fun to use. The sad part is that the game doesn't give you a lot of ammo which usually makes you worried to not lose all that ammo you just collected off from a storage crate or a safe. The upgrades to your weapons are really great to use although for the first walkthrough, you won't find most Weapon Upgrade stations unless you go through everywhere. Another bother for me is that for example shotguns and pistols have to have different types of ammo. Why couldn't it just be one type of ammo but trippling it? The different types of ammo is to at least make all the weapons useful and to cause more damage to an enemy, since the types of ammo are aimed specifically for one type of a splicer or Big Daddy. The game graphically is amazing. While looking outside the window looks like an image of a building being reflected at a fun house mirror makes it seem like cheap, plus some freezes while playing too much of the game (makes sense though, you need to take a break), and floating dead bodies are really only the minor problems (well for the 360 version apparently). Getting whacked in the face by a big daddy looks so cool, and the game rarely lags (for me) even if so many things are going on. It's even surprising that the level is so huge and yet there are so places in the level to explore, that there is rarely a loading screen for that particular place.
The tilt is just amazing, switching weapons and plasmids are so easy to handle. The sound such as listining to the hilarious tunes of the vending machines, the corny advertisements, the sad rants of splicers, the "cute?" quotes of little sisters, and the voice acting in general is incredible. It's nice to hear that the characters that don't sound from a I Love Lucy show (hopefully you know what I'm talking about). The repetive parts of the game is that some splicers randomly come towards you (which is good, to not the game boring I guess and to keep the horror shock aspect active) and attack fast. While there are techniques to easily take them down for a Thuggish and Spider, the Leadhead and Houdini Splicer in particular is asking you to use everything you have to take them down. Also the Big Daddy fights get repetive and you die fast if you don't have the good weapons to take them down. If you die, you have to go all the way back to finish the fight (*ahem* What?) with the Big D. Another issue that's minor to me but might be major to others is sometimes being lost in levels, specifically Arcadia, Fort Frolic, Neptune's Bounty, and such (although those 3, I got lost for some time). A major repetive issue for me is hacking involving a BioShocked version of Pipe Dreams as a mini-games. It gets easier to hack but later on it goes off so cheap, and the tonics that say it reduces difficulty, doesn't do anything major. It's still difficult and annoying. The endings really do give you guilt (killed all the little sisters)), shock (did 50/50 of killing and saving little sisters), or makes you glad (saving the little sisters) at what you did. One more sad issue with the game is that the single-player takes 4-6 days to complete, even less if you really rush through it or play it all day non-stop (it took me 4 days). The game takes 20-23 hours long to finish it and the value of the game won't last long unless you want to play it again to see the 2-3 endings. If you don't want to that, at least you can load up a saved game and go from there without any hassle. But even that won't do justice, it's really cool playing it all over again the second time. The lack of multiplayer isn't bad thing in my opinion, but like I said, won't last the value of playing this game. Overall, ignoring some of the major and minor parts of the game, BioShock is a masterpiece that has more then what you think it delivers. It has a great story, innovative gameplay, easy-to-manuever tilt, amazing sound, and it is also a great techincal achievement combined. It's either you buy it or rent it, but definately don't skip it. It's a game you should play, you won't be dis-satisfied.
