When 2K Games first announced over six months ago that they were porting their highly-acclaimed First Person Shooter Bioshock to the Playstation3 the main question on everyone’s mind was whether 2K would take the time to replicate the same experience that players had on the Xbox360 and PC versions and bring it over to the Playstation3. Let me assure you however that Bioshock on the Playstation3 is every bit as good as its 360 counter-part. The game features the same excellent single-player campaign that was found on the 360 and PC versions as well as adding another difficulty level labelled ‘Survivor’ and a set of bonus ‘Challenge Rooms’ which will be made available for free download over the Playstation Network.
When you first play Bioshock you may think it is nothing more than a graphical show-piece however as you progress into the mysterious and haunting underwater city of Rapture you quickly become entranced with the magnificent story and you can think of nothing else but finding out what happened to the citizens of this mysterious underwater metropolis.
Bioshock is set in 1960 and takes place in a mysterious underwater city called ‘Rapture’. The game starts off with your character on a plane flight over the mid-Atlantic when suddenly after the plane mysteriously crashes you are stranded in the sea and looming in front of you is mysterious black tower sitting on an isolated rocky outcrop. At this point the first thing that strikes you is the sheer beauty and realism of the games visuals, you notice the way the water rolls around you, the tongues of fire that engulf the plane’s mangled shell and the moonlight glinting off the surface of the water and you have to remind yourself that you are playing a game and not watching a movie. As you climb out of the murky waters and walk into the tower you discover a small submarine, called a bathysphere, waiting to take you underwater. In this submarine you are introduced to the man who created Rapture, a mysterious business man named Andrew Ryan, and to the city itself.
When the bathysphere docks you begin to understand that all is not well in Rapture and something terrible has happened to its citizens. Even before you step into the city you witness one of the genetic mutants known as ‘splicers’ attacking one of the few remaining un-mutated citizens, these splicers have effectively taken over Rapture. You also begin to notice that everything appears run-down and broken. The source of all the problems in Rapture is due to a substance known as ADAM which allows peoples genetic codes to be altered with ease. After acquiring the first weapon in the game, the wrench, and battling your way through a few splicers you come across the first ‘plasmid’ in the game, which gives your character the ability to shoot lightning from his fingertips.
This is essentially where Bioshock slightly deviates from its core First Person Shooter gameplay and becomes more like a Role Playing Game. Throughout the game you collect special types of ADAM known as plasmids these give your character special powers such as the ability to shoot lightening from his hand, or fire, or bees, or ice, or you can make a replica of yourself so enemies will attack that instead of you, the list goes on.
