I fell for the Bioshock hype and I fell hard. While I enjoyed the final
product, I still had alot of problems with it. I think if Bioshock was
strictly a FPS, then it would suck, and if it was strictly an adventure
game, then it would suck, but since it combines these two elements, it
seems better than it really is. That's only because there aren't very
many one-player FPS out there right now.
The biggest hype this
game created was the amazing storyline and originality. While I LOVED
the Little Sisters and Big Daddies, I felt everything else was
contrived as hell.
I loved the first hour of Bioshock, it was
very dark and creepy. After that I think I lost the "shock value" and I
would see the same characters repeating the same phrases over and over
again, you get desensitized fairly quick with this game. Heck, there's
really no bosses in this game, just the random bad guys and Big Daddies
through the entire game. There's 2 variations of big daddies and maybe
5 of the regular enemies, but get use to them because you're going to
be seeing them alot.
Bioshock was also really difficult in the
beginning, but once you get use to the controls and once you start
learning skills that boost your strength, HP and defense, then the game
becomes way to easy actually. Enemies types do progress along with you,
but it's still incredibly easier later in the game than earlier.
----------Battle System----------
Bioshock is a hybrid First Person Shooter / Adventure / RPG. I'll be
perfectly honest and say that Bioshock is fairly mediocre shooter, but
with the added depth of RPG stats and Adventure puzzles you'll feel
like this has more depth than your average single player shooter. It
does though, I won't take that away, but I still don't think I would
but this above Resident Evil 4 or Metroid Prime by any means either.
When you kill a Big Daddy, and capture a Little Sister, you get the
choice between killing or saving the Little Sister. If you decide to
kill her you get 160 Adam Points, and if you save her you get 80 Adam
Points. You get to spend these points at a station that boost your HP
or Magic (opps Eve), or you can buy new skills or spells.
There's special stations found in the game that can permentally boost
your weapons power. You'll also find scattered throughout the game
stations that can heal you, switch your skills, sell you items or ammo.
There's quite a few spells in the game, but I felt only three of them
ultimately mattered. That was Fire, which can melt ice or set enemies
on fire. Electricity, which can open special doors and kill enemies
standing in water, and finally Telekensis, which can grab far away
items and hurl them back at an enemy, kinda like Half-Life.
There's only 8 weapons in the game, but each weapon can hold atleast 1
or 3 type of bullets. You can't hold very many bullets per weapon but
you'll find plenty of bullets during corpse looting or you can just buy
them at any time. I can't say that Bioshock is a "Survival Horror"
because I never felt like I was losing anything by wasting bullets or
health packets. As matter of fact, this game can be super easy because
it doesn't even matter if you die. If you die, you get sent to the
nearest check point without any penalty. Not only that but all the
damage you inflicted to the enemy that killed you will still be
attached to him by the time you make your revenge.
There was a
neat hacking minigame, which reminds me of Pipe Dreams of the NES. This
minigame allows you to hack machines to give you cheaper items. You can
also hack auto-machines, like security cameras and autoguns for
example. This allows you to take control of these weapons against your
enemy.
There wasn't a huge enemy variation. There was the
Leather Head Splicers, which attack and are strong against Melee style.
There was Spider Splicers, which can climb walls and ceilings and throw
items at you. There was the Nitro Splicers, that throw bombs. There's
also two versions of the Big Daddies, one can attack with gun and the
other will melee. Outside of that, there was only one honest to god
boss in the game.
One cool option in the game was an addition
of a camera. The camera allows you to take pictures of your enemies,
but for some reason you can't keep the pictures. Either way, taking
pictures allow you to store "information" on the enemy, and the more
pictures you take, the more info you'll know about the enemy and the
stronger your character will get fighting them in the future. You can
only level this stat up 5 times before you can't take anymore pictures
though.
----------Characters / Story----------
You play as
Jack, and how do you know your name is Jack? Well at the start of the
game you see a note that says "TO: Jack" and that's the last time your
name will ever be mentioned. Besides a few old photos, you'll never see
yourself either. So you basically play as the silent, faceless
protagonist. Jack was flying on a plane when it suddenly crashed into
the ocean. When he found shore, he locating a secret utopia world gone
wrong called Rapture. This world was created and formed by Andrew Ryan
(which kinda sounds like Ayn Rand, way to go on a limb guys). Andrew
Ryan's failed society and crazy science projects made everyone
stircrazy and nuts. Also on this underwater city is Dr. Tennenbaum. She
takes care of the "Little Sisters" in the city. The Little Sisters are
small little girls that roam around the city searching for corpses to
harvest "Adams". Adams give people extra strength, and they're the only
ones able to get for no given reason. The Little Sisters are protected
by "Big Daddies". They're giant mech's in underwater armor. Between all
of this craziness, you're guided to freedom by man named Atlas.
I wasn't really a big fan of the story. For one, they hit you over the
head with metaphors WAY to much, Atlas, Andrew Ryan, Adam, Eve,
Rapture, etc. The game was promoted as having a "big mortality choice",
but you either harvest or save the Little Sister when you find one.
It's not a big choice, and if it was your first time playing then you
really wouldn't know what the right choice was. There was a few
"surprises" in the game, but none were shocking or interesting to me.
Nearly all cutscenes are shown in real time, so you can walk around and
attack an do whatever you want. This sounds cool right? Weeeell, you're
ALWAYS trapped in a small room with a bulletproof glass surrounding you
from the action. The characters you do interact with are also behind
glass. There's only one time you actually meet a character face to
face. It was a pretty cool effect at first, but after the 3rd or 4th
time I got sick of this style.
Almost all the storyline in the
game is presented by a disembodied voice over loud speakers or through
tapes found throughout the game. You feel no interaction at all within
the storyline.
----------Graphics----------
I liked the
graphics for the most part, but I also thought they're rough in a few
areas too. I loved the lighting effects, which gave the entire game a
real nice atmospheric look. I loved the iconic Big Daddy and Little
Sister designs, heck even the little things like the icons for tonics
you gain through out the game, which kinda reminds me of Fallout. I
loved the unique settings and often unique level designs through out
the game. I never got lost and would always remember my place in the
game because everything looked so different and how well the game was
paced and set together. There was a few things that I thought was weird
though. Why would someone keep a morgue freeze in their apartment?
There's a few inconsistencies with the graphics for me. I love the
water effects, but when you melt ice, the ice turns into that silvery
goo from Terminator 2. When glass breaks, it breaks in huge chunks.
When you damage something, it makes the same pattern over and over
again. The character models look good, but there aren't enough of them.
Another big disappointment was how the characters died, they just fall
down with ragdoll-psychics. That's pretty lame. While Bioshock is
fairly gorey, with blood stained walls and cutscenes showing little
girls stabbing corpses and mad doctors disemboweling his victims, you
never create any gore yourself. There are no dismemberings, no head
shots, nothing. You kill something and they fall down like a ragdoll.
Besides that, there was a few scenes that felt out of place, for
example you had to rotate a wheel in one scene. When you're rotating
it, your hands are still holding on to your weapon and your wheel is
magically rotating on it's own. I wish they could of added hands to
scenes like that.
The only time the game loads is when you
open a new area or save your game. Area's in this game are huge, so
you'll never really see much loading in the entire game. There are a
few spots in the game where you can see items such as signs and walls
buffering, but it's hardly noticeable.
----------Sound----------
The music and sound effects are amazing. For the most part the music is
ambient sounds, but occasionally you'll hear some pumped up music
during fights with Big Daddies or something.
My biggest gripe
are the subtitles. They don't follow along with the words at all, and
it's mostly annoying because the voices in the game have a low scratchy
sound to them, which sounds nice but you can't make everything out
unless you have subtitles, especially if you're in the heat of battle.
It's very very frustrating.
----------World Map----------
The world map reminds me alot of Resident Evil 4, but bigger (but you
can run through Bioshock ALOT faster so they might seem shorter). The
map is basically one or two HUGE areas connected. You can freeroam
within that given area all you want, this is definitely not a rail
shooter like Medal of Honor, but there's still only one given path if
you want to go along with the story. The game basically tells you where
to go with a huge hovering arrow on the top of the screen. When you
follow it, you'll probably encounter a cutscene by a disembodied voice.
They will tell you your next objective (almost always "Go to Point B"
or "find 3 items").
Once you get further into the game you'll
find a submarine, which will teleport you to the next area. There might
be one or two of these subs per stage, and if you want you can
backtrack if you missed items or Little Sisters.
----------Time to Complete Game----------
The game doesn't record your time in the game, but I did play it
through twice. Once on easy, which gave me the "bad" ending, I think
this might of took me atleast 10 hours at the most. Then I played it
again on hard which gave me the "good" ending. This might of been
atleast 15 or more hours, maybe longer because I was being a completest
with the tonics, weapons and recorders.
I liked both endings, so it doesn't really matter which one you end up with.
