BioShock

The Good
“System Shock 3” is all we heard a couple of months ago while all the critics were still wanking off to their favorite videos of Bioshock’s Big Daddies beating the snot out of every living thing. Reviewers seemed to be handing out more 10’s to this game than a desperately lonely man at a strip joint. Five-dollar words like innovation, unique, and unpredictable were repeatedly burned into our corneas to the point where we now can’t control our urge to shout them out every time another “immersive FPS” hits the market.

Upon starting up the game, I instinctively sided with the cynics, having been put through my fair share of let downs and disappointments with the FPS genre. Upon first starting the game I felt no reason to start drooling over it. It appeared to be another FPS game attempting to mask a thin plotline with a deep and thought-provoking setting. Yet as I went on, I realized how truly epic both the plot and gameplay were, until I was literally struggling to pick out something to find wrong with the game. Eventually I was faced with the reality of the situation: this game, shockingly, was exceeding my expectations.

Bioshock’s trump card, I believe, is its storyline. At the beginning of the game, you somehow manage to survive a plane crash in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Upon rising to the surface of the water, you see an eery lighthouse just sitting there, beckoning you to go in. Ignoring the screams of your fellow passengers, you go inside and take a jolly little ride on the bathysphere there to the train-wreck of a city that is Rapture. Rapture was a city built at the bottom of the ocean by Andrew Ryan for the purpose of avoiding government, socialist, and religious regulations, which he felt were hindering mankind’s greatness. However, the city is in ruins, torn apart from the inside by rioting. Someone or something has turned the citizens of Rapture against themselves.

Bioshock has an absolutely incredible sense of immersion. If you enjoy having your sense of belief suspended, prepare to have Bioshock steal it and launch it into orbit, never to return. Everything about the Bioshock universe is brilliant, from the atmosphere to the story, to the sheer depth and intuitiveness of the new scenario it presents to players.

You can tell Bioshock was built around the story because everything the designers to is intended to make it feel like a story. First of all, the very presentation of Rapture is breath-taking. From the first seconds of the game as you look up at the mysterious lighthouse, you can already sense something is amiss. The developers build on this, and throughout the game it only gets more atmospheric. The leaking walls serve to display both the atrophying architecture as well as the decaying splendor of this supposed utopia. The developers also use almost theatrical techniques to shock and surprise you, to the point that at some points in the game you can only stand in awe.

This only develops as you slowly learn the story of Rapture. In this case, Bioshock takes from both the Half-Life series with its “no cut-scenes” approach and Doom 3with its “audio log” approach, relying more heavily on the latter for exposition while the former for more present-action plot development. The audio log system works terrifically to develop the story of Rapture because most of the audio logs aren’t in order, allowing you to piece together to story as you progress through the game.

As well, most of the audio logs are done by a key set of 6 or 7 characters. This gives you the impression that even though they are not by your side, these characters are still part of the action and still affecting everything you do. By listening to these audio logs you get an amazing idea of the personalities of these people and how they reacted as Rapture descended into chaos. The fact that they mention other characters from other audio logs only serves to reinforce this notion.

I originally expected Bioshock to take on a sci-fi suspense angle, but I was shocked to see that in reality in leans far into horror. And when I say horror, I do not just mean the “monsters jump out of closets” type like we saw in Doom 3. I mean deeply fucked-up psychological horror. The game takes on a twilight-zone kind of feel, showing how the effects of isolation and removal from society drove the citizens of Rapture power-hungry and mad. This is accented by the mounting feeling of being trapped forever in the watery coffin that is Rapture.

The combat system is largely the same as any other FPS game out there. The game, in addition to giving you various weapons, gives you plasmids. These stem-cell like formulas alter your genetic material granting you access to God-like powers such as shooting lightning out of your hand, or shooting fire out of your hand, or shooting ice out of your hand, and, well, you get my point now. It really doesn’t get past these few and a couple of others. These are more useful for interacting with the environment than anything, as electric can temporarily short circuit turrets and cameras, fire will melt blocking ice and set oil on fire, etc.

However, you will largely be killing your foes with a rather generic set of guns ranging from a 30’s era machine gun to a pump shotgun. The plasmids help to vary things up a bit, but I found myself using them when I simply had run out of bullets for the rest of my guns. Occasionally large gunfights will get pretty exciting, but this is usually when Big Daddy’s or gun turrets get involved as well and also because gun shots are VERY LOUD for this very purpose.

Where combat truly shines is, yes, the Big Daddy fights. This is truly where you get to exercise your creative freedom in taking down this gargantuan beast largely because there are so many ways to do it. You can take him down with enough machine gun bullets and persistence, but it is much easier to use the environment against him. Lure him into some oil, electrocute him, lead him into a nest of enemies, hack a turret and use it against him, have him run over some trap wire, get him to ram into some barrels, lead him over your trip mines. Any combination of these provides for a brilliant fight, and what makes it better is that it is completely improvised, giving you a warm feeling of satisfaction knowing that the game wasn’t holding your hand through it. It’s this feeling that makes fighting the Big Daddies worth it, as well as the Adam which allows you to buy plasmids, health, and other upgrades.

The game is obviously pretty, though this is mostly due to the atmosphere and style rather than the graphics. If you sat there and stared at Bioshock and appreciated like a fine painting, you would in fact see the tremendous amount of detail in almost every part of Bioshock’s environment. However, let’s face it; we aren’t going to be looking at some pretty cabinets when we’ve got turrets shoving bullets in our back and balls of fire raining down upon us. Even so, most games these days are just as pretty so I really don’t known what to set as the standard anymore. Like I said, it’s pretty because of the atmosphere. When you stand in a quiet desolate dentist’s office in Rapture and you can’t hear anything but the streams of water leaking from the ceiling, that’s when you truly see the beauty in Bioshock. However, the game, like every other FPS out there, is still played mostly with the lights off, offering you less chances than you may think to sample the beauty of the game.

The Bad
The biggest let down was easily the false sense of choice and freedom the game gave me as I was starting it. I remember all of the trailers spouting out that you had all this freedom and how unpredictable the game would be depending upon your own choices. Well, being the cold, cynical man I am I immediately realized what a load of horse crap this all was. What took me by surprise, however, was to how far they actually embellished the truth. The game gives you actually no choice whatsoever, which might upset a few people, who, I don’t know, maybe were hoping for something actually promised a billion times by every Bioshock trailer out there.

The big thing is that when you kill a Big Daddy, you get to do naughty things with little girls, and by naughty things I mean harvest their Adam. While the whole thing sounds like something you’d hear on To Catch a Predator, its supposedly a huge focal point of the game because you can either save her for a little Adam or kill her for a whole bloody truckload of it. The entire “morality” choices of the game narrow down to this. It’s not that there are other choices and that they don’t make any impact, but this is IT. Either kill or save, and that determines whether you get the holy good guy ending or the piss bad ending. Either you’re a saint or your Hitler based on whether you decide to either save or kill these little girls, and there is no middle ground. They tout all this freedom and choice, but like Fable there is no “uh, maybe both” choice. Either your voice cures cancer or God kills kittens at the very sound of it.

That’s really all there is. There is really no customization of your character because he can use any plasmid a million times without consequence, and can use any gun at any time. There are these things called tonics which give you cool bonuses like getting more health from snacks, but there are a limited number of these which are actually useful and by the end of the game you have enough slots open to use all of the good ones anyway. There are no side quests or optional objectives to do. Hell, every objective is mandatory anyway. I thought that somewhere along the line I would be given a choice to help out the citizens or Rapture or kill them, but instead I ended up taking orders from a man on a radio for hours on end.

And while we’re still bitching let’s talk about game difficulty. More specifically, let’s talk about where the Hell it went. Last time I checked in FPS games, when you died you lost the game. Instead they’ve introduced this “vita-chamber” non-sense which brings you back to life every time you die. This takes away a lot of the danger of the game, and honestly I fell like it was the worst part. With these chambers you’re more willing to take stupid risks because all of the consequence has been taken away. This also made it a lot less satisfying finding creative ways to kill Big Daddies since if you were stupid and simply starting plugging away at him you could go back five minutes later to do it again.

This part also made the game somewhat frustrating because in order to kill some bad guys all you had to do was whittle away their health while taking numerous trips to the vita-chamber. This process of attack, die, walk back, repeat is incredibly frustrating and holds up the game a lot, especially when there are infinite enemies in the game. Yes, supposedly the citizens of Rapture are “living, breathing” people who walk from place to place, but instead of making the game believable, it made it annoying as fuck.


The Bottom Line
I suppose, however, I am being a bit unfair. I’m not one of those untalented hacks who tries to pass of unwonted criticism as a proper review, and truly I found Bioshock to be one of the best games I’ve played in recent months. I’m actually really excited over how this turned out because it’s been a long time since a game has made me forget about both lunch and dinner without me even realizing it. Like Rapture, Bioshock has a lot of cracks in it, and they are somewhat obvious. However, don’t listen to the tiny voice in the back of your head pointing to these flaws. Smother it out with a large dosage of Bioshock. This game is amazing and certainly worth whatever children you may need to sell to get your hands on it.

The Good
Well Bioshock is supposed to be a spiritual successor to the classic System Shock series which was basically an rpg game blended with first person shooter mechanics.

After playing this game it seemed more like a successor to Doom 3. I wouldn't buy the whole revolutionary hype magazines are giving it; it brings nothing new to the table at least on PC standards.

First the good.
The biggest saving points to this game has to be the Story, its unique art direction including level design, voice acting and music score. Basically "presentation" the first ingredient has somewhat succeeded. I have a mixed opinion on the graphics as the water effects are good, but the character modeling is just plain horrid. The level design and artwork are pretty good too; sets the whole steam punk theme although I find the games lighting a little too extreme.

The Bad
While things look good, unfortunately this game doesn't play very well. The AI is just plain horrible. While it appears to be smart at first, it just becomes predictable and annoying. Sure they put themselves off when their burning or recharging their health, that's a really good thing but its gets really annoying when they just keep running around. Why? The characters move at a really fast speed making it more frustrating than anything, therefore making you wish this was not a FPS. The Big Daddies with the drills are fun to fight (if there are no splicers around), But the ones with guns keep shooting at you and their shots drain a good load of your health.

Bioshock really sets a good atmosphere. I was really enjoying the level design & ambiance. Unfortunately this gets ruined since your bombarded with enemies. Hell I can't even listen to the audio logs because the enemies keep respawning or there's some loud gunfight nearby.

Later on the splicers become even more powerful, and while battling them you tend to end up in confusion as the game has too many weapons and ammo types. While I liked the idea of ammo types in System Shock or Rainbow Six, it fails hard in this game as this is a face paced shooter where you're battling splicers and machinery in the same damn location. What good is the chemical thrower when you have a plasmid which does the same? Half the plasmids are boring and do nothing much to enhance the game.

To add to the intense colorful lighting and bloom, the screen blurs when you're shot, so don't play this game when your sleepy.

And most importantly, the game was advertised to be extremely non linear but it's as linear as the old Doom or Wolfenstein games. Don't get me wrong, I really love linear games (Half-Life 2) but I was really expecting a steam punk version of System Shock here. The game comes with a choice to harvest the little sisters or save them. Whatever you choose will not affect the gameplay except for the ending and the tone of the doctor's voice in the latter half. Oh and there's an arrow which tells you exactly where to go.

The Bottom Line
Bioshock may seem like a lame attempt to milk some money out of the System Shock name. They may have dumbed the game down for console standards and accessibility (that's my guess) . While it is worth playing, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who is looking for something revolutionary.

Simply put Bioshock is made of 2 ingredients where one fails to make the dish enjoyable.

The Good
First off, I want to say this: BioShock is a solid game, a decent game. It didn't grab me by any part of my anatomy and make me fall in love with it, but it didn't make me want to spit blood, either. It's a... solid game... which is about the highest compliment I can pay it.

It can certainly be fun at times. My favorite thing has to be the telekinesis plasmid. Tossing explosive barrels around is fun. Tossing heavy bags of fertiliser at an enemy's head is fun. Less effective, but good for a sadistic chuckle: Throwing a dead cat at an enemy's head. And throwing a dead enemy at a live enemy is fun. I really like the telekinesis plasmid.

Garbage cans! They're good to throw.

Forgetting telekinesis for a moment, I also enjoyed watching the fights between Big Daddies and splicers. You know the splicers are going to lose, which just makes the whole thing more entertaining.

Though it became repetitive, I did enjoy hacking gun turrets and security bots, then sitting back and watching them do their job.

Other good points:
* Good graphics (though I personally found them rather hard to look at after a while, with their overly high contrast and slew of filters).
* Pretty decent voice acting (except for a major character who pops up later in the game... no spoilers... if you've played it, you should know who I'm referring to).
* High attention to detail, with plenty of nice touches. Something I thought was really cool was the weapon upgrades, which actually change the look of your steampunkish guns by adding extra cogs and tubes, etc.
* An interesting, different setting.
* The story is decent enough (though very similar to System Shock 1 & 2).
* Good ragdolls (except for the incessant jitter problems).

The Bad
The main problem is how repetitive this game is. There are only a few different types of enemies, and they are all 'splicers' (super-fast homicidal maniacs). Most blast you with pistols or tommy-guns. Others leap wildly and try to slash your face off. A third, rarer type crawl along the ceiling and throw spinning blades at you. Later on, you encounter a couple who are a bit more interesting (the guy who phases in and out of corporeal form and shoots fireballs) but by the half-way point of the game, you will have seen every one of the five(?) enemy variations... over and over again. You will have also heard all their dialog to the point of boredom. I have read many reviews, comments and pieces of hyperbole about how these are 'tragic characters' you can 'empathise with.' Well... no... they're fast, repetitive zombies. Just because they're dressed to go to the ball and have a few lines of speech about their dead spouse or moulting scalp does not make me feel sorry for them, particularly when repetition reinforces the fact that they are all clones of each other and they are all 'crazy' in exactly the same way (i.e. they see you and instantly want to murder your ass).

The two other denizens of Rapture who you will meet regularly are the famous Big Daddy and Little Sister. Sadly, repeated dialogue and behavior also make them seem very artificial, despite the interplay between the two. Unlike the splicers, the Big Daddies don't attack you unless provoked. However, you have to kill them to get to the Little Sisters, to get the 'Adam,' which is the local currency and will allow you to 'buy' additional plasmids and power-ups. Therefore, it's up to you to choose when you want to fight a Big Daddy. Unfortunately, this makes the Big Daddy fights feel like more of a chore than anything. It's sort of like, "Well, I'm going to be leaving the level soon. Guess I'd better kill a couple of Big Daddies before I go sigh." At least, that was how I was feeling after a few fights. These 'boss battles' really lose all their tension because, although the Big Daddies are tough, it absolutely doesn't matter if you die, as you will just get sent to a nearby respawn chamber, then you can come back and continue fighting with only a few seconds' delay. If the Big Daddies could, say, go plug themselves into an unhackable wall socket and recover their energy while you were temporarily dead, this might even the odds. Then you'd have to kill 'em in one go, which would definitely bring the tension back. But no.
Anyway, I like the Big Daddies. They are pretty cute, and can be fun to fight, sometimes. Maybe the first few times. But like everything else in BioShock, they become dull.

The game throws a constant stream of splicers at you, from start to finish. They respawn like mad. Clear an area and approximately a minute later (or less), another splicer will spawn. Combat becomes very boring, especially as (on normal difficulty), it takes a lot of shots from most weapons to take down even a single attacker.

The idea of the game is to make each encounter different by giving the player a wide range of plasmids (or, as another reviewer called them; 'spells') and guns (with plenty of different ammo types). Unfortunately, as with the enemies, by the half-way point of the game, you will have collected all the available guns and all the plasmid types (the only remaining thing will be more powerful versions of existing plasmids). Also, by this point, I had fought so many splicers that I'd become thoroughly bored with the battles.

Most encounters will involve you switching back and forth between your plasmids and guns, as the guns on their own are usually too weak. In fact, all the weapons feel too weak, even when upgraded (the crossbow being the one exception). Switching between plasmids and guns is technically simple but in practice, it feels over-fiddly. The problem is that this game, despite its pretensions of being something greater, is just a shooter; but it's a shooter that's over-complicated and lacks one of the most basic requirements of the genre; the simple, satisfying fun factor. You cannot just blow enemies away in BioShock, although it will probably get to a point where you will long to. Each encounter is a drawn-out battle where you will switch between plasmids and guns as you first distract, then slightly maim, then confuse, then finally kill your opponent. What is intended as an innovative approach to combat becomes stale through repetition. Sure, there are some really interesting plasmids (turn people against each other; make them targets for security bots; make them attack a fake version of yourself) but some are better than others, some prove to be near useless and there are a few basic strategies you will find yourself using time and time again.

There are other problems, too. Throughout the game, you are swamped with items to pick up and vending machines to buy items from. As if there wasn't enough ammo lying around already, and enough money to buy ammo, you can also pick up seemingly useless items such as 'brass tubes' and screws. Then, you throw all these pieces of junk into another wall-mounted machine, which will magically turn them into... more ammo. Why is this a problem? Because there is simply too much. It is yet another aspect of the game that becomes repetitive; endlessly picking up things, endlessly using vending machines. And when a vending machine is never less than a couple of rooms away, it removes much of the challenge and excitement of being low on ammo and having to survive. In fact, when I was about 3/4 of the way through the game, I decided to make things more interesting by imposing a rule on myself: I would stop using vending machines and 'invent-o-matics' - From now on, I would only take what I could find lying around. It came as no surprise that this instantly made the game more fun, and took away some of the repetitiveness as I no longer had to hack those damn vending machines.

Hacking...
Hacking is something that sounds like it should be exciting and carry some level of difficulty. But it's not. Every time you hack a vending machine, bot, camera, gun turret or lock you do the exact same thing: Play a game of Pipe Dream. Now, I quite like Pipe Dream but you'll play it a few hundred times in BioShock. And as if it wasn't easy enough already, you have the option of using all kinds of 'gene tonics' (aka. power-ups) to boost your hacking skills and make the game ridiculously easy. It sort of boggles the mind that Rapture is full of security devices that can all be easily overcome by sticking a few bits of pipe together.

The big problem with this game, apart from its crashing lack of variety is that its design is fearful. What do I mean? Well, there is a sort of schizophrenic battle going on here between trying to make the game complex and flexible and advanced... and then the flipside of the coin: trying desperately hard to make it accessible, and not too difficult or daunting for novices, and making sure that absolutely no-one is going to be the slightest bit confused by anything. Yes, it's the 'dumbing down' that this game has inflicted on itself.

The most obvious example of this is what I'm going to call 'the golden arrow of idiocy.' You know a game is treating you like an idiot when you are given an objective, which is then not only written in your diary (with optional extra hints) and marked on your map but also pointed out by a giant golden arrow which hangs in the air and which you can follow along mindlessly like an obedient puppy dog. The doors you have to open are even marked in gold! At least, that's what I'm told. I turned off the arrow as soon as I saw it. Thankfully, there was an option to do so, though maybe there won't be in BioShock 2. Honestly, I can't believe that the designers were so worried about people getting lost that they put a giant golden arrow in this game! It works for GTA, sure, but it has no place here.

Oh yeah, and the respawn chambers. On the one hand, I can actually see the point of them, as the load times are so horrendous that reloading every time you died would be a real hassle. But come on! Where is the tension in a game that has basically no penalty for dying? Death doesn't cost anything, doesn't lose you anything... You re-appear with a decent chunk of health and psi-power ('Eve') in a chamber which is usually about 20 seconds' walk from the spot where you died. In fact, dying can often be a benefit! Low on health? Only got one medi-kit left? Well, you may as well save it for later. It'd be more efficient to quickly die, because then you'll get some free health! It does honestly come down to that mental process sometimes. "Oh, I'm about to die. No point in wasting a medi-kit. ZAP! There we go... respawn chamber."

I am whining like a miserable baby here. The trouble is, there's just so much to complain about.

What else?

Well, what's so great about the story? It has strong similarities to System Shock 1 / 2 (Great story the first time around, but feeling a bit recycled now), and apart from that, there isn't much going on here. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that there are two goals in the game - "Save my kids" and then, a bit later, "Kill the bad guy." I kept thinking as I was wandering about: "WHY am I doing this? Why am I following these orders from some guy talking to me on the radio?" Now, those who have played the game will know that there's a twist in the story that answers this very question. Fans will say it's a great twist! Personally, I think it's an excuse, trying to explain away the standard following of objectives that goes on and the standard lack of player choice.

I'm going to wrap this up soon. Just a few more points:
* The game isn't scary at all, though I think it's trying to be. It copies so many elements from System Shock 2. However, SS2 was incredibly scary; one of the things that made it stand out. BioShock, once you get used to it after the first hour or so, and aside from a couple of isolated moments, totally fails on this count.
* Nearly everything from SS2 is back, whether it was good or bad. BioShock's 'research camera' is not very practical and only slightly less silly than ingesting(?) random chemicals in SS2.
* Patches may have fixed this by now, but I experienced a few random crashes. When this happens, it will delete your config file and replace it with a default one, meaning you lose all your settings, including your key mappings. This is very annoying. It also makes no real sense and seems to be a strange trend in recent games (Prey was the same). I know you can locate the 'default' file and edit that, but you shouldn't have to. You should at least be given the choice of starting the game with your settings after a crash.

The Bottom Line
Looking back at this review, I think it sounds as though I was deeply hurt by this game. That's not the case, although I did become quite bored by it, and I trudged on and completed it only for the sake of achieving that goal. But like I said at the start of the review, it's a solid game. It's alright. It's decent. It just could've used more variety (particularly in the enemy types) and some different design decisions.

If you haven't played any of the System Shock, Deus Ex or Thief games, then you may think BioShock is fantastic. If you have played those games, you may still think it's fantastic (because people have different opinions; which is great, by the way!). Or like me, you may feel it's a game that tries hard to continue the great tradition of those immersive, amazing action/RPGs... but falls short.