BioShock

The Good
Released in 2007, Bioshock, is the spiritual successor to the, System Shock, franchise. The series that helped re-define what a FPS could be. With such a storied past and all the critical accolades, can Bioshock live up to the hype?

I would like to note that, despite the fact that I finished Bioshock, about a year ago, I for some reason, had trouble articulating my thoughts on the game. Thus making a review an unlikely prospect. This being the first time that I have ever found myself in such a precarious position.

Anyhow, after a second play, taking the other path, I feel I am at last prepared for this review.

Bioshock begins when your plane crashes somewhere in the Atlantic ocean. Being the only survivor, you swim towards a beacon, before the suction pulls you under. Enter the bathysphere, and you are treated to a flyby of Rapture, or what is left of it anyway.(It reminds me of the flyby of Los Angeles in Bladerunner-MM-)

Built by megalomaniac Andrew Ryan, Rapture, is now decaying at the bottom of the sea after a genetic civil war. Ryan also is one of the few people still alive in Rapture, and interacts with you. One memorable scene involves meeting Ryan for the first time in person, and he is playing golf while his city burns.

You see first hand the brutality of the splicers, gain your first plasmid, and see a Big Daddy doing what they do best. At this point the game is very suspenseful, and invokes a sense of dread, much like it’s predecessors.

One of the first areas the medical pavilion, is very disturbing. Your encounter with Sander Cohen also stands out in my mind in overall creepy factor.

Bioshock even reuses the audio logs like in System Shock, and more recently in Doom 3. They are a nice touch and help flesh out the world of Bioshock, and it’s more that a little creepy to think that most of these people are dead, or in some cases will die by your hand. On one audio log in particular you actually hear the last moments of one the major characters.

Bioshock for all intents and purposes is a FPS. And while it has some RPG elements, it is by and large a FPS. Combat is simple and fairly effective. Using your plasmids in tandem with your firearms offers a sort of one-two punch. (Kinda like in Undying.-MM-) And there are a great deal of fire arms at your disposal. A pistol, shotgun, crossbow, and flamethrower among others.

There are also many plasmids. Some attack, like Electro Bolt, Some aid you such as Hypnotize Big Daddy. And there are also some that are passive, like cloak, and speedy hacker. All plasmids are purchased with Adam. And the only way to get Adam, is to get a Little Sister, which in turn are protected by Big Daddies.

A Little Sister is a genetic construct, little girls made to gather Adam, which they draw from dead splicers.(Some of Bioshocks’ creepiest moments are when watching a Little Sister draw Adam, and say, “I’m a good girl!”) To get the Adam they carry, you must take the Big Daddy. These hulking brutes were human…once. They have heavy fire power and resistance to damage, but can die. Once destroyed you can either Harvest the Little Sister, or Rescue her. Harvesting gains you more Adam, but rescuing them is the only way to accesses, some of the better plasmids, much as Hypnotize Big Daddy. Harvesting Vs. Rescuing also determines what alignment you have good or evil. And changes the ending.

The story moves along at a brisk pace, and there are few times where you stray from the main objective. There are however lots of secrets to uncover, and achievements to earn. Like collecting all the plasmids, or audiologs. Bioshock is also fairly lengthy for a FPS. Clocking in at about 25 hours, in your first play.

The graphics is Bioshock are amazing. One review on Moby claims, that you would have to be on drugs to appreciate the graphics. I don’t know what that means. Because the visuals are a sight to behold. Between the art deco design of Rapture, and the eerie look of the splicers, and the amazing lighting effects I don’t see how you could NOT like the graphics. You must play it on 1080p, if you have the means. The unreal engine never looked better.

The music is very good. From the original score to the real world songs form the 40’s and 50’s.

The sound effects are all good. From the gunshots to the plasmids, it all sounds great. But this pales in comparison to the voice work. The psychotic mumblings of the splicers is genius, and often disturbing. You see the splicers brains are so rattled that they say things from there past lives, such as, “Get the fuck out my office!” , “Jesus loves me.”( Christians are creepy.-MM-) and, “Go ahead leave me for that bitch!”

And all the main characters have good voices, and the dialog is well written which I feel is more important.

The Bad
Combat is way to frequent. There are only supposed to be a handful of people left in Rapture, yet by the games end you will have killed hundreds of them. The only positive side is that there is a good variety of splicers. Nitro, Leatherhead, etc.

Sometimes you will need to backtrack, say to use a vending machine, you go back to rooms that you just exited, and all the splicers are back.

This then leads to always needing ammo and health packs. And while it is rare that a splicer will be able to kill you, it is still very annoying. You are really better off avoiding any backtracking.

There are only two different paths, good or evil. And two endings, good or evil. There is not even a neutral path! Deus Ex had four different endings, yet Bioshock could only manage two, WTF?

Furthermore there are very few points in which you can change the outcome of an objective. There is really only one part in which you get to choose to kill a character or not kill them in the entire game.

The Bottom Line
At the end of the day Bioshock is worthy successor to the legendary System Shock series. In some ways it is actually surpasses those games. If you are a fan of FPS and have a PC or Xbox 360 you simply have to play this game. Seriously it’s required by law, or at least it should be. And well read gamers will certainly enjoy it even more.

The Good
The moment that the game's undersea city, Rapture is revealed to an intense orchestral flourish, shining like a retro-styled future dream in the vibrant depths, the player is drawn into an experience. That is indeed what Bioshock is - an experience. The game has an atmosphere of terrific substance, a triumph of design.

Graphically, there is no doubt that the technology is incredible. Most especially, lighting and water effects will cause jaws to drop in awe. Early in the game, I witnessed a cascade of water and could not believe the realistic look of it. And in a game set under the waves, this is used to wonderful effect.

Yet graphics are really only a means to express the visual experience. As we found with Oblivion, no matter how pretty a game is, a poorly designed world becomes tedious and boring. Bioshock succeeds in avoiding such problems. Every location is distinct and meaningful. It is not simply a matter of individual levels, but individual districts and rooms which have a sense of...well.. place. And, further, they have a sense of the people who had inhabited them. Everywhere, the player who looks will find tiny stories being told of someone who was there before them. Many of these are quite chilling. All of them are seamlessly expressed within the game's world.

Sound effects are a big part of any game, but in the survival horror genre they serve the essential purposes of causing tension and indicating the presence of nearby enemies. Bioshock's sound is of a quality beyond reproach. Although voice tends to be well done, it is in the combination of lush environmental effects with haunting 30's and 40's style music coming from sources in the world itself that the player is truly drawn into the game.

Combat is creative and enjoyable. There are a great many combat encounters, yet one can avoid them entirely or choose to use indirect means to take down their foes.

One highly touted aspect of the game is the use of the environment in fighting. For instance, hacking a health machine will cause enemies to be poisoned when they try to use it. New dimensions certainly open up in Bioshock for those with the creativity and presence of mind to use them.

Much like its spiritual predecessor, System Shock 2, Bioshock's intense atmosphere and randomly spawning enemies succeeds in creating that essential "never really safe" feeling I love in these games. This, combined with the descent into a world of madness and terror in Rapture, creates an unforgettable experience.

The Bad
While Bioshock is the spiritual successor to the game which I consider to be one of the greatest of all time - System Shock 2 - it does not quite live up to the older product. Certainly, technology has been upgraded. And there is no doubt that the AI and the use of environment are substantially improved. However, beyond this, I find that Bioshock consistently falls short of System Shock 2.

While I do praise the sound and also the quality of the voice acting, the range of script and casting is far too limited. It seems as if I am constantly encountering the same people who are saying the same things over and over. Yes, in System Shock 2, there were similar limitations. But it does not bother me there, perhaps because of the "uncanny valley" effect. In other words, I do not have an issue with worm zombies moaning out repetitious lines because they are so inhuman. When a very human seeming splicer rants the same lines as five other splicers in the last half hour, it is so close to human that it becomes very noticeable to me.

The AI is better than in System Shock 2, but it is still pretty poor compared to what is available. In a world after F.E.A.R.'s incredible tactical combat, the bar has been raised so that it is no longer acceptable for AI to charge at me with guns. I want them to try to flank, to be aware of what weapon I am using and when I am reloading it. Certainly, I would like a bit better than what Bioshock provided.

System Shock 2 was a PC only release, while Bioshock was developed for multiple platforms at the same time. Many people suggest that this caused Bioshock to be "dumbed down" for the more casual console market. Whether this was the reasoning or not, there is little doubt that this is a far easier game and one with much less complexity.

First, the roleplaying game aspect has pretty much disappeared here. In System Shock 2, the player had to assign points to upgrade both their attributes and their skills. You were not automatically able to hack any computer, use any gun, and project psionic blasts. In order to do any of that, the player had to make choices. So you could never be a super-soldier, master hacker, and psionic wizard at the same time. That made for true gameplay choices. Meanwhile, all skill and stat points are now gone from Bioshock. Now your character automatically is capable of any hacking, plasmid usage, or weapon usage with perfect skill.

One of the key aspects of survival horror is the need to survive. These are taken separately from other action games because they impose difficult restrictions which force a careful, thoughtful style of play amidst a chaotic, dangerous environment. Generally, this is achieved through a combination of limited health and limited resources.

System Shock 2 truly put the survival in survival horror. On the first play-through, most will find the game's difficulty to be incredible. You begin to hoard every resource you can, avoid combat when possible, and rejoice at finding even one more bullet. Every action you take is a calculated risk of your chances to survive. By contrast, I found that even on Hard, I was overflowing with resources by mid-game in Bioshock. There was never any desire to avoid combat except in the very beginning. I had so much stuff that I was often unable to pick up more of it. My ammunition and money was constantly full. All of this served to decrease my sense of truly surviving.

Much was made before release about the supposed choices made in Bioshock. However, in reality, there was only one line of choices being made - whether to harvest the "Adam" (money to spend on genetic powers) fully from the zombie little girls who ran about gathering it, thus killing them, or whether to save them for a much lesser amount of Adam. Not only was this rather black and white question the only moral issue to solve, but if you chose the "good" path then you would receive repeated large gifts for doing so - thus making the Adam difference between the two paths very little. I would have been happier if being the good guy meant you had to work harder.

Combat could be a bit unsatisfying at times in Bioshock. The problem was balance. Near the end of the game, enemies became superpeople who could laugh off your plasmid abilities. Being engulfed in flames seemed to have little effect on them, for instance. Yet some weapons proved to be so overpowered that it felt like cheating to use them. So the creativity of the environmental style of combat ended up being lost in the shuffle.

The Bottom Line
I would recommend Bioshock for its atmosphere alone, but there is a lot more to love about it. There is no doubt that this game is a 5 star title. However, those expecting a real return to the brilliance of System Shock 2 should be aware that it is not to be found here - only a shadow of that glory.

The Good
Drug users might appreciate the graphics - during combat BioShock often seems more of a psychedelic arcade game what with the quick pace and all the chaotic effects thrown in.

The Bad
First of all, this game was supposed to be a spiritual successor to the epic FPS/RPG System Shock 2. Unfortunately something went terribly wrong in the process and we ended up with a incoherent shooter where nothing really works. Oddly hailed by essentially all reviewers as revolutionary, BioShock does not really bring anything new to the genre. Sadder still, it's mostly a setback, at least as far as PC games are concerned.

The complex gameplay from SS2 was drowned to the point where one begins to wonder which SS2 they were making a sequel of: System Shock 2 or Serious Sam 2? Gone are the stats that differentiated one player from another: you can now do everything right from the beginning. Gone is the limited inventory. Now you can carry around everything you pick up. Well, not quite. You can only carry nine med-kits and nine eve-hypos. Apparently despite totting around a flame thrower with several huge canisters of ammo, a grenade launcher, a shotgun, a machine gun and god knows what else, if you picked up one more med-kit when you already have nine you'd collapse to the ground from your burden. Gone is the weapon degradation. You pick up a revolver in the beginning and it works perfectly even after firing a thousand rounds and being dragged alone through water, fire and god knows what else. The grenade launcher looks like it's made of cloth... luckily it's special indestructible cloth. Gone are limited resources, now you'll regularly reach the artificial limits on the ammo you carry with you, which in a way is good because unlike in SS2 you'll be forced to empty entire machine gun magazines to clear the average room.

Psi powers are replaced by some sort of Oblivion-like magic spells. Compared to psi powers there are far fewer of these spells, they aren't as nearly as inventive or intricate, and the spell mana is never in short supply. You can hypnotize a big daddy to help you or throw stuff around with them, but other than that they're just like weapons except that at certain points the game will present puzzles to you that involve these spells. Unfortunately the puzzles are laughably simple, as in melt some ice blocking your way with the incinerate spell. Very revolutionary.

Much was made of the choices that you could make in BioShock. Except one non-choice that affects only which end-game cinematic you receive, the choices involve which gun you'll shoot an enemy with. I remember Levine saying that this is going to be a game that's impossible to write a walkthrough for. Now that the cat's out of the bag we finally see what he meant: it would be extremely tedious and counterproductive to write a walkthrough for a completely liner shooter like BioShock. Shockingly, Levine said a lot of things yonder at TTLG which now look like complete lies because he knew TTLG'S SS2 fans would promote his product for free.

Much is now made of the physics that BioShock presents, however even though they used the well-tested Havok engine they evidently couldn't figure how to set it up properly. Dead bodies twitch uncontrollably, boxes fly towards the ceiling when I walk over them, and so on. And the physics is pretty much limited to throwing things around. You can throw as many grenades around as you want - you'll never break glass. Wouldn't it be cool the glass cracked if you shot it too much and water invaded the place (of course at that depth that would be insta-death). But that would be innovative. The game also has many invisible walls, which always signal lazy design.

The combat is very chaotic. There are a ton of enemies, they move around very quickly, never standing still, and everyone seems to tot around a whole armory. Unfortunately it's extremely repetitive as well, as the game only has two kinds of enemies. There are splicers, which are humans gone crazy. There minimal visual variation between them and they seem to posses no intelligence whatsoever. One kind of them can climb ceilings, which is fun the first ten times you see it. And there are "big daddies" - walking diving suits that protect invincible "little sisters". A limitation of Havok means you can't gib enemies. No matter how many grenades you chuck at a dead big daddy he'll just ragdoll. Wonderful progress!

The interface did not escape the dumbing down - gone is the right-click into interact mode from SS2 where you could do everything. And even worse when you access anything the game pauses. In SS2 moments when you had to access the inventory or hack a system or whatever were always very tense because the game kept running while you were doing this. In BioShock you can run up to a hostile rocket-launching turret and spend all the time you need hacking it since the world is temporarily suspended for your benefit. Gosh, if only real life had that feature. Fonts are now big, and game text is short and to the point. I guess modern casual gamers can't be trusted with too complex a prose. There's even a freaking "quest pointer" ala Oblivion. Except it's taken to the next level. Not only does it show you which direction to go to, it even points exactly which doors to traverse! Maybe in BioShock 2 the game will walk automagically and you'll only have to shoot enemies as you coast along.

Like in SS2, the game does not end if you die. You respawn in a Vita Chamber. Except that this time the machines are far more frequent, do not require activation, cost nothing, and restore half of your health and mana. In SS2 it was often very inconvenient to die, and especially on hard/impossible it was preferable to load a saved game, but in BioShock it makes you effectively immortal. One has to wonder why bother with the respawning at all? Just have the player be in god-mode like the little sisters.

The artwork and story did nothing for me. I'd already read Rand's work a long time ago so seeing it butchered in a below-mediocre game was distinctly unimpressive. Thanks to the chaotic gameplay it's very hard to follow what exactly is going on at all, and listening to audio logs is a pain since there's almost always shooting going on.

The survival-horror element from SS2 is gone, for the above reasons. BioShock has a strong cartoony-arcadey thing going, kind of like Serious Sam.

What else? Well, there's the DRM. It works for some people, it doesn't for others. All I know is that my DVDRW has been failing a lot since I've installed SecuROM (which also comes with the demo?!)

The Bottom Line
BioShock is a terribly over-hyped shooter. What I wrote above just barely scratches the surface of what's wrong with it. IMO it's inferior to FEAR and the like. About as fun as Quake 4, I'd say. At first I thought I was just getting too old for this sort of stuff, so I fired up some older games I used to love (System Shock 2, Silent Hill 3, Psychonauts), but no, they're as good as they were then. I've finally realized that it's not me at all - BioShock is just a really bad game.