BioShock

The Good
BioShock polarized opinions shortly after its release, mainly because it had claimed to be something it really wasn't: a true spiritual successor to System Shock games. The game was seen by some old-timers as a herald of simplified gameplay for the masses, an unworthy stepchild conquering innocent hearts with shallow splendor. I must state that I share that sentiment; but first, as always, the good part.

BioShock is one of the most stylistically impressive games I've come across. Call it Art Deco or whatever, but in fact it is a unique "Rapturian" style. Most of the things you see in BioShock can only be seen in this game. Everything - every character, building, piece of furniture, photographs, clothes, machinery, random objects - is homogeneous, everything is designed in such a way that it suits the lush, decadent theme of the game. Rapture is instantly recognizable. Take a look at any BioShock screenshot and you'll know immediately it is from BioShock. There aren't that many games that can boast such an achievement. The game simply screams style, and from the first screen to the last you are invited to an unforgettable art gallery.

Then there are sound effects and music, truly an experience of its own. The insane babbling of the splicers, the eerie recorded voices of dead people on audio diaries, the distorted screams coming from unexpected places, the creepy child voices of little sisters, the menacing, blood-chilling humming of their protectors come on top of old music - forgotten and desolate, like Rapture itself. Very old swing tunes, the kind of jazz that feels like it should be stored in a museum - comfortable and strangely sad, vulnerable music, which turns so scary when you realize to what it serves as background. You listen to this game as much as you look at it. And if you do both, you are immersed into a strange, beautiful, disturbing world, with a magical atmosphere that draws you in with unseen force.

The contrast between the cozy "retro" world depicted in the game and the terrifying, desolate reality can be quite scary. There is something very majestic - and oddly touching - in the ruined city you'll explore. You can fall in love with Rapture. It is beautiful, yet it is also horrifying. All this marvelous work, all those visions, the ideals, the energy, the genius of its creators - everything was destroyed. Using an excellent gameplay device that did survive from System Shock, the scattered audio diaries tell you about a world and people that don't exist any more. You travel through places that were once full of life and have fell victims to destruction and decay.

The much-advertised Big Daddies and Little Sisters may not represent the epitome of choice-based gameplay, but they do add an interesting twist to the routines of the genre. Basically, we are talking about a substantial amount of tough optional bosses with a bit of a schematic "good and evil" decision pattern through in. Like everything else in the game, those characters are nicely tied into the story, and your treatment of them will eventually affect the ending.

As mentioned above, recreating the story of the past using gameplay-related means is an essential feature that was faithfully carried over from System Shock games. If you've played those you know what I'm talking about: instead of developing from cutscene to cutscene, the story is hidden in the notes left by different characters, and it's up to you to unravel it. This is retroactive storytelling, and it works great. The story itself is pretty good, though its formal structure and even a major plot twist were basically ripped out of the second System Shock 2.

The Bad
I won't go into promotional issues here, but even without all the hype similarities with System Shock games can be felt just from playing BioShock. Sadly, many of those similarities are superficial: the developers of BioShock apparently failed to understand what made its older brothers work in such splendid ways.

System Shock games were wonderfully open-ended. The space station in the first game and the abandoned ship in the second were large, generous locations you could explore at your own pace. Not so in BioShock: granted, the levels are reasonably spacious and there is optional stuff to find almost everywhere - but they are still levels. Free-form exploration was one of the chief reasons for System Shock games feeling like RPGs. BioShock doesn't feel that way at all: it's just a fairly linear shooter with some fancy magic spells.

And even as such, it's not that good. I always had a feeling that the designers wanted to make something more out of it - a deeper, more tactical game with more choices during combat. The fact is that you do have choices - but they don't mesh well with the game's mandatory fast pace and linearity. Since you cannot circumvent your enemies, the preferred alternative would be then blasting them to pieces in a fast and furious way. Instead, you'll have to micro-manage your plasmids and fiddle with your abilities just to get rid of yet another brainless splicer.

You are therefore overwhelmed by your possibilities, and that makes the game too slow, and hence overly repetitive. You'll be doing a lots of things at the same time - fighting enemies, hunting for items, buying things, etc., and most of those activities won't be new and fresh anymore. Also, those activities feel artificial and disjointed: the game conveniently pauses for you when you attempt to hack a turret - and when it's done, you are confronted once again by a flurry of chaotic enemies seemingly taken out of an arcade game. By the way, hacking is handled like a minigame, which is a poor choice per se, especially when it's easy and monotonous.

There is surprisingly little variety in enemies. It's basically the same splicers from the beginning to the end. Sure, there are several variants of them who behave quite differently, but in the end they are the same mutant humans over and over again. During later levels, the enemies become more powerful, but they still look the same and even have the same names. They just gain more health and take way too long to kill. This doesn't really contribute to the difficulty - it just increases the tedium, which is so out of place in an action game.

Resource management is a valuable game mechanic that modern games like dumbing down so much. Collecting only makes sense when the collected item is scarce and when it takes a while to complete the collection. In BioShock, you have no problem packing machine guns and grenade launchers, but you can only carry nine healing items and five hundred dollars. Ammo is too plentiful and dollars are scattered around when there is nothing I want to buy.

The ubiquitous vita chambers are, in all seriousness, a game-breaking flaw. In this game, you are essentially immortal. When you die, you always respawn with half your health intact, while your enemies are politely waiting for you to come over and finish them off. This kills any remnants of challenge and suspense the game might have still had. I clearly remember a Big Daddy fight where I literally emptied a gun into him, got killed, emptied another gun, and so on, until I emerged victorious. There was zero skill involved; I felt the designers were simply patronizing me. I cannot fathom how the designers could let such a fatal defect slip into the final version of the product.

The Bottom Line
It's not hard to see why BioShock enraged those who were craving for a true third coming of System Shock. The full truth is even sadder: Bioshock doesn't really work that well even as a simple, straightforward shooter. It is undeniably a beautiful and atmospheric game, but it is hardly fulfilling.

The Good
If anyone of you have played System Shock 2, you would have known that that game was set in the future. The same cannot be said about 2K's latest offering, Bioshock; the game is set in 1960, way before I was born. A plane crashes in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and you are the only survivor. You resurface in front of what appears to be an underwater complex. You go and investigate this complex and, before you know it, you are taken to Rapture, a city that was built in the '40s by Andrew Ryan. It is supposed to be paradise, but you immediately find out that your descent into the city caused destruction and chaos.

The first thing I saw, long before I entered Rapture, was how amazing the water animates at the beginning of the game, and the fire around it. I think that this could be part of the DX10 enhancements in the game. It is this point in the game where you have to make your way to the bathysphere. Just looking around shows me what I could expect. As BioShock is set in 1960, the walls are decorated with old-style posters plastered around the walls and music that was common in that year.

After watching the introduction from Ryan, the window opens up to give you breathtaking views of Rapture, as the bathysphere takes you to one of the entrances leading to the city. I enjoyed the views while I was making my way there, with neon lights embedded onto each of the buildings. During the game, there are windows that you can look outside from, but these are not quite as spectacular as the one inside the bathysphere.

Around Rapture, there are a variety of weapons scattered in certain areas, and most of these weapons have three different types of ammunition. It doesn't hurt to try out all the types just to see what they are like. I prefer the machine gun for the early enemies, and the “Bucks” and the heat-seeking RPG for later ones. Of course, you will mainly use these weapons to kill Splicers. You will know when you are about to approach a Splicer: they chant and sing to themselves. As the manual states, a Splicer is a citizen of Rapture who became so obsessed with Plasmids that their overuse altered their genetic structure. Splicers are only alerted to your presence when you walk into their vicinity or shoot your weapon for no reason. Doing the latter takes me back to the days when I was playing Wolfenstein 3D when I could alert the Nazis simply by shooting at nothing. When they see you, they really do their best to destroy you. The audio logs that you can pick up (also an element from System Shock 2) are interesting to listen to, as these are a record of their memories during their time in Rapture .

Now, BioShock uses an element that was borrowed from System Shock 2 and the Thief games. When Splicers are killed, you will be able to go through their pockets and steal some useful items like extra cash, health, components, and much more. I enjoyed doing this as you never know what stuff you can collect. If you have enough of a specific item, the game doesn't let you get any more until it has been used. For instance, the game assumes that $500 is enough (even though there is a four-digit number for the money counter).

To get through the game, you need to use various machines. The manual has detailed information about these machines, so I won't bore you with all the details. Each of the machines attract the player to their location by playing some sort of melody or by speaking to you. “El Ammo Banditos”, for example, shouts something in Spanish. I can say that I used these machines more than twenty times in a level, to stock up on things like health, EVE, and ammo, as well as getting more Plasmids.

BioShock has two other elements that need mentioning, and these are also taken from System Shock 2. Security cameras are scattered around Rapture, and they are on the lookout for any intruders. Like SS2, once they have you in their sights they give a warning sound. Several seconds later, they confirm your sighting, sending security droids to your location, and these droids have orders to shoot and kill. You can destroy them, and put the droids to good use. That brings me to the second element: hacking. Hacking something brings up an interface where you have to connect some pipes until a pipe reaches the exit point. In this case, successfully hacking a security droid will cause it to protect you and shoot any splicers it sees. I enjoy how droids sound like bees when they follow you. Hacking is not limited to droids. You can also hack turrets, health stations, and most of the machines, but one machine that you can't hack is the “Gatherer's Garden”.

Sure, there are weapons that you can use to kill the Splicers. But the real magic of BioShock is the Plasmids that you can also use to perform special attacks. For example, you can electrocute your enemies, incinerate them, throw them up in the air and make them go down hard, sick bees onto them, and even turn Splicers against one another. Just because you selected specific Plasmids at the start of the game does not mean that you are stuck with the same ones throughout the game. You'll find hundreds of Plasmids to choose from at one of those “Gatherer's Garden” machines. If you had enough of your equipped ones, you can always buy new ones. (Hint: You might want to purchase a slot to store the plasmids in.) I like those “Evolve Today” black-and-white ads that introduce the Plasmids. They are hilarious to watch. Of course, you need to stock up on EVE if you want to keep using Plasmids. If you have no EVE, you cannot use Plasmids.

As you walk in some locations, as I said earlier, you can hear actual '60s music playing in the background. I describe the music as slow-moving, but in some places it just has a jazzy feel to it. If you like the music, you can stop what you are doing and listen to it right through to the end.

Two characters that I enjoy most are the Big Daddies and Little Sisters. The Daddies walk around making bear noises, then stop making those noises when they are accompanied by a Sister. Because the Daddies go around in diving suits, that must explain why they are called “Mr. Bubbles”. As the manual says, you can't do anything with the Sisters until you have dealt with the Daddy first, but it takes a lot of firepower to defeat them. When defeated, the Sisters mourn the Daddies as if they are a part of their family. I like how you have two options of dealing with the Sister. You see, you can harvest (kill) them to get a lot of ADAM, but that won't be pleasant to look at. An alternate, safer way is to rescue the Sister but you get less ADAM than you would by killing them. ADAM is one of the important items to get as it determines how many Plasmids you can get. What I did during the game was kill the Sisters, but only if I was very low on ADAM. I prefer to save them, however, since I don't believe in hurting innocent young girls. Once you have enough ADAM, you can spend it at one of those “Gatherer's Garden” machines.

One thing that I had to laugh at are what happens when you decide to save Sisters. When you manhandle her, all they say is “No!” four times while you are trying to get at the ADAM. After you release her afterward, she forgets about the Daddy since she is too busy saying “Thank you. You've saved my life” or something along those lines, then goes back to where she came from.

Although you have that yellow Quest arrow pointing to your objective at the top of the screen, I ignored it most of the time until I am ready to accomplish it. As with most first-person shooters, I like to explore a bit, hunting for weapons, health, EVE, and other stuff. This way I can avoid spending the cash I just collected on vending machines.

The controls are easy since you may be more familiar with them playing early first-person shooters. I really like how you could quickly switch to another weapon/Plasmid by turning the mouse wheel, and by switching between weapons/Plasmids with the right mouse button. It doesn't hurt to memorize the key bindings for special weapons/Plasmids. More often than not, I happened to press the wrong keys when I got involved in a full-blown fight with a Splicer and I end up losing a lot of health for doing this.

The Bad
I found that the areas are far too dark to see anything, even if my monitor/video settings are set to a satisfactory level. I had to rely on the Quest arrow to get me out of those dark areas.

About the vending machines: hacking machines doesn't really give you much of a discounted price. It is normally 15 dollars less than the normal price. They would not be worth hacking into since this is the case.

The Bottom Line
In BioShock, you can hack, steal items from your enemy's pockets, and evade security cameras; and these are the elements that were taken straight from System Shock 2. Each section of the game should take about 30 minutes to complete, but it may take longer if you are like me and explore the area a bit, ignoring the Quest arrow as you go. You encounter a variety of Splicers, and nearly all of them run towards you and jump in the air for an attack, so it is better to use what weapons you have to kill them before they are inches away from you.

Two characters that play an important role in the game are the Big Daddies and Little Sisters, both of which are funny to look at and listen to. There are three endings to this game, but what ending you view will depend on how you deal with the Sisters. If you view a specific ending, it would not hurt to play BioShock two more times and try the other endings.

The sound is great, and the music reflects the year that the game is set in. The same goes for the graphics, but you won't get the extra benefits without a DX10-compliant video card,

BioShock is the first games in the series, so expect a second and third game to be released later. There is also a movie that ties in with the third game.

The Good
+ great story - would you kindly get your foot outta my ass? + great visuals - water, that most intangible of elements, looks like water + atmosphere supports the story - immersive environment makes the 50's look hip again, no thanks to Marty McFly's dad + stuff blows up great - all underwater secret cities should have full tanks of flammable propane lying everywhere in case a video game gets made there

The Bad
- way too easy - Bioshock has an invincible "god" mode - it's called default - the movie will be better - could have had more varied enemy selection, like that gigantic walking spider-thing mech from DOOM, but that wouldn't have "served" the story - once again, the best weapon in the game - the crossbow - is also the most low-tech; development time spent on hells-yes plasmids may have been better spent on crowd favorite "2x4 with rusty nail hammered through it"

The Bottom Line
Analysis: Bioshock and Compromise

Sometimes, some things are just too good for their own good.

While that seems to be a contradictory statement simply on its own, it makes sense (but not too much sense) when you consider there are many things that haven't enjoyed any success when it is fully conceivable that they should. Critical success does not necessarily mean popular success; sometimes art is made that is so advanced that the current generation can not accept it (the term avant-garde comes to mind). The public can only handle so much.

This may seem to be critical of the average layman, who can't be faulted for being who he is, a man--a laying man, at that. In that case, to put it another way (other than saying the public can only accept so much), beauty is the beginning of fear. You know that new sports car? That fancy expensive one, the one you fantasize about? If you buy that, you're going to worry about it all the time; you're going to worry about it being stolen, scratched, towed, and even targeted by malicious flying birds and their gooey excrement. You know that hot, attractive girl? The one you fantasize about all the time? Once she becomes your girlfriend ("oh yes, she will be mine") you may find yourself constantly worried that someone may steal her from you. Again: beauty is the beginning of fear, and some things are just too good for their own good.

While these two points aren't necessarily the same, the same point can be made: the public can only handle so much. So, that's where Bioshock lands, firmly on its capable and talented feet and stooping low to bend to the lowest common denominator so that even the most lay of the layest of layman will "get" this game.

Bioshock is a beautiful game that takes place in the undersea city of Rapture. Based on the philosophies of Ayn Rand, Bioshock is an exploration of Objectivism gone catastrophically wrong. In the game, a charismatic leader named Andrew Ryan founds the city of Rapture as a capitalist haven safe against influence and pressure from outside political and religious powers. Literally shut off from the entire world at the bottom of the ocean, the Objectivist experiment of Rapture fails due to internal problems; this is suggested due in part to Objectivist dogma where the scientist, artist and capitalist aren't constrained by ethics or morality.

This is quite an interesting basis for a story; furthermore, Bioshock would continue down the "interesting path" some more and spin a tale of betrayal, deceit and domination. However, the fantastic research and writing that went into making this video game comes at a price: it's too good for its own good.

When applied to video games many gamers could only shake their heads in disbelief. "How can a game be too good?" they may say. I suppose this can be someone asking how vanilla ice cream can be too vanilla-y, or how someone can have sex too often and have too many orgasms. Well, I can't complain about vanilla ice cream nor about orgasms that are too good to have, but there is something to be said about Bioshock: its story and game play are terribly unbalanced with each other. Bioshock can't make up its mind whether it wants to tell a story or let you blow things up; stuck as a compromise, Bioshock delivers an interesting story in a way only video games can tell at the cost of overpowered game play that is too easy even for the average layman.

The story is too good for video games. I admit this sounds insulting to all video gamers and layman everywhere, lying down, but when the news broke that Bioshock is getting the Hollywood treatment with "name" director Gore Verbinski attached, who made alot of money and fame making movies about a ride at Disneyworld, I suspect the excitement was mostly over the fact that the great story in Bioshock would finally get told properly - in another medium that can tell stories well.

How can a story be too good for a game? Well, the high quality of a story in a video game can be detrimental when the developers emphasize the importance of the story over everything else; what this does effectively is subvert every other aspect including game play, difficulty, and enemy selection. You know (you laymen guys), everything that makes a video game a game.

First, the game is entirely too easy. Of the three difficulty levels, the hardest level is about the same level as most other games' mild medium difficulty level; compared to a hardcore game like Ninja Gaiden, Bioshock's hardest difficulty level is on par with the former game's easiest difficulty level. Other elements add to this ease: the game pauses when selecting weapons or plasmids, basic enemies (splicers) are all the same and so similar strategies can be used against them throughout the game, weapons are upgradeable to over-powered status, after halfway through the game money becomes so easy to make that a 500$ maximum capacity is forced on the player (unlike my wallet in real life), a map and a directional arrow points to the objective so that getting lost in a level is an impossibility, and furthermore no penalty is ever exacted on the player for dying - the player is instantly resurrected at a Vita-chamber to redo a level until ultimately he succeeds.

Secondly, the game play is so unbalanced that not long after beginning you become a unstoppable powered tank. The average enemy soon doesn't have a chance against the player, and in fact by the game's end you are pretty much just as powerful as the end boss. It appears the makers spent a lot of time designing cool ways to blow things up real good that they forgot to give you a suitable opponent; while it may be argued that Big Daddies are tough mini-bosses, the truth is they don't appear often enough and once you learn the technique how to take down a Big Daddy quickly it actually becomes routine quite quickly. In fact, one of the biggest challenges in Bioshock is cycling through your weapons and plasmids regularly to use them all equally, whereas in most cases you'll stick with one familiar weapon and upgrade it to make short work of all splicers and Big Daddies.

The fact of the matter is that the game has been designed to be overly simple and easy for the simplest of laymen to ensure that absolutely anyone and everyone can make it to the end - to ensure that this story gets told, from beginning to end. In four (and a compound) words: great story, bad game play. This is the antithesis of most games that have a bad story but great game play. Video games have traditionally not had great stories because usually they have been about game play, the meat, and back bone of video games.

Consider all the audio diaries scattered through each of the levels. When put together they weave together the complicated social tapestry of Rapture, a blend of unbridled ambition and treachery and despair. An interesting part of the story... that isn't an integral part of the game. In fact, listening to these audio diaries will commonly displace you from the immersion of the game, and in fact distract you from attacking enemies. These side-stories are entirely skippable for those who wish to simply blow things up.

And that's a problem too: as a straight-forward first-person shooter, Bioshock is strangely unsatisfying for not having unbalanced game play. Bioshock looks beautiful, sounds realistic for sound effects and dramatic for voice acting and has period songs of the era, and is a high class offering that should be a great video game - but it isn't as much fun as DOOM to shoot monsters and blow stuff up.

This is where Bioshock deviates from the norm (watch out, lying-down people everywhere!). As a game, it isn't much fun or challenging, but as a story and as a work of original art, it is fascinating and nuanced and fresh. As a top tier well-hyped video game with enormous production values, it's clear that sacrifices were made to this game to make it enjoyable and accessible to everyone; to anyone who has studied art knows, art is something that is for anyone, but not everyone. Bioshock could have been something really special and extraordinary, but instead we have something that allows the basest fan boy to blow stuff up.

This isn't to say Bioshock doesn't understand its medium and the limitations thereof; on the contrary, the single most genius fact of the design of Bioshock is the use of linearity. Long a bane of video game design, Bioshock whole-heartedly embraces linearity as the basis of the shocking twist at the game's mid-section. Without explaining it completely to encourage people to play it for themselves, the linearity of the game and lack of choice is used to turn the entire convention of video game stories on its head. This same type of head-turning convention was last used to great effect in "Shadows of the Colossus" (2005), in which, without the use of speaking script, the player realizes in horrifying dismay that the colossus you are slaying aren't evil - the sad, melancholic music that plays upon killing a colossus is in stark contrast to the happy, heroic music that plays when you finally mount them.

This perspective as a gamer progressing through levels to satisfy an objective only to realize, after the fact, the real ramification of what you have done can only lie within the realm of objective-reaching video games that feature a challenge/reward system that films, TV and books can't compete. However, films - the film adaptation of Bioshock, for example - aren't limited by the conventions and devices of video games and so aren't constrained in storytelling: films don't have power-ups, crates to smash and tutorials telling you how to cycle through your weapons. Unlike a video game, films have a set, finite duration of time and will finish whether or not you can kill the end boss who has cheap-ass attacks. Movies tell stories; video games are stories unto themselves that depend upon your mad video game skillz, layman or otherwise.

It is with this sad fact that the Bioshock movie, if it ever gets made, will be much better than the original video game and become the best video game adaptation ever made. This is not so surprising since Bioshock isn't as much a video game as it is a delightful story set awkwardly as a period piece masquerading as a first-person shooter. While it’s confusing that this story wound up being told first as a video game, it shouldn't be surprising that this video game was made as a first-person shooter - it's these fps games that get bought. Getting bought means money. And money is an end in itself that ensures compromise over integrity.

While we may never know to what end Bioshock was compromised, it's clear that the result is an unbalanced game that has a better story than its gameplay. For being innovative and challenging as a work of art in the field of video games is noteworthy, but laymen should now understand why I enjoy playing Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad more than this game. Chicks in bikinis using samurai swords to slice up zombies - now that makes a fun game; the movie... (Oneechanbara: The Movie (2008)) not so much.

There's hope for you yet, Bioshock.

(If you've made it this far, I'll divulge the fact that I already did a review for Bioshock for PC - after only having played it for a few hours. If you look it up here on Mobygames, you'll see - quite gratifying to me - that I wasn't that far off the mark from the mark. Once again, thank you Mobygames for making my reviews arguably the most read/voted unhelpful!)