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
Bioshock is probably one of the most disturbingly beautiful games I've ever played. While the aesthetic is clearly designed to make the player uncomfortable, it's clear that the game's designers took great care to construct a believable world. The environments are believable and look lived in, water effects are above par, and the dynamic light and shadows really add to the sense of dread that makes a really good suspense/horror game possible.

The other half of making the world believable is giving it a compelling story. Rapture has no shortage of interesting characters, and the audio diaries that litter its halls add a wonderfully woven back story to an already intriguing world. Bioshock is a shining example of how to properly tell a story in a first-person shooter.

The game's controls are solid, its weapons varied, and a veritable host of power-up combinations make for an experience that never gets dull. Plasmids, or genetic enhancements, provide a new implementation of on old mechanic, namely spellcasting, but supported by an impressive customization system and a drool-worthy physics engine.

The Bad
While Bioshock leaves very little to be found wanting, it's not without its problems, minor as they may be.

While Bioshock's layout is generally good at helping the player suspend disbelief, there are times when the age-old "invisible wall" problem comes into play. Certain ledges, staircases, etc that look as if they should be accessible are instead impassible borders. The game does avoid this for the most part, but it cropped up enough that I felt it bears mentioning at least.

I also had some issues with the controller mapping, particularly certain buttons performing double duty. For example, the x button is used to hack machinery, and in many cases you need to do this quick, before a turret or security bot is reactivated. This isn't a problem, except that x ALSO is the hotkeyed button for using an EVE hypo, so if you hit it too early you can end up wasting a valuable resource. The same thing happened to me occasionally with using the b button to cancel out of menus and accidentally using health packs.

All in all though, most of my issues with the game were minimal and didn't take away at all from the overall experience.

The Bottom Line
Imagine being totally immersed in a world where everyone around you has gone horribly insane and you are the only sane person left. Not a new concept, but entirely re imagined and relocated to Rapture, the underwater utopia gone wrong.

Bioshock is chock full of truly frightening moments, and not the standard spring-loaded cat stuff, but real glimpses into chaos and insanity. There's nothing about the game that isn't entirely creepy, but at the same time appealing.

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.