SuhailiBioShock
February 27th 2008 02:40
I'll be honest with you, I'm not a hardcore FPS gamer, I didn't grow up on Doom and my acquaintance with Duke Nuke'Em consisted entirely of a friend showing me that you could, if that was your thing, use the toilet.
To add insult to blasphemy, I didn't even know what System Shock was, so when a "spiritual successor" was announced, I shrugged and went back to bashing zombies with guitars. After listening to both Tycho from Penny Arcade and Ethan from Ctrl Alt Del do nothing but rant about the game, I caved in and downloaded the demo.
"They told me, 'Son, you're special. You were born to do great things'. You know what? They were right." The first lines spoken in BioShock prove to be prophetic and not just in relation to Jack's descent into Rapture but the game itself.
You're Jack, the sole survivor of a plane crash somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. After surfacing amidst the flaming wreckage, you spot what looks like a giant lighthouse, placed rather oddly in the middle of nowhere. After entering and exploring a little bit, you come across a bathysphere (a hybrid of a submarine and an elevator). With nowhere else to go and no other options, you enter the chamber and activate it.
So begins your decent into Rapture, a metropolis built by Andrew Ryan both as a haven for the best and brightest of humanity whether they were artists, scientists, doctors or engineers and as a shrine to his individualistic belief that humanity shouldn't be subject to moral or ethical limitations. All of which just happens to be many fathoms beneath the surface of the ocean. When you arrive at the city, it quickly becomes apparent that Rapture has ruptured as the citizens spiralled into madness. Driven insane by a combination of ADAM-addiction (a form of pure stem cells which allows for almost any genetic modification imaginable) and an utter lack of any moral compass, the city has become an underwater hell.
The controls are simple to master, the left trigger activates Plasmids (the "super-powers") and the right trigger is used for the guns and melee attacks. Tapping the left and right bumpers cycles through all available weapons and holding them brings up a radial menu for quicker selection. A is your universal interaction button and as such, it's context sensitive, B uses a first aid kit while X reloads both your weapon and your EVE supply, if you happen to have a syringe in your inventory. Y is the nominal jump button but, apart from one or two instances in the game, you won't really need to remember that.
The story is beautifully planned out and the attention to detail is evident from the very beginning, the only downside is that the story leaves you wanting more, much more than the twenty or so hours a first play through will take you but I would have wanted more if the game had been sixty hours. The story doesn't feel either stretched or cramped at its current length and I can't think of anything they could have added without destroying the pace of the game.
Since you can't discuss anything that happens in terms of narrative without spoiling something; to avoid ruining the game for anyone who hasn't yet played (what's wrong with you?!), I'll leave the narrative discussion here.
The graphics are beautiful, the Art Deco style of architecture is stunning and I found myself wishing I could suspend playing the game just to admire the environments. The level of disuse and decay has also been rendered lovingly, from the underwater tunnels which are slowly filling with seawater to the in-game posters and adverts (all of which are readable), and it's easy believe you really are in a city filled with genetically modified maniacs.
There is no multiplayer option available so BioShock is, for the moment, a single player only game. Despite this lack, I didn't find this diminished the game for me one iota. Of course, the last FPS multiplayer I played was the original Perfect Dark so I may not be entirely unbiased when I say that the "missing" multi isn't a huge disappointment. Having said that, it would have been nice to have the option of electrocuting my friends before smacking them with my trusty wrench, without having to deal with those annoying legal proceedings afterwards.
Now, all due praise aside for a moment, there were a couple of gripes that I had with the game, which prevent it from achieving the perfect score it could have so easily had. The biggest problem I had was the acquisition of Plasmids. Don't get me wrong, I love them and used them more than I used my "traditional" weapons (at least until I had to start hunting down Big Daddies) but I have a hard time believing that anyone's first reaction to finding a glowing red syringe is to pick it up and stab themselves with it. There were so many options that 2K Games could have used to explain the need to modify your DNA (and it is a need) but they just glossed over it to get you into the game proper.
The other thing which continually bugged me was the Vita-Chambers; if you die you are immediately reconstructed in the nearest of these "respawn" points with no real penalty - your inventory and weapons remain untouched which means that you can reload your weapons as well as top up your Health and EVE before having to try your luck again. To cap it off, all enemies health remains at the level you beat them down to. This means that, if you wanted, you could run through the entire game beating things up with your Wrench; it's not an advisable course of action but it is possible nevertheless.
In short, BioShock has everything a game needs to be considered great: an engaging and appropriately intricate story, an easy-to-use control set-up, top-notch voice acting and graphics which make you believe in Rapture enough to make you squeal like a girl when a Big Daddy comes thundering right at you. But for a few small niggling problems, BioShock could have been a perfect game. As it stands, 2K Games have given us something that will be hard to top and if they dish up more of the same, I for one will leap back into the world of Ryan Industries and Fontaine Futures without hesitating.
9.3 out of 10.
To add insult to blasphemy, I didn't even know what System Shock was, so when a "spiritual successor" was announced, I shrugged and went back to bashing zombies with guitars. After listening to both Tycho from Penny Arcade and Ethan from Ctrl Alt Del do nothing but rant about the game, I caved in and downloaded the demo.
"They told me, 'Son, you're special. You were born to do great things'. You know what? They were right." The first lines spoken in BioShock prove to be prophetic and not just in relation to Jack's descent into Rapture but the game itself.
You're Jack, the sole survivor of a plane crash somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. After surfacing amidst the flaming wreckage, you spot what looks like a giant lighthouse, placed rather oddly in the middle of nowhere. After entering and exploring a little bit, you come across a bathysphere (a hybrid of a submarine and an elevator). With nowhere else to go and no other options, you enter the chamber and activate it.
So begins your decent into Rapture, a metropolis built by Andrew Ryan both as a haven for the best and brightest of humanity whether they were artists, scientists, doctors or engineers and as a shrine to his individualistic belief that humanity shouldn't be subject to moral or ethical limitations. All of which just happens to be many fathoms beneath the surface of the ocean. When you arrive at the city, it quickly becomes apparent that Rapture has ruptured as the citizens spiralled into madness. Driven insane by a combination of ADAM-addiction (a form of pure stem cells which allows for almost any genetic modification imaginable) and an utter lack of any moral compass, the city has become an underwater hell.
The controls are simple to master, the left trigger activates Plasmids (the "super-powers") and the right trigger is used for the guns and melee attacks. Tapping the left and right bumpers cycles through all available weapons and holding them brings up a radial menu for quicker selection. A is your universal interaction button and as such, it's context sensitive, B uses a first aid kit while X reloads both your weapon and your EVE supply, if you happen to have a syringe in your inventory. Y is the nominal jump button but, apart from one or two instances in the game, you won't really need to remember that.
The story is beautifully planned out and the attention to detail is evident from the very beginning, the only downside is that the story leaves you wanting more, much more than the twenty or so hours a first play through will take you but I would have wanted more if the game had been sixty hours. The story doesn't feel either stretched or cramped at its current length and I can't think of anything they could have added without destroying the pace of the game.
Since you can't discuss anything that happens in terms of narrative without spoiling something; to avoid ruining the game for anyone who hasn't yet played (what's wrong with you?!), I'll leave the narrative discussion here.
The graphics are beautiful, the Art Deco style of architecture is stunning and I found myself wishing I could suspend playing the game just to admire the environments. The level of disuse and decay has also been rendered lovingly, from the underwater tunnels which are slowly filling with seawater to the in-game posters and adverts (all of which are readable), and it's easy believe you really are in a city filled with genetically modified maniacs.
There is no multiplayer option available so BioShock is, for the moment, a single player only game. Despite this lack, I didn't find this diminished the game for me one iota. Of course, the last FPS multiplayer I played was the original Perfect Dark so I may not be entirely unbiased when I say that the "missing" multi isn't a huge disappointment. Having said that, it would have been nice to have the option of electrocuting my friends before smacking them with my trusty wrench, without having to deal with those annoying legal proceedings afterwards.
Now, all due praise aside for a moment, there were a couple of gripes that I had with the game, which prevent it from achieving the perfect score it could have so easily had. The biggest problem I had was the acquisition of Plasmids. Don't get me wrong, I love them and used them more than I used my "traditional" weapons (at least until I had to start hunting down Big Daddies) but I have a hard time believing that anyone's first reaction to finding a glowing red syringe is to pick it up and stab themselves with it. There were so many options that 2K Games could have used to explain the need to modify your DNA (and it is a need) but they just glossed over it to get you into the game proper.
The other thing which continually bugged me was the Vita-Chambers; if you die you are immediately reconstructed in the nearest of these "respawn" points with no real penalty - your inventory and weapons remain untouched which means that you can reload your weapons as well as top up your Health and EVE before having to try your luck again. To cap it off, all enemies health remains at the level you beat them down to. This means that, if you wanted, you could run through the entire game beating things up with your Wrench; it's not an advisable course of action but it is possible nevertheless.
In short, BioShock has everything a game needs to be considered great: an engaging and appropriately intricate story, an easy-to-use control set-up, top-notch voice acting and graphics which make you believe in Rapture enough to make you squeal like a girl when a Big Daddy comes thundering right at you. But for a few small niggling problems, BioShock could have been a perfect game. As it stands, 2K Games have given us something that will be hard to top and if they dish up more of the same, I for one will leap back into the world of Ryan Industries and Fontaine Futures without hesitating.
9.3 out of 10.
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