In anticipation of BioShock: Infinite coming out later this year, I finally decided to play through the first two BioShock games, which I’ve shamefully owned for a while now without even installing. I played a demo for the first BioShock back when it first came out, but for some reason never came back to it. I have a bad habit of buying games faster than I can play them so the BioShock series slipped off of my radar until I saw the 15 minute demo for BioShock: Infinite; the third in the BioShock series.
Setup and World
BioShock takes you to the underwater city of Rapture, one where a civilization opposed to the order of the corrupt world system have built their own “better”civilization. As is obvious in the first few minutes of gameplay, they only managed to create an even worse civilization in building Rapture. The sciences and technology they’ve developed have ended in many “splicing” (taking potion-like vials called “plasmids” to gain powers) in access, leading to insanity. These splicers are the main enemies of the game.
The more iconic enemies of BioShock are the Little Sisters and their protectors, the Big Daddies. They are sort of the bosses of the game, with two to four in each level in each level. The Little Sisters are little girls with a sort of scientific curse on them that causes them to roam Rapture looking for ADAM, the source of currency for buying more powers throughout the game (upgrading and buying more plasmids and character buffs, being able to have more equiped, etc.). ADAM can only be found in the syringes the glowy-eyed Little Sisters carry around but are, for the most part, invincible characters. You fight the Big Daddies so that the Little Sisters submit and become possible to either “harvest” (for lots of ADAM) or “save” (for a little bit of ADAM, plus other rewards over time). It’s the players choice, and a fun choice to have. A saved Little Sister is freed from the glowing eyes and most of the creepyness and escapes to safety. *Spoiler… later on the Little Sisters you save are found living under the care of a good gal NPC, playing with toys and enjoying what little of a good life is possible in Rapture.
Story and Progression
The levels of BioShock are beautiful, even though they have a rustic-creepy vibe throughout, often giving views out of glass walls and windows to view the underwater city, filled with lights and fish. The player is moved through the story mostly by a number of radio messages given by multiple characters. Despite the lack of friendly characters physically in the game, the story holds together pretty well, injecting more interesting elements and plot twists constantly, to keep each level fresh and different. The last three levels are the most thrilling, as you *spoilers ... don your own Big Daddy suit and befriend Little Sisters to help you take down the last ADAM-saturated enemy.
Weapons and Technique
The weapon system is interesting and fun, giving both a list of plasmids you can use (F1 – F6 buttons) and weapons you can use (1 – 8 buttons). Most plasmids have fun uses on enemies and the environment alike. For example, with the fire plasmid, you can ignite enemies and melt ice, while the electricity plasmid can stun enemies, break electronics and electrocute a body of water and all those who are in it. With all the variety and tons of different “buffs” to choose between (and far too many to use all at once), there are a lot of different play styles in the game. I often found myself asking “do I want to use the wrench charged with the ability to freeze enemies, which also gives me health and EVE (“Mana” for using plasmids), or do I want to shock enemies and get in close with the shotgun while they’re stunned? Each ammo-based weapon also has 3 different ammo types, to cause more damage to different types of enemies. With all this going on, the game is really fun to experiment with, but I found myself lost in my numerical and function buttons. I think I just had to resort to 2 favorites of each type so I could create an effective strategy, without always having to search for different powers.
Other Noteworthy Features:
There were two other features I enjoyed in the game and should mention. First of all was the Pokemon Snap-styled “camera”, which you could use to study your enemies and thus unlock buffs, character upgrades, plus essentially make fully researched enemies easier to kill. Those spider splicers went from being boss-like to being as simple as the others. Second was the “Hacking” mini-games, to get lower prices in vending machines, take control of turrets and flying machine gun bots and open locked doors. These hacking games had a bunch of tiles with randomly-placed tube parts and obstacles that would end in hurting the character one way or another. Water would start to flow at one point, and you have to rearrange tiles to navigate the flow to another point. If the current hit a wall, the device being hacked would short-circuit and deal damage. Other obstacles would break the device or call security, sending in an endless line of those flying machine gun bots for a minute or so.
There are minimal frustrations, since the game is filled with Vitae Chambers, which work like re-spawn points any time you die, with no other penalties than having to walk through a small portion of the level again. The game has been out for a few years, so it’s not up to today’s graphical standards, but aside from that, it’s about as good as it gets with FPS games. Not quite as good as Half Life 2 in my opinion, but better than most of the rest.
Summary:
A creative, but a bit on the “dark side” FPS with interesting features that really help lanch this title beyond run-of-the-mill titles that came out in the same few years. The enemies are nearly demonic, but thankfully there’s an element of redemption woven throughout. The world has a lot of variety and strongly unique areas with a better-than-average story told throughout. While the game is challenging, it never becomes frustrating because the low penalty the player pays if they die.
My Rating for BioShock: 8/10