Kantor

User Score
9.6

Presentation - 10
Gameplay - 9.5
Value - 9.0

"I am Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? 'No!' says the man in Washington, 'It belongs to the poor.' 'No!' says the man in the Vatican, 'It belongs to God.' 'No!' says the man in Moscow, 'It belongs to everyone.' I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture.

A city where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, Where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well."

-Andrew Ryan, founder of Rapture

BioShock puts you in the shoes of Jack, a man flying across the ocean to (presumably) meet his family. However, his plane mysteriously crashes into the sea. The only things in sight are the burning wreckage of his plane, and something which looks like a lighthouse. He enters, and his life is changed forever.

[img]http://www.wired.com/images/article/wide/2007/08/pl_games_w.jpg[/img]

No Gods. No Kings. Only Man.

It's not a lighthouse at all, it is a city. A metropolis. Underwater. No sane people remain, only splicers, who resemble humans only in body, and have gone completely insane.

Does this sound interesting to you? It should. BioShock has an intriguing setting, and one of the best stories I have ever witnessed in a game. It's not all storytelling, however, as this is coupled with unique and excellent gameplay.

Andrew Ryan was a Russian man who, sick of modern society, decided to create his own. The child of his ideas was Rapture, a city located entirely underwater, with no ruler, only individuals with the initiatives to make themselves, and the city, great.

You will notice that the citizens of Rapture - or what remains of them - are not very friendly. Your only ally is a mysterious Irish man named Atlas, who gives you advice, and orders, over a radio. Your overriding order? Find Andrew Ryan, and kill him.

Now, to move on to the gameplay, because mentioning more about the story would ruin half the fun of BioShock: experiencing the story firsthand, and being shocked at every brilliant twist.

BioShock is presented entirely in first person. Through the entire game, you see through Jack's eyes. This is an interesting way to present a game, similar to Half Life. You never see Jack's face.

Jack begins completely unarmed, but soon acquires a wrench. While this is sufficient to begin with, you'll need more powerful weapons to face the things that Ryan throws at you: splicers, the main enemy of the game, and Big Daddies, which I will come to later.

BioShock allows you to use many standard weapons, such as a pistol, shotgun, grenade launcher and machine gun. There are also some rather unorthodox weapons: A flamethrower and a crossbow, among others. However, these weapons do not stay the same throughout the game. Special ammo can be found lying around Rapture, or in the corpses of splicers, and you can even make some yourself. Special ammo ranges from pistol bullets that do extra damage to Big Daddies and cameras, to making your flamethrower shoot electric gel which shocks enemies for damage over time, and does extra damage in water.

[img]http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/2007/231/reviews/924919_20070820_embed052.jpg[/img]

There are also "Power to the People" machines in a few locations in Rapture. These will allow you to customise a weapon in a certain way, such as increasing the pistol's clip size, or reducing the flamethrower's ammo consumption. You can use each machine once. After use, it is permanently disabled, so choose your upgrades wisely.

Wait, what? You can make your own ammo? BioShock is not all about running around and killing things. There are many other aspects of the game:

Hacking. Any and all machines can be hacked. Hacking is a minigame, involving making a pipe path from one pipe to another. Hacking a vending machine will give you lower prices, hacking a camera will make it send turrets at enemies, and hacking a turret will make it your permanent ally. Hacking a U-Invent will lower the component requirements for items. What's a U-Invent?

Invention. Find a U-Invent (these are scattered around the later levels) and you will see a list of items that you can create. You will find the components (tubing, screws, etc.) around Rapture. Select the item, and you will receive it, but those components will disappear permanently.

Purchasing powers and items. Items can be bought from a vending machine with money found on corpses or in containers, while powers, separated into Plasmids and Tonics, are bought from Gatherer's Gardens. These are purchased with ADAM, gained from harvesting or rescuing Little Sisters. But first, I'll explain what Plasmids and Tonics are.

[img]http://www.visualwalkthroughs.com/bioshock/medical2/30.jpg[/img]

A plasmid is a power, usually an attack. You can store six of these for use at any point at once. The rest are stored in your gene bank, and you can change these whenever you come across a gene bank (they are quite common). Using plasmids uses EVE (ADAM and EVE, see what they did there?), which can be restored using a hypo, again, found around Rapture, or purchased from vending machines, along with first aid kits that heal you (no regenerating health in this FPS, sorry.) These range from shooting bees at enemies to setting them on fire to shocking them to setting traps for them, to making them fight each other...the list goes on and on.

A tonic is a passive ability, such as dealing damage to enemies when they attack you, or giving you extra health from med kits. These are split into four categories, and you begin with being able to carry two of each category, but you can purchase slots, so you can have up to six in each.

I mentioned that ADAM is used to purchase plasmids and tonics. You get this from Little Sisters, strange twisted little girls with golden eyes that walk around rapture, accompanied by a Big Daddy.

[img]http://www.wired.com/images/article/magazine/1509/pl_bioshock12_f.jpg[/img]

Once you've killed that thing (it isn't easy, but when you die, you respawn at a Vita-Chamber, with the Big Daddy still damaged), the Little Sister begins to look very scared. You have a choice here. A moral choice. You can harvest and destroy the Little Sister, for 160 ADAM, or rescue her and turn her back into a normal little girl, for 80 ADAM. You may think it's easy. Harvesting gives you double the ADAM! Rescuing has its advantages, and that's all I'll say on the matter.

The story is told through radio dialogue, and the odd cutscene (still in first person). Backstory is explained by audio diaries. You'll never find all of them, they are all over the place. But the ones you do listen to give a fascinating insight into what life in Rapture was really like. However, quite a bit of the backstory is lost here, which is unfortunate, because the backstory is extremely interesting.

Now, the technical aspects of the game.

The visual design and video quality are fantastic. The fire and water look great, and so do the character models. However, when a lot is happening on screen, the game does slow down a bit, and the video quality deteriorates. Not a lot, but enough to be noticeable. The game being entirely first person makes you feel like you are the character. Oil catches fire, water is temporarily electrified, so it's not all style and no substance, everything looks great and works great.

There is usually no music playing, but at points with a specific tone, or mood, a soft backing track starts to play. These are well chosen, and well placed. The sound effects are authentic, metal sounds like metal, and wood like wood, fire sounds like fire and electricity sounds like electricity. The voice actors give excellent performances, full of emotion and passion, which brings the story to life.

The game only crashed once, in my entire playthrough. I restarted it, and it ran until the end. There are occasional slowdowns, but not massive ones. Some of the textures seemed a bit off, as well, but most of them were fine.

How long is it? How long is a piece of string? As long as you make it. You can explore the city and look for audio diaries and items, and just get a glimpse of Rapture, or just follow the directions to the letter. I advise the former, the entire city is very well designed. It took me 10 hours or so to complete the game, taking it slowly, and you'll want to play through again, to get the other ending, unlock trophies, and just enjoy the adventure one more time.

BioShock is a superb game, one that I can recommend to anybody not easily spooked. No two playthroughs are ever the same, and it never ceases to be highly enjoyable. You owe it to yourself to pick this up.