Bioshock

Gameplay - 9

To label Bioshock a first-person shooter would be oversimplifying. It is a unique experience that combines elements from several different genres to create a game that you won't feel like you've played before.

From the get-go, you're an ordinary man with no means of defense save for a wrench. Quickly though, you'll have access to the first of many special abilities called Plasmids. The result of a morally unhindered scientific community, Plasmids modify your genetic makeup and allow you to make use of various different abilities throughout the game, both offensive and defensive. In the beginning, your only plasmid will be a simple lightning bolt, but as you progress you will collect a great deal of others. From setting your enemies on fire to forcing them to do your bidding, some plasmids will prove quite useful in your visit to Rapture.

Unfortunately, Plasmids aren't all they've been cracked up to be. Lauded as revolutionary game mechanics that would give rise to new methods of play, their state in the final game is nowhere near “revolutionary”. Some of your most basic plasmids such as Lightning and Incinerate will prove useful, but most of the other plasmids end up being swept under the rug. They will do their job if you want them to, but there is never a point in the game where you feel as if you're going to need any plasmids other than your most basic ones.

Plasmids aren't the only enhancements you'll find though. In your travels you will also come across Gene Tonics. These are passive boosts to your stats, and will increase your performance in various regards. Some Gene Tonics will allow you to receive more health from health packs, slow down the timer in the hacking mini-game, or allow you to deal more damage with certain attacks. Unlike plasmids, your configuration of Gene Tonics will have a dramatic impact on gameplay, so it's advisable to put some time and effort into determining which Tonics you will use to suit and augment your personal style of play.

The majority of your fighting will be accomplished with conventional weapons though. The weapons in Bioshock are nothing new, but the versions presented are decidedly unique from what you've seen before. You've got your Pistol, your Shotgun, your Machine Gun, and a few other standard weapons. The real draw for these weapons comes from the customization. Each weapon has three distinct ammo types. The Pistol for example has ordinary Pistol ammunition, Armor-Piercing ammunition designed for Big Daddies and armored targets, and Anti-Personnel ammunition, effective against unarmored targets like your standard Splicers. In addition to the varying ammo types, each weapon can be upgraded at a Weapon Upgrade station to augment things like Rate of Fire or Damage.

In order to collect Plasmids and allow more slots for Gene Tonics, you're going to need ADAM, the genetic material that keeps Rapture alive (Although that all depends on your definition of “alive”.). The only way to collect this precious material is from the small girls roaming the halls of Rapture, known as “Little Sisters”. Don't expect them to simply hand you the ADAM though. Taking ADAM is as easy as taking candy from a baby, if the baby is protected by a lumbering behemoth in a divers' suit whose very footsteps will melt your subwoofer and rumble your controller. I speak of course of the Big Daddy. Bodyguards to the Little Sisters, Big Daddies are extremely protective of their young companions. If you ignore them, they'll ignore you, but if you so much as breathe on a Little Sister, her Big Daddy will let out a deafening roar, and proceed to engage you in what is usually quite a one-sided bout.

The Big Daddies are noteworthy for their contribution to the game's stellar atmosphere. As you wander the deadened halls of Rapture, a chill crawls up your spine and is likely to remain there for the entirety of the game. 2K Boston has done a fantastic job of establishing setting, and making the player understand that this dead city was once, however briefly, the thriving utopia that it's residents had hoped for. Echoing through the halls, you'll still hear the choppy playback of record players, steadfastly recounting the cheery tunes of Bobby Darin and others, despite the death and destruction that has befallen the city.

As you progress, you'll come across devices which appear to be a rudimentary version of a cassette player. These serve as audio logs of Rapture's residents. Most of these logs are completely optional, but by listening to them you can piece together the growing tension that led to Rapture's downfall, as well as a peek into the personal lives of the citizens.

One significant complaint with the gameplay in Bioshock is the lack of any real penalty for death. Upon your death, you will be revived at a nearby “Vita-Chamber”, with nothing in the gameworld altered. You lose nothing at all by dying. For example, if you manage to bring a Splicer down to half of his health before he kills you, you'll be revived at the Vita-Chamber and be able to continue fighting him, and he will not have recovered any of his health. Because of the non-existent death penalty, the first three quarters or so of the game will post little to no challenge to most players. In the final quarter, the difficulty ramps up significantly to the point of becoming downright frustrating. Enemies will suddenly be able to take much more damage than they probably should, and plasmids will prove almost always ineffective. Even more distressingly, this sudden surge of difficulty happens around the same point that ammunition will suddenly become much more scarce. So you'll be scavenging for ammo while trying to survive with a wrench.

The gameplay in Bioshock is superb, but complaints like the relative irrelevance of Plasmids, and the incredibly frustrating difficulty of the fourth quarter prevent it from reaching perfection.

Visuals - 9

The visuals in Bioshock are beyond belief from an artistic standpoint, if not particularly stunning from a technical perspective.

Rapture is entirely constructed in a retro, art-deco style circa 1945, the approximate time when the city was built. So while the game takes place in 1960, Rapture has not moved on like the rest of the world, and so most of it still lives in 1945. The styled curvature of the roofs and propaganda-style posters on the walls serve to enhance the atmospheric beauty of Bioshock, allowing it to raise the bar for artistic design in gaming.

The textures are beautiful up close but unfortunately suffer from a glaring issue of occasionally severe pop-in. A common technique for increasing performance in games is to use low-resolution textures when the player can't see them, no use wasting processing power on graphics that don't need to be rendered. This system isn't bulletproof though, and there are many instances where you'll walk right up to an object and the game will not have finished loading it's texture, so you'll be staring at a blurry mess for a few seconds before the full, quality texture is loaded. While the art design is amazing and very immersive, this texture pop-in issue destroys the immersion and pulls you right out of the game when it happens, so given the heavy atmosphere of Bioshock, it's a shame to have to put up with this issue.

Another complaint is the water effects. In most places, water looks beautiful. Seeing it pour in from cracks in the ceiling and observing puddles of it on the ground all looks like it should, and in most cases is a sight to behold. Unfortunately, there are some glaring holes in the water presentation, the most noteworthy being the way water reacts to being shot or hit. If you fire a round into the water or hit it with your wrench, you're given a cheap and distracting splash effect that is so agonizingly ugly it can pull you out of the atmosphere for a while. Granted this complaint is fairly nitpicky, but when a game relies on atmosphere and immersion as much as this one does, oversights like this are ever more distressing.

Despite these flaws though, Bioshock is one of the most attractive games on the market today, and it's a shining example of how good art design will always win out over technical prowess.

Sound - 10

I would go so far as to say that Bioshock is one of the greatest sounding games of all time, certainly the greatest I've played. I can think of no other word to describe the sound design other than “perfect”. Say what you will about the impossibility of perfection, there are literally no complaints to speak of with regards to Bioshock's sound.

From the very beginning, the stunning audio will suck you in and refuse to let go. Splashes of water, the pump of a shotgun, the scream of a person whose sanity is long since forgotten, all of it sounds the way you believe it would.

The experience of standing in the halls of Rapture, hearing the dying music of some far off record player, over the dead sounds of distant Big Daddy steps, the ranting of enraged Splicers, the strain of water pressure on Rapture's structure, is one of the most sublime I have ever experienced in my gaming career.

The voice acting is excellent all-around. Every audio log you find tells it's own story, and comes packed with emotion (Or a disturbing lack of emotion, depending on the person speaking.) and care.

Ladies and Gentlemen, it just doesn't get any better than this.

Longevity - 9 (Medium)

Bioshock, while Single-Player only, is a fairly long game. I would estimate my playthrough at around 20 hours, and you will most certainly want to go back for at least another. So at the very least you're looking at a solid 40 hours of gameplay. There is lots to uncover and discover about Rapture though, and none of it will ever feel tedious. Every inch of the city begs to be explored, and you'll find your self throughly engrossed in the adventure of finding out just what happened in Rapture.

Again, there is no Multiplayer, but I don't consider that a negative. A multiplayer game would have destroyed the atmosphere and setting that the single-player game so effectively establishes, so oddly enough, I've actually stacked the lack of Multiplayer as an addition to the game's score, rather than a detraction.

Learning Curve - 9 (Easy)

While Bioshock is a fairly complex game, it is always explained to you at a good pace and with good detail. The average player should have no problems whatsoever getting to know the game mechanics.