In our first ever ret­ro­spect­ive review we go back and review the first chapter of this under­wa­ter uto­pia gone wrong. As we dive back in we meet little sis­ters, big dad­dies, mutated splicers, and a plot filled to the brim with betrayal and decep­tion. Ladies and Gentlemen; wel­come to Rapture.

Story

The story begins aboard an air­plane dur­ing the 1960s. You are fly­ing off to meet someone but are inter­rup­ted as your plane crashes into the Atlantic Ocean. Looking for refuge you head towards a light­house which actu­ally houses the entrance to Andrew Ryan’s uto­pia; Rapture. However not all is as it seems as you arrive to see it in ruins with splicers (Mutated Humans) roam­ing all around the place. Soon you are con­tac­ted by a bunch of people; Atlas (You’re guide), Tenenbaum (A sci­ent­ist who picks on your mor­als), Andrew Ryan (The twis­ted man who cre­ated Rapture), and many oth­ers. Following other games, Rapture leaves in its wake a bunch of recor­ded diar­ies for you to pick up. These detail the rich his­tory of the city and the char­ac­ters them­selves. Memories also appear as ghost like appar­i­tions that show you some of the people in their daily lives before they were either taken by the muta­tion or lives des­troyed. The driv­ing force behind Rapture itself is a source known as ADAM which allows the use of abil­it­ies such as light­ning and fire. A spe­cial slug that cre­ates ADAM was implanted into small girls known as “Little Sisters” who are then guarded by “Big Daddies” who both play an integ­ral role in the story. It’s very rare that a video game is released that con­tains a nar­rat­ive that explores the minds of the insane. It’s also even rarer to find one that delves this deeply into the minds of so many char­ac­ters. BioShock just hap­pens to be one of those games that have the abil­ity to drag you into its atmo­sphere with its cam­paign and leave you guess­ing at every turn and then want­ing more when it’s over.

Score: 9/10

Design

Rapture is huge. It’s easy to note that it was built as an entire city and not meant to be lin­ear. Somehow things went askew as the final product does feel mighty lin­ear. Players can call upon a giant arrow which will tell the dir­ec­tion you’re sup­posed to be going in. This icon will mostly be kept up by many the entire game which cuts off a bunch of Rapture, how­ever those that do ven­ture off the trail will find audio logs, weapon upgrades, and new plas­mids. The game itself is primar­ily a shooter with some light RPG ele­ments strung in, such as upgrad­ing plas­mids and loot­ing from bod­ies. The real stars in the game are the plas­mids. Plasmids are like powers. These will allow you to do incred­ible things such as send volts of elec­tri­city into water, light an enemy on fire with a snap of the fin­gers, freeze and enemy on the spot and then smash him into tiny pieces. There are many of these plas­mids through­out Rapture, though favor­ites will quickly emerge. The prob­lem with all this is you can’t dual wield even a pis­tol and a plas­mid. You’ll have to con­tinu­ally switch the two which can be a real prob­lem in the later levels when swarms of Splicers attack and have skin as thick as a rhino.

Of course as Rapture is a city it should have lots of things to do there, and it does. There’s a whole level basic­ally ded­ic­ated to gambling machines for good­ness sakes! There’s a whole photo mini-game set up which grades you on how well you take pho­tos of the dif­fer­ent enemy types. The more research points you get for each type of enemy the more you’ll learn about them and their weak­nesses. It’s a cool concept but in-game they’re usu­ally rush­ing at you and you’ll more then likely want to blast them out of the way. The other mini-game that dom­in­ates is the hack­ing mini-game where you take tubes and arrange them so the liquid can get from one end to the other. This is a ser­i­ous weak­ness in the whole design because it really just isn’t much fun at all and you’ll find your­self pay­ing to auto-hack the machines.

BioShock is filled to brim here with much to do, see, and find. Sure not everything inser­ted is fun but it still feels extraordin­ary to won­der the halls of rap­ture learn­ing its secrets and defeat­ing its civil­ians.

Score: 8.5/10

Gameplay

BioShock, as stated above, is a blend of the First-Person Shooter and the RPG. The gun­play here is pretty aver­age at best. You press the nor­mal trig­ger but­ton to fire and you can aim down the sights by press­ing down on the Left Stick. The shoot­ing is gen­eric even once you upgrade your weapons, but the real fun comes in the plas­mids. The game really rewards you for the way you use your plas­mids. For example the trophy/achievement “Toaster in the Tub” is rewar­ded for shock­ing a bunch of splicers in the water. Plasmids can be upgraded up some levels which allow for new effects and more dam­age. It’s sat­is­fy­ing to just snap your fin­gers and have fire spring up from where you were aim­ing, or to use telekin­esis on a rocket just blas­ted at you and send it fly­ing back at your enemy.

In a fight all the pieces work well together. BioShock forces you to think how you approach a fight. Use the envir­on­ment is a big one as the water seeps through cracks or as flam­mable gas­ol­ine pours across sur­faces. Set mines and lure enemies to their deaths. Or even brain­wash a big daddy into aid­ing you in a fight. As you get farther into the game the enemies become very very hard. Even on Easy you will die. Ammo may seem a plenty at the begin­ning but the enemies begin eat­ing up so much lead that you’ll be empty­ing magazine upon magazine into them. Plasmids begin tak­ing up more ADAM as you upgrade them and First Aid Kits also become scarce with them.

There is one final boss fight but he’ll be such a pushover after fight­ing off all those Splicers. The next best thing to a boss would be the Big Daddies. You’ll have to be very care­ful of them as they have some very thick armor and some very killer weapons. They’ll smash you, drill through you with their drill arm, or blast you to pieces with a Rivet Gun. And like every other enemy they become ser­i­ously hard. Fighting them though is worth it because you can cap­ture the little sis­ters. This here lays the only mor­al­ity aspect that is in the game. You can either choose to save or har­vest the sis­ters. Saving them will gain you a good por­tion of Eve (Plasmid cur­rency) and war­rant you the “Good” end­ing and favor with Tenenbaum. Harvesting them will give you loads of Eve but also earn­ing you a bad repu­ta­tion. Any way you play BioShock you’re going to have a blast. Just don’t expect much from the actual gun­play.

Score: 9.4/10

Presentation

BioShock is a game of atmo­sphere and it hits everything per­fectly. It can be ter­ri­fy­ing at times to hear the splicers talk­ing like deranged lun­at­ics or sneak­ing up on you in a bunny mask. To fit this tone 2K has craf­ted a won­der­ful soundtrack and filled the roles with an excel­lent voice cast. Every line is delivered per­fectly and the era crack­ling as you listen through the radio or to an audio log is just so per­fectly on the mark that you won­der if these were actual people.

The game uses the Unreal 3 Engine which is good in spots. Water effects look abso­lutely fant­astic as it slith­ers down the walls or gushes from the sea to fill in a room. Weapons, plas­mids and their effects, Big Daddies, and the machinery that lit­ters the city all look crisp and gor­geous on all 3 ver­sions. Splicers and humanoid mod­els don’t. Like many other games the tex­tures come out like they are plastic. While mutated they are, they are cer­tainly not a Barbie doll. This little annoy­ance though can hardly stand in the way of a very good look­ing game in 2007, and still holds up well in 2009.

Score: 9.2/10

Final Thoughts

BioShock was such a great game in 2007 (PC and 360) and then in 2008 (PS3), no other game in 2007 gave you such a great plot with some cool powers to play with in an apo­ca­lyptic under-sea play­ground.