Hands-On With BioShock PS3's Challenge Rooms

Last week 2K Games announced a release date of November 20 for the BioShock Challenge Room download pack, the three-level DLC add-on that's exclusive to the PlayStation 3. At least, exclusive for now--I won't be the slightest bit surprised to see this show up on the 360 at some point, maybe closer to the release of BioShock 2. But for now, if you want to play the Challenge Room levels, you'll have to get 'em on the PS3. It's a fairly respectable bonus to PS3 owners who had to wait an extra year for the game--though a bonus that will run you $9.99. Will it be worth the asking price? It looks like a fairly meaty chunk of content--provided you were left with a deep yearning for more BioShock after you finished the main game.

Anyway, I got to play two of the three levels in the pack, which I feel it is important to note is officially being referred to as the "BioShock Add-On Game Content." Each of the three levels has a different focus. The one I started with, called "Worlds of Hurt," is focused entirely on combat. You head into an initial room with the wrench and the pistol and have to kill a single splicer--really tough, right?

Then you get to a hub room which all the other combat chambers are connected to. In the middle of the room is a collection of every vending machine in the game so you can stock up before the next chamber. But--surprise!--your money and Adam are severely limited throughout World of Hurt, so you can only stock up a couple of weapons and grab one or two new plasmids between each chamber.

Each of the combat rooms has a little piece of custom artwork hanging over its entrance, indicating what kind of challenge you'll face inside. One of them has a bunch of Big Daddies; another is full of those little flying security drones; a third mostly vertical room lined with walkways throws a bunch of teleporting Houdini splicers at you. You can tackle these rooms however you want, but a 2K rep said there's no Mega Man-style progression here where it behooves you to tackle them in a certain order.

The whole Worlds of Hurt section feels like a big survival or endurance mode to me, what with the extremely limited ammo and healing items and the harder and harder waves of enemies. Working with so few resources certainly forced me to improvise my tactics. At one point I completely ran out of ammo and still had a Big Daddy to kill, so I tried to get the brute to charge at me and ram some explosive barrels conveniently sitting in a pool of flammable liquid. It also helps you to hack as many turrets and security bots as you can, but all the hacking is set to the hardest level, so that's a dicey proposition in itself.

There's a timer running throughout the whole level here, so you can try to go back and beat your best times and try harder difficulties. I can attest, this level ain't no cakewalk; I tried Worlds of Hurt on medium setting and probably only finished half of the chambers before I got smoked. At least you can save in between each room in case you die.

BioShock's combat offers pretty good flexibility, with so many different weapons and plasmids, so I could see Worlds of Hurt having decent replay value. But the combat was never the best element of the original game. It was the story, atmosphere, and art design that really drew me into Rapture, and you don't get any new story elements or exposition here. But at least the other level I tried, "A Shocking Turn of Events," is much more puzzle-oriented and at least offers some new level design elements that you didn't see in the original game, if no actual story.

A Shocking Turn of Events is the Challenge Room 2K was showing off back at E3, which has a Little Sister stranded at the top of a ferris wheel. Your simple job is to rescue her. That ferris wheel is a new set piece, as is a carnival gallery with a bunch of big balloons and . There's not so much fighting in this level; it's more about finding ways to power machinery to make the ferris wheel keep turning, using your electricity-emitting plasmids, some stray power cables, and other elements. In one section, I equipped the plasmid that causes you to emit a charge when you're struck in melee, and then lured a splicer over to attack me next to the machine that needed the juice. Get it? Shocking Turn of Events? Ha!

The last Challenge Room is called "The 'I' in Team" and somehow has you trying to protect a Little Sister from a berserk Big Daddy. With no weapons at all. I didn't get to see that one, but yeah, sounds crazy!

Lastly, if you missed it last week, 2K producer Melissa Miller does a good job walking you through the Challenge Room pack in this video. You can see some of the new level elements, like the ferris wheel and some giant nutcracker statues. Pretty neat stuff.

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