BioShock

I fell for the Bioshock hype and I fell hard. While I enjoyed the final product, I still had alot of problems with it. I think if Bioshock was strictly a FPS, then it would suck, and if it was strictly an adventure game, then it would suck, but since it combines these two elements, it seems better than it really is. That's only because there aren't very many one-player FPS out there right now.

The biggest hype this game created was the amazing storyline and originality. While I LOVED the Little Sisters and Big Daddies, I felt everything else was contrived as hell.

I loved the first hour of Bioshock, it was very dark and creepy. After that I think I lost the "shock value" and I would see the same characters repeating the same phrases over and over again, you get desensitized fairly quick with this game. Heck, there's really no bosses in this game, just the random bad guys and Big Daddies through the entire game. There's 2 variations of big daddies and maybe 5 of the regular enemies, but get use to them because you're going to be seeing them alot.

Bioshock was also really difficult in the beginning, but once you get use to the controls and once you start learning skills that boost your strength, HP and defense, then the game becomes way to easy actually. Enemies types do progress along with you, but it's still incredibly easier later in the game than earlier.


----------Battle System----------
Bioshock is a hybrid First Person Shooter / Adventure / RPG. I'll be perfectly honest and say that Bioshock is fairly mediocre shooter, but with the added depth of RPG stats and Adventure puzzles you'll feel like this has more depth than your average single player shooter. It does though, I won't take that away, but I still don't think I would but this above Resident Evil 4 or Metroid Prime by any means either.

When you kill a Big Daddy, and capture a Little Sister, you get the choice between killing or saving the Little Sister. If you decide to kill her you get 160 Adam Points, and if you save her you get 80 Adam Points. You get to spend these points at a station that boost your HP or Magic (opps Eve), or you can buy new skills or spells.

There's special stations found in the game that can permentally boost your weapons power. You'll also find scattered throughout the game stations that can heal you, switch your skills, sell you items or ammo.

There's quite a few spells in the game, but I felt only three of them ultimately mattered. That was Fire, which can melt ice or set enemies on fire. Electricity, which can open special doors and kill enemies standing in water, and finally Telekensis, which can grab far away items and hurl them back at an enemy, kinda like Half-Life.

There's only 8 weapons in the game, but each weapon can hold atleast 1 or 3 type of bullets. You can't hold very many bullets per weapon but you'll find plenty of bullets during corpse looting or you can just buy them at any time. I can't say that Bioshock is a "Survival Horror" because I never felt like I was losing anything by wasting bullets or health packets. As matter of fact, this game can be super easy because it doesn't even matter if you die. If you die, you get sent to the nearest check point without any penalty. Not only that but all the damage you inflicted to the enemy that killed you will still be attached to him by the time you make your revenge.

There was a neat hacking minigame, which reminds me of Pipe Dreams of the NES. This minigame allows you to hack machines to give you cheaper items. You can also hack auto-machines, like security cameras and autoguns for example. This allows you to take control of these weapons against your enemy.

There wasn't a huge enemy variation. There was the Leather Head Splicers, which attack and are strong against Melee style. There was Spider Splicers, which can climb walls and ceilings and throw items at you. There was the Nitro Splicers, that throw bombs. There's also two versions of the Big Daddies, one can attack with gun and the other will melee. Outside of that, there was only one honest to god boss in the game.

One cool option in the game was an addition of a camera. The camera allows you to take pictures of your enemies, but for some reason you can't keep the pictures. Either way, taking pictures allow you to store "information" on the enemy, and the more pictures you take, the more info you'll know about the enemy and the stronger your character will get fighting them in the future. You can only level this stat up 5 times before you can't take anymore pictures though.

----------Characters / Story----------
You play as Jack, and how do you know your name is Jack? Well at the start of the game you see a note that says "TO: Jack" and that's the last time your name will ever be mentioned. Besides a few old photos, you'll never see yourself either. So you basically play as the silent, faceless protagonist. Jack was flying on a plane when it suddenly crashed into the ocean. When he found shore, he locating a secret utopia world gone wrong called Rapture. This world was created and formed by Andrew Ryan (which kinda sounds like Ayn Rand, way to go on a limb guys). Andrew Ryan's failed society and crazy science projects made everyone stircrazy and nuts. Also on this underwater city is Dr. Tennenbaum. She takes care of the "Little Sisters" in the city. The Little Sisters are small little girls that roam around the city searching for corpses to harvest "Adams". Adams give people extra strength, and they're the only ones able to get for no given reason. The Little Sisters are protected by "Big Daddies". They're giant mech's in underwater armor. Between all of this craziness, you're guided to freedom by man named Atlas.

I wasn't really a big fan of the story. For one, they hit you over the head with metaphors WAY to much, Atlas, Andrew Ryan, Adam, Eve, Rapture, etc. The game was promoted as having a "big mortality choice", but you either harvest or save the Little Sister when you find one. It's not a big choice, and if it was your first time playing then you really wouldn't know what the right choice was. There was a few "surprises" in the game, but none were shocking or interesting to me.

Nearly all cutscenes are shown in real time, so you can walk around and attack an do whatever you want. This sounds cool right? Weeeell, you're ALWAYS trapped in a small room with a bulletproof glass surrounding you from the action. The characters you do interact with are also behind glass. There's only one time you actually meet a character face to face. It was a pretty cool effect at first, but after the 3rd or 4th time I got sick of this style.

Almost all the storyline in the game is presented by a disembodied voice over loud speakers or through tapes found throughout the game. You feel no interaction at all within the storyline.

----------Graphics----------
I liked the graphics for the most part, but I also thought they're rough in a few areas too. I loved the lighting effects, which gave the entire game a real nice atmospheric look. I loved the iconic Big Daddy and Little Sister designs, heck even the little things like the icons for tonics you gain through out the game, which kinda reminds me of Fallout. I loved the unique settings and often unique level designs through out the game. I never got lost and would always remember my place in the game because everything looked so different and how well the game was paced and set together. There was a few things that I thought was weird though. Why would someone keep a morgue freeze in their apartment?

There's a few inconsistencies with the graphics for me. I love the water effects, but when you melt ice, the ice turns into that silvery goo from Terminator 2. When glass breaks, it breaks in huge chunks. When you damage something, it makes the same pattern over and over again. The character models look good, but there aren't enough of them. Another big disappointment was how the characters died, they just fall down with ragdoll-psychics. That's pretty lame. While Bioshock is fairly gorey, with blood stained walls and cutscenes showing little girls stabbing corpses and mad doctors disemboweling his victims, you never create any gore yourself. There are no dismemberings, no head shots, nothing. You kill something and they fall down like a ragdoll. Besides that, there was a few scenes that felt out of place, for example you had to rotate a wheel in one scene. When you're rotating it, your hands are still holding on to your weapon and your wheel is magically rotating on it's own. I wish they could of added hands to scenes like that.

The only time the game loads is when you open a new area or save your game. Area's in this game are huge, so you'll never really see much loading in the entire game. There are a few spots in the game where you can see items such as signs and walls buffering, but it's hardly noticeable.

----------Sound----------
The music and sound effects are amazing. For the most part the music is ambient sounds, but occasionally you'll hear some pumped up music during fights with Big Daddies or something.

My biggest gripe are the subtitles. They don't follow along with the words at all, and it's mostly annoying because the voices in the game have a low scratchy sound to them, which sounds nice but you can't make everything out unless you have subtitles, especially if you're in the heat of battle. It's very very frustrating.

----------World Map----------
The world map reminds me alot of Resident Evil 4, but bigger (but you can run through Bioshock ALOT faster so they might seem shorter). The map is basically one or two HUGE areas connected. You can freeroam within that given area all you want, this is definitely not a rail shooter like Medal of Honor, but there's still only one given path if you want to go along with the story. The game basically tells you where to go with a huge hovering arrow on the top of the screen. When you follow it, you'll probably encounter a cutscene by a disembodied voice. They will tell you your next objective (almost always "Go to Point B" or "find 3 items").

Once you get further into the game you'll find a submarine, which will teleport you to the next area. There might be one or two of these subs per stage, and if you want you can backtrack if you missed items or Little Sisters.

----------Time to Complete Game----------
The game doesn't record your time in the game, but I did play it through twice. Once on easy, which gave me the "bad" ending, I think this might of took me atleast 10 hours at the most. Then I played it again on hard which gave me the "good" ending. This might of been atleast 15 or more hours, maybe longer because I was being a completest with the tonics, weapons and recorders.

I liked both endings, so it doesn't really matter which one you end up with.