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    BioShock

    Game » consists of 33 releases. Released Aug 21, 2007

    Venture into the mysterious, Utopian underwater city of Rapture and discover what has turned it into ruin in this first-person epic.

    justin258's BioShock (PC) review

    Avatar image for justin258

    Seven years later and it's still pretty great.

    Bioshock was hailed as an almost instant classic when it came out in 2007. I didn’t personally first play it until 2009 or 2010, finished it once, and didn’t finish it again until just now. Seven years after its initial release, Bioshock holds up exceptionally well. It still looks pretty great, it still has some very effective atmosphere, it still has a very good story that could never have quite the same impact outside of video games. And yes, Bioshock still works really well as a game.

    The most notable aspect of Bioshock was its story and atmosphere. It was widely considered a step forward for video games as an artistic medium. Bioshock created a world for you to roam around in and explore, but it also gave that world some meaning. It’s an objectivist utopia, pretty much Ayn Rand’s wet dream in concept. Of course, by the time you get there, the place is largely in shambles. Almost the entire population is either insane or dead. You, as the player, get to see why this utopia just didn’t work. Audiologs throughout the environment as well as some events reveal that Ryan’s dream of a completely laissez-faire society would never have worked. These audiologs are strongly written and acted, but their placement throughout the game is one of the aspects that hasn’t aged so well. Why are all these people recording their voices with these gigantic tape diaries? How did they wind up in such odd spaces? How do they still work while everything is falling apart? It’s simply a video game logic hole, and the story could never have worked without them, but that doesn’t make their distribution and placement make any more sense in the context of the story. It’s hardly a story or world breaking complaint and it was really just a necessary mechanic, but the logical faults of putting audiologs in every obscure corner of your game must be noted.

    Anoher aspect of the story must be brought up – Bioshock’s story shares many elements with its spiritual predecessor, System Shock 2. I won’t go into this at length, partly because I haven’t finished System Shock 2 and partly because I’d say that Bioshock’s story is still well-worth seeing through, but these similarities are still some food for thought when the subject is a game widely held up as a masterpiece of video game storytelling.

    Bioshock wouldn’t have worked very well if it still looked like System Shock 2, though. Thankfully, despite being seven years old at this point, Bioshock still looks really good. From close-up, textures don’t look so great, but you could say that about a lot of games in 2014 as well. The art design is particularly striking. It’s consistent, sure, but there’s a lot of variety in locations. This is impressive for a game that takes place entirely in an underwater city and where every color seems to fall on the “cool’ side of the temperature spectrum. The first shot you get to see of Rapture counts as one of my favorite video game moments, and thankfully seven years haven’t dulled it much.

    Bioshock as a game doesn’t hold up quite as well as I would have liked. It wouldn’t be a five star game if it wasn’t fun to play, so don’t worry about that. Bioshock is still quite a bit of fun to play. You spend a lot of time roaming around the leveles, scavenging for items, looking for secret nooks and crannies, and altogether trying to ensure that you find more resources than you spend. Most of the weapons still sound and feel quite satisfying, especially the shotgun. The machine gun, unfortunately, sounds really flat and dull, and I’m not sure why. It’s not that it isn’t loud, it’s just that the sound bite lacks punch. Still, it manages to be one of the more useful weapons. Otherwise, combat has a satisfying feel throughout the whole game.

    What is a big deal, though, is the Splicer AI. It often felt rather basic. Leadhead Splicers, the enemies that will still use guns, are particularly baffling in their behaviors. They don’t often take cover, they spend a lot of time running at you like Thuggish Splicers do, and sometimes they run away in a weirdly rigid pattern. They’re AI-pathing to a healing station (probably one that I broke for health packs) and it shows at times. A few core mechanics are also a little irritating. The camera, for instance, requires you to take a picture of enemies. The in-world excuse for this is that you need to “research” splicers in order to do more damage to them, which is a cumbersome explanation for a cumbersome mechanic. How, exactly, does this pile of pictures in the player’s back pocket make your weapons more effective? Why, exactly, did the developers think that fumbling around for a camera while enemies attacked might be something that players enjoy?

    The only other mechanic that remains a problem throughout the game is the hacking. Upon first entering a new area, the wisest thing that any player can do is immediately hack everything in sight. Vendors give you better prices, turrets and cameras attack enemies instead of you, and health stations will be cheaper and will shock any enemy that tries to use it. This is a fine idea in concept, but the hacking minigame is boring and when it isn’t boring, it’s frustrating. In both cases, it’s repetitive. In the latter half of the game, I tried to hack several things which turned out to be impossible to hack. I could start up the minigame but, thanks to randomness, it would be unfinishable. Players can equip the right tonics to greatly lessen the chance of this happening, but it’s still an occasional annoyance. Neither of these things seriously hurt my enjoyment of the game.

    AI issues do not make shotgun blasts any less satisfying, and I found myself doing less and less hacking as I progressed through levels. Neither of these issues are anything more than annoyances, so Bioshock’s gameplay gets to keep its five star rating. However, one section near the end of the game is particularly frustrating and must be mentioned.

    *SPOILER*

    For reasons that would take too long to explain, you have to put on a suit and become one of the game’s iconic Big Daddies. A cool idea in concept, sure, but the boots that you have to put on make a ridiculously loud noise and the helmet that you have to put on covers what might be an entire third of your screen, making an already ridiculously narrow field of view even more narrow. It’s distracting and annoying and, even worse, players have to protect a Little Sister soon after donning the Big Daddy duds. The noisy footsteps aren’t so bad, the helmet is really terrible, but topping all of that off with an escort mission is a baffling design decision and it ruins the entire idea. Fortunately, it’s not a particularly long section. Also fortunately, Bioshock 2 turned out to be a pretty good game in its own right, so we got to play as a Big Daddy anyway.

    *END SPOILER*

    Bioshock remains a game with a compelling atmosphere and story that is well-worth your time and money. If you’ve never played it, well, we’ve still got a bit of a dry spell this summer and we still don’t get shooters that are satisfying on both a primal and thoughtful level, so give it a shot.

    Other reviews for BioShock (PC)

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