Rapture will grab hold of you and never let go.
As game technology increases by leaps and bounds every generation, the hardware has become more and more capable of delivering incredibly cinematic and emotional experiences, which are the best examples of videogames being art.
It’s the late 1960s, and main character Jack is on a flight crossing the . The plane soon comes into contact with severe turbulence, and crashes into the sea. Quickly surfacing, Jack swims to a lighthouse, which is found empty and abandoned apart from a bathysphere, which upon entering, descends into the world of Rapture. Rapture was built in the mid-40s by Andrew Ryan, an idealist who felt chained by every form of government, so took it upon himself to build a city free from rules, religion and scientific ethics. The product of such utopian desires is a city which has destroyed itself through genetic engineering, and the once prosperous and intelligent inhabitants of Rapture have turned into vicious and mindless “Splicers” who are in constant need of the genetic material “ADAM”, which maintains their unnatural evolution.
ADAM is harvested from Little Sisters, small girls whose only purpose in life is to recycle ADAM. They are protected by Bioshock’s mascot, the Big Daddies. These lumbering, mechanical beasts protect the Little Sisters, and are the closest the game sees to a regular boss fight. The Little Sisters bring up Bioshock’s major moral dilemma, on whether to harvest them for ADAM, or save them from their torturous existences. Either choice delivers a different ending, and the endings are so polarized between good and evil that you’re either a saint throughout, or a Nazi, which distorts the game’s ambitions of being truly non linear when dealing with the outcomes to the decisions made throughout the game.
The rest of the world is portrayed through ghostly projections and voice recordings left by the inhabitants before they met their doomed fate. This helps to amplify the sense of isolation, as the only way the player is ever exposed to the story is at arms length, forcing the player to be an outsider always looking inwards.
From the get go, the world of Rapture feels 100% organic. While so many other First Person Shooters are simply continuous corridors, Rapture feels as if it wasn’t designed for a game, and was designed to be a city. While there are numerous districts to Rapture, the ones that truly stand out are; “”- the entertainment district, and the “Farmer’s Market”, due to their inspired design and interesting architectural pieces. On a technical basis, Bioshock looks excellent, with gorgeous water and fire effects, and a smooth frame rate even in the most hectic of situations.
Rapture is given a harrowing suspense by the “Splicers”, who stalk their prey throughout Rapture, breathing down your neck, whispering their depravities into your ear. The voice acting for all the relatively “normal” characters is spot on, nailing accents and dialects perfectly, helping to reinforce the international feel of Rapture’s populous.
Of course, a perfect game world would be worthless without strong gameplay to back it all up, and Bioshock has that side covered perfectly.
Bioshock contains the usual array of firearms, but throughout the game, as with all the other facets of the game, they evolve as you progress. You will soon find Upgrade booths which dish out Steam-punk looking improvements for all your firearms, and these will improve various aspects of each weapon. More interestingly however is the Plasmids, which are interchangeable abilities which allow you to shoot fire, ice, electricity or bees, or you could use telekinesis to throw grenades right back, or turn your enemies against each other. The range of Plasmids is great, and how they can be used to manipulate combat situations is truly breathtaking, and keeps the game from becoming monotonous. The game also has a couple of minigames running throughout the game.
Firstly, you’re able to hack turrets to fight alongside you, or vending machines to receive items for a lower price. Secondly, you are a given a camera a little way into the game, and you can increase your advantages over enemies by taking photos and “researching” them. These little facets, while being meaningless in the grand scheme, help to create a more realistic world, and shapes Rapture into something more recognizable.
Bioshock is quite a different beast from most other recent First Person Shooters, as there is absolutely no online multiplayer, and the focus is most definitely on a narrative driven single player experience. It should take most players around 15 hours to get through, but because the world of Rapture is so immersive, it’s easily conceivable to see yourself becoming lost in Rapture for hours.
Closing comments: Bioshock is more than just a videogame. It acts as the final stepping point to videogames finally being considered art, as you’ll leave Bioshock thinking differently, and in that very way, it must be considered art.
