BioShock

  Beyond? Close, Mr Sinatra, but no cigar. Somewhere beneath the sea is more accurate here I think, and beneath that sea lurks a dark and sinister world of horror, madness. . . and little girls?

  Last year a good friend of mine purchased an Xbox 360 and a selection of games at a disgustingly cheap price. Somebody he knew needed the money to pay his rent, and subsequently prevent him from becoming homeless. One evening, after an argument with my – then -- girlfriend, I found myself at his flat. We sat there chatting, drinking Amstel beer steadily for a few hours and smoking Punch cigars, the ones that Winston Churchill bloke enjoyed. We were playing Perfect Dark Zero, a game so bad it made me cry like a small child, just informed that Santa Clause is not real and that fat guy at the shopping centre, whose knee you sit on every year is actually a drunk pervert. I played Perfect Dark for the N64 and I loved that game with every inch of me. I also read reviews of Zero when it came out and thought “This sounds bloody good. . .I like Perfect Dark, logic dictates I will also like this game” I was sorely mistaken. The only thing that makes me feel better about the whole rotten thing is that one day the makers of that steaming pile of horse shit will have to stand in front of the all powerful and very unforgiving god of games (Shigero Miyamoto) and account for their heinous sins.

  Anyway, where were we? Oh yes, I was smoking a rather elegant cigar while playing a dreadful game when I looked down and saw Bioshock. I promptly insisted we take out PD Zero from the 360, ritualistically burn it in the car park out the front, and crack on with some Bioshock, and by Joe that's exactly what we did.

  I sat there in that smoke filled room watching our protagonist surface from what is possibly some of the sexiest looking water I have ever seen in any video game, after the passenger jet he had just been on came hurtling to the ocean below. I looked around at the burning plane wreckage, then swam toward the huge lighthouse and climbed the stairs to enter. As the doors slammed shut behind me I watched with growing interest and excitement as the lights sequentially turned on revealing a statue of an unknown man holding a banner that read “NO GODS OR KINGS. ONLY MAN” while an orchestral version of Somewhere Beyond The Sea by Frank Sinatra played in the background. I continued forward until I reached a Jules Verne-esue submariner called a Bathysphere, with nowhere else to go I entered and pulled the lever. The bathysphere descended beneath the water and a video presented by someone called Andrew Ryan introduced us to what we had just discovered, an underwater metropolis called Rapture, a paradise where man is not restricted by “Petty morality” and is free to do what he wants. When the bathysphere stopped and I entered Rapture, it soon became apparent that something had gone terribly wrong down here, and this paradise had quickly become a hell. There were so many questions, what is this place? Who am I and what has happened? Now that I had been presented with this mystery, I wanted the answers, I thought to myself “Jesus H. tap-dancing Christ!. . . I have to buy a 360”.

  Twelve months later, for reasons that include a broken down Land rover and two weeks with nothing to do, I finally made the purchase, and with it a copy of Bioshock.

“I'll wrap you in a sheet”

  My plan for those two weeks had been to go on holiday to a beautiful sunny country and sit on a beach with a drink in my hand, early to bed and early to rise, rest and relaxation. Instead I ended up sitting at home in a stuffy room playing Bioshock. Shit, I can think of worse things to be doing.

Right from the beginning Bioshock grabbed me by my wedding vegetables and dragged me into it's beautiful and disturbing world. Set in 1960, you play as Jack the only survivor of a plane crash. You're guided through the frightening and dangerous world of Rapture by an Irishman named Atlas. Atlas explains that the inhabitants of Rapture, Splicers, are genetically modified freaks, junkies who will do anything for their next fix. The drug they so desire is called ADAM, a substance derived from a sea slug that alters the users genetic code allowing them to use abilities known as plasmids, these allow for such things as telekinesis and shooting lightning and fire and bees from your hand.

  The back story is presented to you through Doom 3 like audio diaries. From these diaries you establish that a war has erupted on new years eve 1960, between Andrew Ryan and a smuggler -- and owner of Fontaine Fisheries -- Frank Fontain. These audio diaries also introduce other characters and explain their back story.

  That, in a nutshell, is the story of Bioshock, but that is one tiny little nutshell. The story is packed full of intrigue and excitement. You're constantly presented with a veritable array of mysteries and the desire to solve them.. This is one of the reasons the game is so enjoyable, as you are constantly wondering what will happen next and what happened to this beautiful world of rapture. You'll want to keep playing, to find out the answers and unravel this amazing mystery. There are plot twists and turns around every corner, some of which will surprise you and others will shock and sadden you. All of these points come together to create one of – if not the -- most enjoyable stories I have seen in a video game so far.

“The medicine darling, I need it now”

  Bioshock plays wonderfully. I have some minor quarrels with certain small things, here and there, but nothing major and certainly nothing that spoils the experience.

  It's been said in most reviews, and it's true, that weapons don't feel as powerful as they perhaps should. At the beginning a shotgun blast to the chest of a splicer will be enough to put it down, but in later parts of the game the shotgun seems weaker, despite being shot at the same enemies as before. The weapons are pretty standard fair, you'll start with a handgun, then get a rather antique looking shot gun, a Thompson machine-gun, grenade launcher and a chemical launcher. Along with these weapons ,you can also get different types of ammo, such as anti-personnel rounds, which are good for different types of splicers, armour piercing for Big Daddies, electric buck and explosive buck for the shotgun and proximity grenades for the grenade launcher. Standard firearms aren't the attraction here, and though they're useful and somewhat enjoyable, the real fun will be found with the Plasmids. From launching the enemies own bombs back at them with telekinesis, to shooting fire and ice and bee's from your hand, Plasmids really are a huge amount of fun. They also factor into the game play, and in the early parts of the game you'll find yourself having to search for the inferno plasmid so you can melt the ice blocking a door.

  Plasmids are purchased using the aforementioned currency of Adam. Adam is harvested by little girls called Little Sisters, they wander the world of rapture guarded by huge metal beasts called Big Daddies. These are by far the hardest enemy in the game, and when you're low on health and ammo and you hear the distinct thudding of the beasts foot steps, you'll feel genuine fear. The little sisters are bloody disturbing, and the moral decision of whether to save them or harvest them factors into both how you feel personally about the game ,and the way the game will eventually play out. It also results, depending on which choice you make, in more or less Adam, though the obvious choice may not necessarily result in more.

  Bioshock plays like a traditional FPS, with RPG like customisation. This customisation, be it weapons or personal abilities that allow for quicker hacking, or electric skin, keep things interesting and certainly stop the game from becoming just another FPS.

“A man chooses, a slave obeys”

  The level design can, at times, be a bit confusing, and despite having a constant arrow on the screen telling you where to go, I sometimes found myself going in circles trying to figure out what I was doing. That's another thing that is a little strange about the game, there is that aforementioned arrow at the top of the screen telling you exactly where to go, though on many occasions I was pretty grateful for it, sometimes it disappeared for no good reason at all and I bloody missed it. It does however discourage exploration, and that's one thing this game was made for, with little nooks and crannies around every corner, the game is designed for exploration, it rewards exploration, yet never encourages it.

“Look Mr. Bubbles. . . An angel”

  Visually, Bioshock blew me away the first night I played it. It's not only the graphics -- though they are divinely beautiful -- it's also the design of rapture itself.

  From Bars looking out on the deep ocean as whales swim past to the beautiful underwater forest of Arcadia the world of Rapture is an absolute joy to behold. Before its release there was a lot of hype about the water effects, and right from the start you realise that they went out of there way to get it right. I stood in awe when I first saw a chunk of the planes fuselage smash through the tunnel at the beginning, and watched as the water rushed through.

  Accompanying the beautiful graphics are some equally impressive audio. Every splicer has a unique array of speech that can be heard as they walk along, unaware of your presence. They'll sing, whistle, complain and comment about the world they live in. When shot, they'll yell and curse you, scream in agony and threaten there imminent revenge. Big daddies sound as terrifying as they look, and you'll always hear the beats before you see them, which seriously raises the tension.

  The soundtrack in the game consists of music from the 30' 40' and 50' with songs from

Django Reinhardt, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Noel Coward and many more. The music works beautifully with the game and adds a huge amount of atmosphere.

 To wrap this up then, my time spent with Bioshock was thoroughly enjoyable. Excellent graphics, a unique and compelling story and perfect audio all adds up to one of the greatest game experiences I have ever had. If you don't already own this game, would you kindly go out and buy it?