Something went wrong. Try again later
    Follow

    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.

    pancreatic_juice's BioShock (Limited Edition) (Xbox 360) review

    Avatar image for pancreatic_juice

    Bioshock raises the bar for deep first-person experiences.

    2K has done a fantastic job with Bioshock; their efforts to create a FPS, lite RPG and adventure game hybrid have paid off. Unfortunately it's only available for the PC and the Xbox 360 however. I have not played it on the PC but both games are the same content wise. Bioshock is also a single-player game only but the case says it has XBL functionality. I think this is a mistake as there is no online component in the game. I do believe that 2K should of made the game for all platforms though, because any hard-core gamer should experience Bioshock for themselves.


    Under the Atlantic Ocean lies the underwater city of Rapture and it surely ain't no merry Atlantis. Instead of hot Mermaids there are deranged human splicers, super engineered big daddies and creepy little sisters, which roam this utopian city gone wrong. Andrew Ryan, an ideologist who rejected the views of the world, built Rapture in the 1940's as a haven for artists, scientists and people searching to escape the censoring and moral confines of regimes on the surface. Designed as the end of the funnel that which only good things come out of, Rapture's lifespan ironically didn't last long, as the mess down there rivals my desk draw clutter. Vices on the surface plagued the people of Rapture just as badly; greed, corruption, selfishness… these worked in tandem with limitless ethic guidelines in scientific fields and together they twisted the underwater world into a hellhole. If you're like me, watching human nature at its finest is fascinatingly addicting.


    You start as a faceless protagonist named Jack… yup, just you and your status of joe schmoe farmhand. While on a flight over the Atlantic Ocean something terrible happens. What happens next is that somehow the plane crashes and you're thrown into the oceans icy grip of doom. You resurface to look at the remains of the aircraft and see an ominous lighthouse nearby, which is beautifully emphasized by a bright full moon and some elegant nighttime clouds. Needless to say the moment you step onto the lighthouses steps you will feel this rush of excitement, curiosity and eeriness crawl around your frail little body. I wrapped myself in my favorite quilt and took a swig of my V8 splash (loaded with antioxidants of course) before heading into a journey that I would never forget.


    Mentioning anything further about the plot would be a crime. Bioshocks plot should be experienced as a virgin to the game, so just know that it's simple on the outside, but incredibly complex as well. The story is told through real time radio conversations with other people in Rapture and by picking up and listening to pre-recorded audio diaries strewn about. So one can follow the immediate plot, which is like a dull dandelion, or if you pick up the audio diaries the plot unfolds into a gorgeous maze of roses bushes. There is a ton of back-story and a lot of interesting characters that you will feel connected to, even though you'll have only seen a small portrait of them and listened to their voice. Thankfully the voice acting is great and the characters ethnic accents sound natural, wunderbar.


    Gameplay in Bioshock is a bit of an unclassifiable and indefinable smorgasbord of ideas. After you enter Rapture you'll be set on a linear pathway. Each section of the city you visit has much more to it than just the road paved by the guiding yellow arrow on the top of the screen though. Exploration isn't encouraged by the game but scrounging the world from ceiling to floor isn't only fun but you'll have more opportunities to grab items and whatnot. Sure there are also times when you must go fetch items and do a tad bit of backtracking, but these don't do anything to harm the games flow. Plus you have a handy dandy palm-pilot that used to belong to the Jetsons. It can pull up a menu, which basically knows everything about everything. It also has a map with labeled beneficial outlets, stores all the audio diaries you pick up, will tell you where to go and what to do if you get stumped and can make you cup of decaf real quick. Where the hell did Jack get this thing?


    One thing about Bioshocks linearity is that it feels like it's being forced, the game wants you to go through a level only once. If you don't deal with every little sister (more on this later) on a level and try to go to the next area, a warning message will pop up saying that there are still little sisters in this current level. Not only is that awkward but it feels artificial. Also if you return to an area it feels dead, I mean items don't respawn, there will be far less enemies and I even think that the graphics are scaled down a bit on return visits, maybe that was just me.


    Bioshock boasts some neat weapons and abilities though. For example, once you pick up a camera you can use it to takes photos of enemies. These photos will add to your research level for that enemy and with every research level gained you get attack bonuses against them, usually a damage increase. Also nearly every mechanical contraption in Rapture, from vending machines to security robots, can be hacked. Hacked machines are beneficial to you, vending machine prices lower, security cameras will ignore you, locked doors will open, hacking is awesome. Hacking is carried out by a simple mini-game on a 2D plane where you create a pathway using pipes in order to lead a flowing liquid from one point to another. I found the mini-game to be laughably easy throughout the whole game; maybe that's why I think it's so great.


    Your arsenal in Bioshock is pretty sweet, I mean freaking sweet. You have traditional straight-up firearms, a wrench for up close fighting, customizable genetic tonics and innovative offensive plasmids (sort of like magic spells). Conventional peashooters are swell and they have multiple ammo types and obtainable enhancements, but the plasmids steal the show. From blasting enemies with lighting, introducing them to angry swarms of bees, dousing them in flames and even setting them upon each other, plasmids will be your best friend.


    Naturally you'll rely on your plasmids more and more, but near the end the game temporarily takes away your ability to choose your equipped plasmid and gives you any random one. This will throw most players on a loop and they'll have to be extra alert and smart in combat. On my first time through Bioshock I thought it wouldn't be so bad without control of my plasmids for a bit, got into a brawl with some splicers… got my ass handed to me. But I learned just how much plasmids overshadow guns the farther you get into the game.


    Using plasmids costs EVE, essentially your magic points to keep it simple. You can find or buy EVE hypos throughout the city, basically syringes filled with the EVE recovering blue juice. To use plasmids however you must find them scattered about or buy them at Gatherers Garden shops and buying them costs ADAM. ADAM is the genetic currency of Rapture (I can't really say much about it without spoiling the game); everything revolves around it. If ADAM is the most significant element of the ecosystem in Rapture, then little sisters are the keystone species.


    Little sisters are… tiny female siblings… not really actually, but just know that they are essential to the game and they smell funny. These girls, whom are protected by big daddies, travel through Rapture in hope of collecting ADAM from dead bodies and keeping the ADAM flowing in a cycle through the city. They also play a role, actually the only role, in Bioshocks' plots "moral choices". Big daddies protect little sisters, you can leave the duo alone and they will return the favor, sounds great right? An enemy that won't attack you unless you do it first, but here's the catch. To get ADAM you must either harvest or rescue little sisters, the former kills the girl and yields more juicy ADAM, while the latter nets you less ADAM but the girl lives to sing another day. Wait the catch ain't over yet, if you want to harvest/rescue a little sister you have to kill their big daddy guardian first. These behemoths can be tough cookies and you'll have to lay out a plan to take them out without getting whomped yourself.


    Actually getting whomped (dieing) in Bioshock is not only hard to do but holds no penalties. The game is easy overall, even on the hard settings, and it gives you so much money, ammo and med packs, you simply can't use them at the rate the game gives them to you, so expect to leave a lot of items just laying around. Anyways, death in Bioshock is more like a temporary setback. When you hit the bucket you are revived back at the last Vita-Chamber you passed, these tube thingies are automatically activated when you pass them and require no money or anything to use. But everything you've done in the game is done and done; say you're fighting a big daddy, you get him down to half health, but you die. After you are revived in the Vita-Chamber you can go back and find the same big daddy and he will be at half health still, so you're really just being sent to a new location. This revive system is however, very well explained and implemented into the games plot ingeniously; so it's not exactly a player specific crutch.


    Let's go back to Bioshocks arsenal though; besides kick ass plasmids and clunky looking but effective homemade firearms you can equip multiple tonics. These are passive upgrades and fall into three categories. Physical ones are ones that beef you up, Combat tonics let you add an extra texture to your attacks and Engineering ones ease the process of hacking (not like it needs to be eased at all).


    Not all tonics are really that useful however and some are obviously better than others. But you can heavily customize them to suit your play style. If your low on ammo or you like to get your enemies to fight each other, equip the Enrage plasmid (makes enemies attack one another) and the tonic Natural Camouflage (cloaks you when standing still). Maybe you're having a tough time in close quarters combat? Put on the tonics Wrench Jockey (ups wrench damage) and Bloodlust (you get some health and EVE with each wrench hit) then. While these lite customization options are great, it feels a little underwhelming after a while. You'll easily settle into favorite strategies, formulas and attack patterns for different situations. I rarely changed my Combat tonics, but I was swapping my Physical tonics right up to the credits. Plus some things just simply won't get the job done at times thereby forcing you to use the proper abilities, but it's still fun to change up your genetic code and experiment.


    Sightseers rejoice, because Bioshock looks fantastic. It takes place in the 1950's and it captures the look of that time period. From retro style neon signs, billboards with stippled pop art, and broken jukeboxes playing tunes by folks like Perry Como… it feels like it's in the 50's through and through. In addition to capturing the interior décor style nearly half a century ago, Bioshock looks creepy and is very atmospheric. Seeing as Rapture is a twisted pile of ethics, dementia and craziness, at times you will feel the despair and hopelessness in the fallen city. Dead bodies just laying everywhere, magnificent blood splatters covering whole walls (sometimes-even spelling out messages), mutilated corpses on gurneys and some top-notch dust clouds and lighting, you can't but help feel a little unsettled by Bioshock.


    The game is pretty dark by default but there's a brightness slider so you can fix it. It uses the Havok physics engine but I can't say that the engine is that good. You'll lightly bump into a crate only to watch as all the items fall off as if a rhino charged into it, but the engine does a fine job in the end, especially when it shows items being realistically scattered about after an explosion. There are some other faults in the presentation though. There is minor texture pop-in, Jack has no shadow, the game can just go on the fritz sometimes and do this spazzy jump, which is rare though, and ragdoll death animations look really poor. The game runs smoothly though overall, oh and the water… looks absolutely amazing.


    Audio is handled deftly with a semi horror-y soundtrack with quick crescendos and swells for suspense, plus a sweet sad little violin ditty kicks in for those frowny face parts. There's a plethora of licensed songs that will play in the game as well, these help build the setting a lot. Hearing Bobby Darins rendition of "Somewhere Beyond the Sea" start-up as your fighting a big daddy is something you got to experience. Also as mentioned earlier voice acting is top-notch.


    Sound effects are a mixed bag. Guns sound especially awesome; the pistol has a really nice mechanical whirring twang and the rocket launcher reload sounds very appropriate, given the fact that it looks like it's built from a vacuum cleaner and shells are made from coffee cans. Some plasmids don't stand out but they all get the job done; it's just that some don't sound that great while others do. The sound of using Incinerate isn't as satisfying as it should be for example; instead of a nice robust crackling "FWOOM" it's just like a generic skimpy "bwoosh" sound. But some sound really nice when you equip them; there is nothing like the hard sharp "kreeg-whump" of Winterblast and the radio scrambling "wee-oo wee-oo" of Security Bullseye.


    There is one last thing that you must understand before playing Bioshock. It is not a horror game first and foremost. It has many horror elements, and it certainly feels like a horror game at times but it is not designed to freak you out, but it will. The frights in Bioshock mainly are from pop out scares, like splicers jumping out of wall fridges, the lights going off and the dead body you just saw not being there when the lights come back on. It's not meant to offer continuous frights. Instead it's more a long-term mental horror game; it shows you how a society with brilliance but without limits will go down the drain. Also no matter how unified your city is, there will always be moochers and con men out there just waiting to jack the city. A common theme of utopian philosophy and some Machiavellian justifications helps glue everything together and create a unique world of ideals.


    Overall though Bioshock is a marvelous gaming achievement; not only in its hybrid gameplay design and free form customizable combat, but its artistic and technical bounds in visual standards, great plot that's portrayed perfectly and its high level of polish make it go even farther. If you have a PC that can run it or a Xbox 360, you need to check out Bioshock.

    Other reviews for BioShock (Limited Edition) (Xbox 360)

      Bioshock truly is a memorable creation. 0

      You are a man known as Jack, who finds himself drowning in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean after his plane crashes down. However, he is rescued from certain death by the appearance of some sort of lighthouse situated on the water itself. Too weary and desperate to consider this peculiarity for more than a moment, Jack swims to the towering building in a moment of pure introductory brilliance and finds himself in its 1960s-esque interior. Descending down after gathering himself properly, he disc...

      7 out of 7 found this review helpful.

      BioShock Review 0

      When I thought new Sci-fi shooters began to overlap, I was contradicted after purchasing BioShock. The primary difference this game has (although it has numerous differences to today's shooters) is its emphasis on making decisions. At first when you are given the choices in this game, they don't seem so heavy, but as you play through this game you will see their significance. Despite a lack of multiplayer, BioShock is a very powerful shooter that gamers out there should not miss.The Plot- It is ...

      4 out of 5 found this review helpful.

    This edit will also create new pages on Giant Bomb for:

    Beware, you are proposing to add brand new pages to the wiki along with your edits. Make sure this is what you intended. This will likely increase the time it takes for your changes to go live.

    Comment and Save

    Until you earn 1000 points all your submissions need to be vetted by other Giant Bomb users. This process takes no more than a few hours and we'll send you an email once approved.