BioShock

BioShock is a game that for someone to understand the sheer greatness of roaming around Rapture, they would have to play it first hand.

Least for me after hearing all about the hype and praise its 360 counterpart got. I found it hard to even find myself pretending to admire from what I saw, I never quite understood the eerieness of the story and enviroments just from watching video clips. Even still with it initially being a 360 exclusive I decided to just forget about it and shrug it off as another standard fps.

Once its ps3 version was announced I continued my disbelief of it being a game thats really anything spectacular...yet I did begin to have thoughts that it could be a game I'de enjoy, if for the horror theme alone. Still, I left it a lil late with me thinking there were better titles to waste my easily earned money on...games like Far Cry 2...lol...well its not bad...but its pretty useless to even have it in comparison to BioShock., espeically since there very different brands of FPS' altogether in fact.

Yes of course I eventually got myself a copy and after only about 30 minutes into the game...I now started to realise what everyone was on about. Its sheer quality, everything from its story (both main and its incredibly deep backstory) to its unorthodox gameplay combinations. While its amazingly immersive enviroment and atmosphere is King with the huge list of what Bioshock nails perfectly, everything else is still a fine reason to give Bioshock a hella lot of love :P.

BioShock on first glance would be labeled as an fps, but its so much more with that and its customisation options at hand. It definatly does strive towards the fps genre but its obvious it had equal effort put into its other gameplay mechanics. There is these things called plasmids, which when injected into oneself can give you a many number of strange abilities. Varying from setting people on fire with a click of your finger...to letting loose a whole swarm of bee's onto your opponent. Theres alot to behold in terms of your plasmids, whats more though is some much more passive abilities to gain through these tonics.
They can give you plenty of unique improvements such as you giving out more damage with your wrench to being able to be more resistance to fire attacks and such. Theres quite a few categorys in fact, such as engineering tonics of course focus on the hacking system.

The hacking system is prominent throughout and revolves around you shutting down plenty of different types of machines and hacking them to gain you quite a few benefits. How it works is much like pipemania, you must create a fluent path of pipes from the starting end to the finish, all the while with the power constantly on the move, which basically means you have a timer. You must eventually look out for not sending the power surge into any overloaded pipe circuits or even any alarm systems. Its generally pretty fun and always worth it even when the hacking system will start to get a little tedious.

With you micromanaging your plasmids and hacking away like an ex-microsoft employee, BioShock still has plenty of gunplay available. You'll come across your standard pistol, shotgun and machine-gun but also come across some less common weapons such as a chemical shooter and even a crossbow. Theres not too many weapons, but they each have plenty of different ammo, combining this with plasmids and theres a huge variety of ways of putting your enemies down on the ground.

The enemies themselves usually consist of humanoids, but theres still plenty of different types of these 'humanoids' that you'll definatly need some different tactics on your belt besides 1. shock dude 2. smack the freak with your wrench. You'll face plenty of different types of 'Splicers' and sentry bots all with different AI patterns and weapons.

The real highlight out of the enemy roster, and ones that'll force you to think fast and really make use of every bullet and plasmid, is the Big Daddy's. Huge lumbering f***ers who are packed with some nasty weaponry and a nasty smell apparently. Its very fortunate that there initally neutral and will only attack if you attack first, but if you want to get your hands on some of that precious ADAM material to buy you some more plasmids, your going to have put a bullet or 50 through alot of Daddys.

These Big Daddys are the bodyguards of the Little sisters, those glowy eyed brats are what you need to get yah hands on for some extra ADAM, which in turn can be spent for more plasmids. Taking down a Daddy though is certaintly not an easy task but as the game goes on, the amount of ammo and health packs spent on taking down a Daddy is certaintly worth it.
After a Daddy is 'finally' laid to rest, the way for you to get the ADAM is to actually steal it out of the Lil sisters. Though here you have a morality choice to which you can etheir just 'harvest' the lil sister completly, getting yourself a handsome amount of ADAM to spend, or rescue them from their state which gets you a substantially less amount of ADAM. Its here were the multiple endings are decided upon, but of course its pretty obvious doing which will get you what ending.
None the less its yet another noice addition to BioShocks list of versatile gameplay aspects.

So lets see you have:

-Standard fps Gunplay.

-Stye of gameplay customisation with the plasmids.

-Hacking Minigames.

-Morality Choices=Multiple endings.

All of which succeed incredibly well which is certaintly an impressive feat to say the least, all thats missing I suppose is some action packed explosive vehicular sections...which III think...no no, no vehicle segments.

Gameplay is of course an absolute win as far as I'm concerned but then again its not like everything else had to slack off to make up for it.

Sound is a keen example of really, just how much effort and how much blood and sweat and tax's that must have come out of this.
The voice acting for one, is sheer perfection, your character will sadly ever speak, which I usually tend to dislike due to it leading to me to feel this character is hardly even a character at all, yet somehow...BioShock managed to have me care Jack, (he may not talk but he least has a name) you'll learn alot about yourself over the course of BioShock and again, he'll never utter a word (besides a single line at the beginning) but I can still sense what type of person this 'Jack' is.

I suppose a silent protoganist isn't just the developers being lazy, it can also be implemented to make the character seem much more intwined with yourself, he'll never speak to the characters, much like you, but can still hear what they say to him. The morality choices (while still pretty basic) add all that more depth into having 'Jack' played by yourself. It could of been made much more substantial, but whats there still gives enough reason to actually like this character and have him tweaked to how you would have him fight his way through the Splicers.

Again though, even if your character doesn't speak, theres still plenty of dialogue to listen to. Mostly through the taped diarys you'll come across, in fact there probably is more backstory to the game than there is in terms of the main storyline, but theres still alot to be said by the main characters you'll encounter.
The soundtrack too isn't always noticable, but the 50s-60s era soundtrack is made creepy to the point of having those songs never sound the same again, when coupled with BioShocks atmosphere. The sound effects too are top-notch. The wrench sounds very painful when struck against a splicers already disfigured face, and the same goes with the shotgun sounding as powerful as a shotgun should. The plasmids all have their appropiate sounds to accompany them too. From the buzzing of bee's to the sizzle of fire incinerating a splicers flesh.

Graphically BioShock is very impressive too. Its enviroments are all unnerving yet even sometimes beautiful at the same time to witness. Observing Rapture through a windowed hallway is an astonishing feat. It really gives you the feeling theres even that much more to Rapture than what you'll get to see yourself.
BioShocks graphics may not be up as the best, but are still impressive enough for you to really feel apart of the enviroments and to help make those Splicers all that more menacing.

BioShock isn't exactly a very lengthy game, espiecally not if you really aim to try and beat the game as fast as possible. But really, if you going to check out all the diarys, test out new plasmids, take out every Big Daddy (because beleive me, each one will probably add at least another 10 mins onto your gameplay time) and maybe even take your time around Rapture just to let the immersion take you over, you could very easily have BioShock last you for 20+ hours.
But no matter how long it took you, theres still reason to return to Rapture for one more 'adventure'. Multiple endings are reason enough, but theres always little things about Rapture you may have missed on your first run that will surprise you on the next. The dialogue is always welcome to hear again when you actually understand its excellent story.
But theres so always so much to see and plenty of hacks to perform, whats more with so many plasmids and tonics you could actually play through again just to set yourself a different set to play through in a completly different manner.
You can't start again with everything you've unlocked (least not with the ps3 exclusive dlc) but on the higher difficulties you could very well be forced to create some new tactics.

Plentyfull of challenging requirments for thr trophies and basically everything I've already written gives BioShock some well deserved lastability.

BioShock is a rather unique hybrid indeed and for executing all of these many different gameplay aspects so well is reason enough to admire this excellent piece of gaming. But BioShock while still a very deep and substantial game full of artistic glory, is also undeniably fun to play through, multiple times, with a story that is certaintly one that has to be shared.