BioShock Review
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Before I begin, I should note that possibly the greatest detractor in the experience of playing BioShock is the massive amount of hype surrounding this product. Currently the top-rated game at Metacritic (at 96/100, last top games being Oblivion and Gears of War at 94/100), BioShock is one of those games where you have a hard time identifying your personal playing experience with what you've seen written in previews and reviews.
That's not really a comment on the game itself, but if you raise expectations high enough you'll make it impossible for any game to fulfill them. BioShock suffers a bit from that - without any heightened anticipation, most people would love this excellently crafted hybrid. And most people still do, but they might have done so more without the hype. Still, Ken Levine finally got his blockbuster hit, and there's probably no other developer more deserving of one.
The Game's Body
I won't spoil BioShock's storyline in this review, or even discuss much of it. Essentially, you're thrown into an ex-idyllic dystopia gone mad and have to survive. In order to fight off the hordes of crazed superpowered humans called splicers, you will have to use all means available to you. These include guns, plasmids that give you potent special powers, ammunition upgrades, hacked security bots, and, more often than not, the environment The important resources available to you are ammo, EVE that powers your plasmids, and Adam that can buy you character upgrades from vending machines. Money can get you the ammo and EVE, but Adam is harder to come by as you have to harvest it from the syringe-wielding Little Sisters, who are protected by well-armed Big Daddies.
The game plays mostly like a straight FPS, offering the choice of a handful of weapons, each (except the wrench and research camera) with 3 ammo types. It's certainly possible to run and gun through a lot of the game, but as you go along you'll typically find that using certain types of ammo and planning a certain strategy will help through the tougher bit. This goes for Big Daddy fights, but also for certain hold-down-the-fort events in the game.
Physically, you'll have access to a lot of tonics (combat, engineering, and physical) and plasmids (including the likes of Electro Shock or Telekinesis). You can get and switch them about at certain machines, though you'll need to invest quite a bit of Adam for most upgrades. The choice of tonics and plasmids to use can be pretty straightforward, but will affect your gameplay and chances of survival greatly.
There are a few hints at survival or adventure elements, but slightly more significant is the addition of RPG elements. The plasmids resemble spells, running on the mana-like EVE, and the tonics basically function like character talents or perks. There are a lot of items to pick up in the game, but not a lot that can be equipped or used in difficult situations. Frustration at the lack of an inventory screen coupled with the semi-generic way all of these elements have been implemented means that hardcore RPG fans probably won't find what they're looking for. Sure, there are a lot of similarities to System Shock 2, but the game was clearly aimed at a different audience.
The story is pretty linear. While you're pretty much free to go anywhere you want within constrained areas, you can't actually progress the game much other than in following the set of events Irrational assigned to the player. This means that despite promises to the contrary, every play-through will be basically the same except in the details.
The details themselves aren't half bad, and they do offer some richness of gameplay. Apart from the question of how you approach the Little Sisters, there is a lot to enjoy in experimenting with different combinations of weapons, plasmids and tonics. The (living, breathing world) of Rapture applies to a lot of smaller details, as NPCs wander around living their lives for most of the time. This doesn't apply to key NPCs, meaning the hinges of the storyline are always at exactly the same spot. For the most part, you won't notice much about Rapture's living world unless you go out and search for it.
The Game's Soul
The game's graphics are nothing short of grand. The lighting, textures and models are all superbly crafted. More importantly, the game is very well optimized, breaking a lot of current weak standards by being easily playable on a computer a few years old, albeit with a lot of graphical options turned down.
More importantly, those great graphics are used to support a great atmosphere. Rapture is a visually stunning place, made with great attention to detail and a lot of spirit, with the caveat that it's suspiciously close to Fallout at times. Rapture is a mix of a Victorian world with a retro-50's world; throw in some steampunk elements and you're sure to be visually wowed frequently as you make your way through the game. This tough combination of settings is done extremely well here, with an obviously consistent vision stopping it from feeling too dispersed.
The atmosphere is supported by the amazing voice acting. And you will hear people talk a lot, not just through the radio or old audio recordings, but also in the eerie sound of a splicer talking to himself about various insane topics or a Little Sister innocently frolicking about talking about angels. The music fits in well, complimenting the background noise of bulkheads grinding or the jarring beat of a Big Daddy's heavy feet thumping in the distance.
Critiques: the obvious ones
I've skipped over chances to criticise some gameplay elements previously, so I'll be handling them next. First up are critiques you'd find valid for the game even if it hadn't been hyped.
First, and most obvious, is the hacking minigame. I'll have to admit I'm not fond of minigames to begin with, so it (might just be me,) but the whole experience is frustrating for a number of reasons. First, there's the puzzled initial reaction of (what does plumbing have to do with hacking)? Then, after a couple of times, you might start to think it's slightly frustrating to play this somewhat simple or even childish mini-game every time you hack something (though this is partially avoidable by plentiful use of the research camera). The fact that time apparently freezes as you hack to the point of leaving your character floating in mid-air makes this minigame even more absurd.
Then there's the fact that this game is simply too easy. Now, there's nothing wrong with a game being easy and BioShock does offer various difficulty options at the start of a new game. It's just not enough. The problem with BioShock is that every level is absolutely strewn about with upgrades, medicinals, and ammo. Worse, the free-to-use Vita-Chambers mean that you'll resurrect at no cost, so you can return time and again to any fight, often with the opponent's hostility suddenly disappearing. This means that there's actually no conceivable way to lose this game and, unlike System Shock, no point where you can make it too difficult for yourself to finish (short of not picking up any Adam or shooting all your EVE and ammo into a wall). If there's any textbook definition of a game being too easy, BioShock is it.
Next is the game's extreme linearity. This is kind of one foot in an obvious critique and another in the hype-related ones, but it's not unfair to state that the gameplay of modern shooters, such as S.T.A.L.K.E.R. somewhat raises the bar. It would be fine that BioShock does not fulfill these demands if it weren't for the many promises that were made that the game isn't linear, such as the oft-reported choice of killing a Little Sister or not. The details are, as said, quite good, but you can't really claim it helps replayability that at the end of the day all of your in-game choices change very little, as you end up completing the same objectives and squashing the same opponents at the exact same trigger points. Isn't it ironic that BioShock, touted to be setting a new standard for FPS titles, is actually a step back in non-linear design? If the game had incorporated more RPG elements, perhaps this wouldn't be such an issue.
Critiques: the oblique ones
BioShock was promised to contain a lot of moral choices and consequences, first and foremost through the harsh moral choice of how to treat the Little Sisters. In a moral sense, this choice is treated in a laughably childish matter. It presents you with a rock-solid dichotomy of choices to (be evil) or (be good), which is kind of an odd representation of reality. And in this case, being evil or being good automatically means you're the personification of that characteristic, (evil made flesh) or (good incarnate). There's no middle way available at all, even if you try to, say, save half the Little Sisters and destroy the other half. The option to avoid all Little Sisters is not only impossible, but even if it were possible, it'd make your time in the game frustrating and practically impossible to play due to lack of Adam. To offer such a limited range of choices and sticking to two extremes is disappointingly narrow.
As a classic example of gaming choice and consequence, BioShock really falls short. The whole point of a moral dilemma should logically be that your choice offers some kind of real consequence. BioShock is one of those games that supposedly (features) such difficult, visceral, and tear-jerking moral decisions to call out the player's humanity. However, the actual meat and bones of the choice is pretty dry, and the consequences are virtually non-existent for the actual duration of the game, right up until the end when it smacks you in the face a bit. But never while playing the game are you subjected to such a thing as, say, all Big Daddies turning hostile to you because of your hostility toward Little Sisters, or significantly different paths that open up simply because you saved a lot of the Adam-hungry orphans.
Another promised intellectual approach of this game involves its philosophical underpinnings, based primarily on the works of Ayn Rand. And there are indeed a lot of stabs at the philosophy of individual strength and übermensch-like tendencies throughout the game. I'll put my personal dislike of Rand aside for a second and note that having philosophical underpinnings to a game is always a breath of relief for gaming in general, and helps it take steps towards being taken more seriously as an art form.
With that said, if I criticise BioShock's approach not from a gamer's viewpoint (since the average gamer might justly be impressed) but from a literary intellectual viewpoint, it falls 20 yards short of the 10-yard marker. Not only are Rand's ideas not the most fascinating to use as the epic focus of a game, the biggest problem here is not so much the way the world is structured around the idea of the power of individuals, it's the way this idea is delivered to you. And when I say delivered, I mean screamed. BioShock doesn't beat about the bush, practically pushing your face into their philosophical pie while shouting (get it, get it!) The approach is ham-fisted, to say the least, which turns the personifications of freedom, willpower, and slavery dotted in the game into exclamation points, or even rather disappointing unsubtle parodies of a point that might well have been stated more clearly via a more subtle manner.
Conclusion
Don't be too put off at my caveats above - BioShock is clearly a 2007 Game of the Year contender and an FPS hybrid that is well above normal standards in production values, design, and originality. The fact that BioShock is such an easy favourite says more on the state of gaming today than it does of the game itself, but don't let that distract you from a solid gaming experience.
While BioShock ends up being more of a shooter than an RPG, it is a cut above the rest in atmosphere and gameplay. Don't buy it expecting everything you've heard about it to be true (an advice that holds true for most games these days), but don't fret about buying it if you're looking for a cleverly crafted shooter and a visually stunning experience.
