Review: BioShock – Rapturous applause for underwater shooter

Mike Bantick
Wednesday, 05 September 2007 06:47

Opinion and Analysis

Rapture is a beautiful place, though game-play essentially takes place in the one underwater city, the locations have diversity enough to encourage exploration, whilst holding a thematic architecture throughout the game.  DX10 technology (and even on lower graphical settings) show off dynamic lighting, and water effects galore.

The Unreal 3 Engine gives us the graphical and physical wiz-bangery, and does indeed shine, though in my mind, interaction with some scattered detritus feels a little wrong, it is easy to send a rake or similar bounding across the room simply by walking into it.

Foes (Splicers predominately) add to the immersion, going about their business, with appropriate conversations, until riled, at which point they will launch into frenzied attacks.  The player will also need to contend with security cameras and hovering guard bots.

The combination of real world weapons and plasmids give a satisfying arsenal to wield and lead onto the BioShock moral dilemma:  Little Sisters, frail looking little girls roam the world extracting Adam from corpses.  Guarded by the powerful, dive-suit protected Big Daddies, little sisters either need to be “harvested” for their ADAM or freed from their drug-induced duties.

Despite your decision, first you must deal with the Big Daddy, and initially this can be an issue, once you master Plasmids and the variety of ammo available for each weapon, the prospect becomes more managable.

It is up to you how you react to a Little Sister, you will get advice from many of the more saner(!) denizens of Rapture, but ultimately it is an interesting situation to through at gamers. 

There are many vending machines also scattered around Rapture, giving access to the mundane food and ammo up to the more exotic, extra plasmids and the U-invent where items can be created from other components.  Hacking of these vending machines can prove fruitful, albeit somewhat arduous after a time.

This leads to the one flaw in the game.  One of the other “vending machine” types is the vita-chamber where a player is “respawned” after death.  It is a kind of checkpointing system that in its effect makes player death a non-event, with no penalty imposed.

Unlike most shooters where death means a ‘reload’ back to the last save game, BioShock on the other-hand grants the God like ability to respawn, without penalty.  Giving you a chance to find that difficult enemy and trounce them before they can get to a healing station.  It looks like Vita-Chambers are only available to Raptures visitors, not its own inhabitants.

Overall BioShock is an EVE shot in the arm for the gaming community – it has rocketed to the top of sales charts for both PC and Xbox 360.  This, with a complete lack of a multiplayer component.

For my part – lose the Vita-Chambers and the game is a perfect example of a piece of entertainment and fiction that provides a immersion level that will live long in ones soul.