Title BioShock Date 08.28.2007 Genre FPS Platform PC Developer 2K Boston, 2K Australia Publisher 2K Games

Introduction
BioShock. The word is now pretty much stapled into the minds of most serious PC gamers, and will live on as a title that sits comfortable along with Half Life 2 and F.E.A.R as modern classic FPS gamer. This is, after some thoughts and internal reflection about approximately 10 hours of exceptional gameplay and experience, one of the finest FPS games made.

Story and Concept
I will attempt to keep this review as spoiler-free as possible, but allow me to give you a short insight into the concept of BioShock. This section of the review can be skipped if you want to head down to the gameplay section instead and avoid any spoilers.

BioShock takes place in 1960, in the utopian city of Rapture. Created by one man's visions about a perfect society, where every man and woman owns himself, where petty politics and economy won't corrupt the people. The key point? It's completely under water. Like a living, breathing Atlantis it stands on the seabed in the Atlantic Ocean, housing thousands of inhabitants. One night, an airplane crashes into the Atlantic Ocean, and as the lone survivor, you find yourself stranded by a lone Lighthouse. Entering it, you find a bathysphere that takes you on a descent into Rapture, the best city on earth.

But something is wrong in the once idyllic city of Rapture. Deformed, hideous mutated beings run rampart throughout the cities, the population is nowhere to be seen, and the city is falling apart bit by bit both internally and externally, with evidences of a power struggle that has destroyed the city, and something else...something worse. Soon, your trip to Rapture becomes a fight for survival.

The story of Rapture is fantastic. Hands-down, this is one of the best stories and presentations in a FPS game to date. As you venture through Rapture, you'll gradually piece together its past and what caused it to destroy itself, while at the same time getting plenty of unsuspected twists that are highly effective and surprisingly stunning. Coupled with the morality issues you face throughout the game, BioShock takes a hold of you psychologically and doesn't let go, even after completing the game.

As well as being a well told story with great characters, setting and events, BioShock also manages to be quite disturbing. It creeps into your head and heart and doesn't let go. It's the small things that make this game so exceptionally creepy. A woman's dead body can be found… just near a cute teddy bear. A dead couple lies together on a bed with a picture of their lost daughter. Pictures spread around displaying various attempts to improve the human nature… and to remove its symmetry can be found. The details are astounding, and help immerse you into the game, and just like a great game should do, it changes you.

Gameplay
At its core, BioShock is a standard FPS game. However, it does have a few twists and turns that lifts it up above most other games. As any normal FPS game, you'll get your standard weapons, including the blunt melee weapon, the accurate but weak pistol, the powerful shotgun, the weaker machinegun, the Grenade Launcher and so on. These can be modified with several types of ammo (for example, you can change to special anti-personnel ammo for the pistol, or heat-seeking rockets for the grenade launcher) It is advisable that you learn to use these weapons well, as they are weak and good against various types of enemies, and they also work differently with various types of Plasmids.

Plasmids, ah yes. Basically, around Rapture you'll find and purchase power-ups that will genetically modify you in all kinds of ways. These are divided into different categories, one for the active plasmid skills (Like shooting fire or electric bolts or using telekinesis), one for mechanical interaction (like making it easier to hack, which is quite useful), one for bodily improvements (like increasing health gained from First Aid) and one for combat (like giving you a static shield, faster swing with the wrench). There are also passive skills you can buy which increases your total health and Eve (magic).

The thing is this: You can only have a few selected plasmids installed at any time. All plasmids are stored so you'll never loose any you obtain, but you have to change them around to choose the ones you want to have since you can't have all of them equipped at the same time. In the beginning, you'll only have two slots for the various types of Power Ups, which can be quite nasty when you have to choose between equally good and important skills. So how do you get more slots?

Well, enter Adam. Adam is, without spoiling it too much, the essence of the supernatural abilities and genetic improvements. You need Adam to buy both new slots, new skills and upgrade your old ones. So, you need to get Adam, and you need a lot of it. The thing is, there's only one way to get it, and that's from the little sisters.

Little sisters are small girls walking around harvesting Adam from dead bodies. If you encounter them, you can get Adam from them, but you'll have to make a moral choice between killing them to get all the Adam you need, or rescuing them but only obtain half the Adam. The ending (and also various other scenes and dialogues) is greatly changed depending on your actions. You will run short on Adam if you don't kill them, and you do need Adam to survive. But will you kill to live, or will you let live and fight for your own survival?

No matter your choice, you will first have to deal with the Big Daddy. Dressed up in an old fashioned scuba-gear, these things are the bodyguard for the Little Sisters, fighting to the death to protect the little girls. And you cannot get the Adam from the girls without taking out the Big Daddy first. So better get used to them. They'll be neutral to you as long as you don't attack them, which is good because it allows you to plan ahead. Because once you fire that first bullet or plasmid at them, you're in for a world of pain, especially on the earlier levels. You'll never, never expect them to gain that momentum. They look slow but hard hitting, but the news is, they're *very* fast and hard hitting, and once they got you down they can make quick work out of you. You'll have to use various tactics to take them out, a combination of Plasmids and general weapons. Firing bees at them will distract them, making it easier to get shots at them, electric bolts will stun them for a short time, set them on fire, there are many ways to slow them and take them out, and they turn out to be one of the highlights of the game.

Hacking vendor machines, safes, doors and security systems are another part of the game which becomes strangely addictive. This plays out almost like a game of Pipedream, where you have to arrange pipes to ensure the flow of a liquid from point A to point B, within a certain amount of time. Fail to do that, and you might cause an alarm or damage yourself. Luckily, you'll usually have enough auto-hacks to solve the hardest ones automatically if this is not your type of thing, and it is often better to take the easy way out to avoid triggering an alarm if you're low on health. But generally, this is a fun little mini-game.

BioShock is a fairly linear game, but it does allow for backtracking to experience earlier levels, to pick up stuff you might have missed (and there will be). Each level is separated by a loading screen, and there's no loading in the levels themselves, a great change from for example Half Life 2. The levels are also quite huge. However, when discussing the levels, this is where one of the few issues comes up.

While some levels and parts of the game are just brilliant, there are unfortunately some levels which suffer from the “Doom 3 syndrome”, where the levels and environments looks the same. The initial levels are absolutely stunning and varied as well, but deeper into Rapture it becomes less fun, and the wow factor dies down quite a bit. In fact, water seems to become less and less a part of the game, and in some levels you are knee-deep into industrial parts of the city where everything looks the same. Unfortunately, some of those levels also suffer from go fetch quests, where you have to run back and forth, searching everywhere throughout the level to find a few items. These parts can be tedious, and after a while downright boring. The game picks up again though and those moments belong to the minority, but it's unfortunately quite notable.

When that's said, the level design is brilliant, hands down. The Medical level is directly creepy, and another level is built up like a forest, and another one is built up like a shopping center, containing some of the most crazy moments you'll ever witness in a FPS game, period (and some of the most disturbing). These levels all makes up for the duller parts, and generally the majority of the game is a lot of fun.

Graphics
BioShock looks great. It's impossible not to be wowed by the initial part of the game; the water effects are just so good. Any kind of water you'll see from now on in any FPS game will forever be compared to BioShock, and for a good reason. This sets the standard of how water should look in a game. The descent to Rapture is absolutely gorgeous. From the start where you're swimming in the ocean, to a part where you're running from flowing water, or just generally looking at parts where water is acting like it should, it looks stunning.

The rest of the game is not far behind either, the game is flowing with various special effects, from the way your hands transform as you equip the various plasmids, to the extraction of Adam from the Little Sisters and generally, the entire 40-50's look of Rapture. It all looks incredible. Posters are slapped on the wall that contribute to that old time feeling, and not once are you taken out of the experience by misplaced or bad graphics.

The best thing is about the graphics is you don't need a supercomputer to make it run, and still with low graphics it will look good. Running the game on an AMD 1.83GHz CPU with 2GB Ram and a GeForce 7600GT allowed it to be played on 1024*768 with most settings, including Vertical Sync and still obtain a decent framerate. It should only look better further up, so if you got the system then you're in for a treat.

Sound
Sound is something that is usually ignored or heavily downplayed in many reviews. However, sounds are completely essential to the experience in BioShock, and without praising the sound effects, voice acting and music, one is ignoring one of the best aspects of the game.

Listen to the beauty, the sensible violin as you descent into Rapture. There's a certain type of sad, majestic beauty over it that should give you goose bumps. Followed by a brooding piano and strings, and you'll get an aural experience on par with the visual, unlike what most other games have managed to capture. Luckily, the music stays constantly good throughout the game, and it nails that prickling, frantic desperation during certain scenes throughout the game. This is top notch.

The voice acting as well is very well done. Listen to Ryan's introduction move as you descend into Rapture. Listen to how he nails that typical, 50's voice complete with the same type of sound layer, accent and way of talking. Ryan has a lot of great lines throughout the game and is exceptionally enjoyable to listen to. Along the way you'll also encounter a few other characters who are doing an almost equally good job, some of the audio diaries are hauntingly well done.

Sound effects as well are nothing to be scoffed about. Haunting cries, laughs and insane ranting fills the halls, a chilling female voice will malevolently tell you how she'll wrap you in sheets, another one will cry out in pain and desperation of what she has become after a series of gruesome surgeries. You'll grow to feel for the poor people of Rapture, who thought they came down to a paradise, but was sent down to hell instead. The very same you kill, who even shout at you how they just want a conversation or someone to talk to, or pray for god's mercy, even as they desperately attack you. Run away, and they'll taunt you with how you're a coward or that they'll come after you.

There is simply nothing to distract from the sound. It is among the finest I've heard in gaming for many, many years.

Conclusion
BioShock is one game that lives up to the hype. It only has one flaw, which is that it sometimes becomes a little stale at a few points, but it always picks back up.

There's not much else to say about the game than I haven't already said. It looks fantastic. It sounds fantastic. It plays fantastic. The combat with the huge amount of plasmids and weapons makes combat incredibly fun and varied, and there are tons and tons of ways to take out foes. The sense of redemption as you choose to rescue the Little Sisters is something special, and so are the fights with the Big Daddies. The game is pretty much everything it could be and exceeds it and will remain one of the great new classics of gaming. It is an experience, and it's hard to not look back at it and think "That was a great, great game." Most importantly, it's a game that it's actually fun to replay.

Game Score

A-

Reviewed By: Odd Magne Granli