Bioshock
August 29, 2007Imagine a game that defies convention. A game that marks out its own path in the FPS genre and tackles new challenges with confident flair. A game that isn’t afraid to conjure feelings of pity and guilt as well as exhilaration and joy. A game that is prepared to hand the reigns of control over the environment to the user and allow them to use it as they see fit. Combine these seemingly too-good-to-be-true ideals and you’ll start to get a good idea just why Bioshock is being hailed as not only one of the most important games of this generation, but one of the most important games of all time.
Set in 1960, Bioshock introduces one of the most fantastically imagined game environments to have ever been created. After the game’s protagonist, Jack, has survived a plane crash into the Atlantic he swims to the apparent safety of a nearby lighthouse. It’s not long before Jack heads into a small sub and is taken deeper into the ocean, only to be greeted by the awe-inspiring Rapture. Rapture – built on the seabed in 1946 by the industrialist Andrew Ryan – was intended to be an entirely self-supporting facility. A place populated by the creme de la creme of human civilization – artists, writers, scientists, philosophers – Rapture was an idealistic place, founded on visions of a perfect society. Of course, this ideal didn’t last. With so many great minds working together it was not long before a breakthrough was made and ADAM came on the scene – a species of sea slug that could be used to enhance one’s own body. You want fire to shoot from your hands? Done. You want to control items with the power of your mind? Done. You want to control swarms of flies? Done. As ever, this discovery came at a high price. A civil war broke out between Ryan and his detractors as the citizens of Rapture injected with Adam began to go mad. Rapture went from a utopian haven to a dystopian hell hole. Instead of the cream of society Rapture is now inhabited solely by Splicers – humans that have modified themselves beyond any recognition. This is where your nightmare takes place.
Ken Levine and his team know how to craft a good story. Their knowledge of how games can be used to tell stories is incredibly impressive – as evidenced by the brilliant System Shock 2. By flouting cutscenes and locked scripted sequences – cutting them almost entirely from the game, in fact – Levine and the 2K team instead allow you to discover audio recordings, glimpse posters that litter the walls, observe ghostly images enacting moments of the past, and simply see the inhabitants of the now dystopian Rapture. They do no force plot threads and character development on the player but rather allow them to piece the fragments of the story together themselves. You will find yourself mapping the fates and interactions of each distinct character – some long since dead and others still wandering the halls of Rapture, now so demented there is no chance of redemption. The plot is there to be explored and examined by the player rather than just simply absorbed. The feeling of dawning realization throughout as you come to know the extent of the horrors that occurred in this underwater tomb is as disturbing as it is cleverly implemented.
Bioshock isn’t just about plot. It’s a about creating a realistic, convincing world. Rapture is a complete place to explore and understand. You can travel anywhere, to such locations as a theatre, the gardens, and the medical pavilion. It’s all there, and it all feels like it should be. Nothing is forced in, each area transitions to the next in a believable manner. There are no invisible walls forcing the player to turn away, you can explore every nook and cranny. You’ll have to if you want to survive.
To say the game is atmospheric understates the remarkably meticulous and evocative art direction. Creativity and character oozes from every corner of the environments, allowing them to detail what life was like in Rapture long ago. The reds, golds and greens of the underwater city’s art-deco style create a stunning and inescapable ambiance that immerses the senses the way a game in the current generation should. The audio is astonishingly well crafted too, with ambient noise constantly surrounding you – dripping water, the creaking of Rapture’s hull, the cackling of a demented splicer. It all serves to transport you away from the comfort of your living room and into an entirely different world.
2K have done an excellent job of cranking the creepiness factor up to 11. While the game may not be outright terrifying the way System Shock 2 managed, Bioshock is still full of spine-chilling enemies that’ll have you thinking twice about playing the dark. Imagine the situation – lost at sea, afraid, and you find yourself in Rapture. A place so cut off from society it is actually underwater – a place that has had years to transform its human inhabitants into something so twisted mentally and physically they are mere shadows of the people they used to be. And you’re trapped in there with them. The Splicers perfectly exhibit the trappings of an interior life, pitifully mumbling and whimpering to themselves about lives long lost. It’s unnerving to say the least.
On the right trigger and bumper of your pad you have control over your weapon selection and attack. The pleasingly cumbersome, 40s-style weapons come in all shapes and sizes, from the pistol, to the crossbow, to the chemical thrower. Choosing which weapons to use and when can be pivotal in deciding the outcome of a battle. Each weapon also comes with a variety of ammo, some more effective against different enemies than others. You are also able to augment your weapons when you reach weapon upgrade stations, adding such capabilities to them as increased strength, a larger clip size, less recoil and so on. By using bits and pieces found around Rapture the player can also use ‘U-Invent’ machines to create their own ammo – explosive buck shots for instance. The left trigger and bumper control your use of plasmids. Plasmids are the genetic upgrades that can be found or bought through Gatherer Gardens – stations placed throughout the levels that allow you to use ADAM in exchange for physical augmentations. These physical properties are governed by EVE, an energy supply that will decrease each time you use one of your many powers. Among other things you can control electricity, fire, ice, use telekinesis, hypnotize enemies, create miniature tornadoes, and trick enemies into thinking you are elsewhere. There are only a limited number of slots available at the beginning of the game (more can be purchased later) so it’s a case of deciding which powers are best to take with you and when.
The player can also upgrade their combat capabilities and physical properties. For example, the user may be able to add an upgrade to one of their available slots that causes them to emit a static discharge when attacked, hurting any surrounding enemies, or they may add one that increases the effectiveness of health kits. Deciding which to equip and when is a task requiring an amount of consideration, especially as you can only swap upgrades at Gene Banks – another type of station located at different points around Rapture – meaning it may be some time before you can change these augmentations again.
The player is also able to upgrade their engineering skill, allowing them to better perform one of the game⿿s other distinctive features – hacking. Any vending machines, security cameras, turrets and health stations can be hacked. Doing so brings up a minigame you’ll likely see a lot of, one in which you must create a channel for fluid to flow to an exit point by switching panels containing differently shaped pipes. With the fluid filling up the pipe you’re under pressure to get this done quickly. Alternatively you can pay the machine money or, if you have one, use an autohack tool to quickly bypass the game. It’s a welcome diversion from the action of the main game, and if done enough the player will have a much easier time on their journey through Rapture. Hacking turrets to make them work for you is one example of the benefits inherent in this system.
So, there is an almost obscene amount of choice. Bioshock hands all of these gameplay mechanics over to the player and allows them to be used as the player wishes. After playing through the game there’s no doubt that this design strategy works perfectly well. Bioshock manages to sustain and support the dizzying range of tactics it affords the player in an extremely confident manner. Indeed, working out strategies and using your abilities in conjunction is vital to make it through Rapture alive. A few examples may help to illustrate the point. Maybe you see a group of Splicers and you’re running low on ammo. Go hack the nearby turret, use telekinesis to lift an explosive canister, hurl it at your enemies and then let the turret finish the job you started. A particularly nasty enemy getting you down? Hack a health station, and then shoot a fireball at the oil at your foe’s feet. After he ignites allow him to run to the health station and let out a snigger as it does him harm rather than good. Still not dead? Zap the water at his feet with electricity and watch as it shudders through him. There’s always a different way to go about any given situation, always some manner of saving ammo. This is what gaming should be like – when the combat comes together in this way it is as thrilling as it is rewarding.
The innovation doesn’t stop there. This is a game that’s set to push boundaries, to take games in new directions. The use of your environment is distinct in its application but the addition of Big Daddies and Little Sisters serves to place Bioshock on an even higher pedestal when viewed from the perspective of what games are capable of. If you’re not familiar with the image of the Big Daddy, then where have you been the last few months? The Big Daddies are the protectors of the Little Sisters – large-eyed, tiny girls that harvest ADAM from Rapture’s dead. Now picture the scene. You’ve taken out the Big Daddy. The harmless Little Sister is whimpering as you stand over her, deciding whether to rescue her, or to harvest the precious genetic material she possesses for your own ends. Atlas, the pragmatic Irishman who’s been giving you advice via radio since you entered the world of Rapture says she’s no longer human and therefore no longer deserving of pity. Dr Tenenbaum, the apparent creator of the strange little girl says the opposite, and if you save her you will be rewarded in time. Moral decisions aren’t new to games, but Bioshock takes a much more profound step into questions of morality, presenting a choice that is as graphic as it is difficult to resolve. Also, given that the Big Daddy will only attack you if you provoke him or get too close to his ward, you won’t feel too good about taking him down. 2K has defied the convention that video games’ only purpose is to exhilarate the player and make them feel good. Here, Bioshock creates feelings of unease, sadness, and guilt. In this way Bioshock ventures from being simply a game and wanders into that notorious topic of games as art.
2K Games have created a real world, and populated it with real inhabitants. Bioshock expertly straddles so many entertainment art forms it’s simply the best demonstration of how flexible the medium can truly be. Although a shooter on the surface, Bioshock is a story that exists and unfolds inside the most convincing game world ever conceived. It takes the concept of the FPS yet shapes it in its own way, carving out its own genre – one of intelligence, experimentation and risk-taking. Ok, there may be problems with texture and audio drop-out, sometimes it’s difficult to select the items you really want from the radial menu, and the hacking minigame can sometimes feel a little jarring, but it simply feels silly to make a big deal out of these minor issues when you consider the magnitude of the game as a whole. The only gripe that it feels sensible to put forth is that at some point the game has to end, bringing to a close one of the finest gaming experiences out there. Bioshock not only provides a great gameplay experience but an equally engrossing story, one that has as much to say about the current state of storytelling in gaming as it does about science’s relationship with idealism and unchecked human nature.
As one reviewer put it, ‘Bioshock shines like a beacon of light in a sea of mediocrity’. Take his advice and buy this game. Show developers this is what we want.
9.5/10
