After much anticipation Bioshock has finally arrived, but does it live up to all the massive hype established from System Shock fanboys and classic PC gamers? As someone who unfortunately missed out on the whole System Shock series, I have to say it has completely blown my expectations away.
First of all let's get this out the way... Bioshock doesn't really do anything new. It is not the first FPS to have RPG elements, magic, or a gripping story line. What makes Bioshock so good is that it just manages to do everything right.
Let's start with the most impressive part of the game, the atmosphere. Despite the fact that it is a decayed, ravished abyss of something that could only be described as your worst nightmare 2,000 legions underneath the sea, the world of Rapture still manages to be strikingly beautiful. This is yet another fantastic looking game created with the Unreal Engine 3, the same graphics engine that was used to make Gears or War, Rainbow Six Vegas, and various other games that have came out in the past year.
To sum it up, Rapture is basically what 1950's New York would look like underwater and filled with psychotic deformed freaks... so basically 1950s NY under water. Each level is beautifully rendered in an Art Deco theme, with a slight touch of apocalyptic mayhem for style.
For the most part the music takes a back seat to errie sound effects and disturbing dialog from the denezins of Rapture. Even though they have lost all of their humanity thanks to the egineering of plasmids, they still seem to remember their past and discuss it quite freely with each other, or to themselves... Though I was unfortunately I was without surround sound for this game, it still managed submerge me into the its world thanks to well done stereo positioning and sound effects.
There aren't very many enimies in the game, but there are enough to keep the game play interesting and suspenseful. There are many different forms of splicers, ranging from spider splicers which crawl around on the ceiling and pounce down on you unexpectingly, to crazy bomb throwing Nitro splicers, to the classic gun or pipe welding type. Levels are also filled with machines such as security cameras which call forth remote controlled helicopters armed with machine guns when detected, and various different type of turrents, such as flame thrower, gattling gun, and RPG.
Of course the most menacing foe you will face in rapture are the lumbering Big Daddies, which also come in assorted flavors of difficulty. However Big Daddies usually will not attack you on sight. Instead they will only retaliate when attacked, or when the girls they are protecting are attacked.
But like all things in Rapture things aren't always what they seem, and the needle weilding little sisters are far from sweet toddlers merely trying to escape Hell on Earth. This is where the choice aspect comes into play. You can chose to save the hellish little sisters, or harvest their bodies (thus killing them) for a little more ADAM.
This leads us to some of the RPG elements of the game. You gain ADAM by killing or saving little sisters, which can then be used to purchase health or magic (called EVE) upgrades at certain genetic vending machines, along with new plasmids, which can do anything from giving you a new move such as Electrobolt or Incinirate, or increase the amount of health gained when using a medical kit, to making hacking easier or making alarms shorter. There are also weapon upgrade stations placed through out Rapture which can make your weapons more powerful, extend the their range or magazine size, and reduce recoil and the chance of certains types of ammunition from breaking.
While the story isn't anything ground breaking, it manages to be interesting from begining to end, and manages to do something only games like Resident Evil and perhaps FEAR have done recently, which is scare the crap out of you at times, or at least make you nervous enough to waste a few bullets shooting at things that aren't really there.
It's a great ride through Rapture, but the final loop isn't nearly as exciting as the events preceeding it. The last boss is far too easy (on the normal difficulty at least), and the good ending was fairly underwhelming. Fortunately the game encorages replay thanks to the multiple endings and open ended game play, you probably won't see all of Rapture on the first time through. This is a major plus since the game features no type of multiplayer mode to speak of, which is fairly uncommon for a FPS.
