Cross this one off the bucket list. BACKGROUND:
Considering how acclaimed the series is, I've heard a fair bit about BioShock, but I've never actually played any game in the trilogy. How fortuitous that all three games went free for a limited time; now I can rectify having gone years without playing this game. PLOT: BioShock is set in 1960 and follows the perspective of Jack, who survives a plane crash over the Atlantic Ocean. He happens upon a lighthouse with a bathysphere (an old-school deep-sea submersible) in it; upon riding it, he is taken to Rapture, a sprawling underwater city with an appropriately old-timey vibe fused with what I would describe as "nautical steampunk." Unfortunately, the Rapture that Jack finds himself in has fallen to ruin, as the once-gleaming utopia has gone full dystopia. With the guidance of a man named Atlas (who contacts Jack via radio), our main character must go around the city in hopes of saving Rapture, whose creator Andrew Ryan has gone mad with power. Through a combination of cutscenes, collectible diaries that play audio recordings of key figures in Rapture's rise and fall, and environmental storytelling, you'll get an excellent picture of Rapture's entire history. Everything from Andrew Ryan's initial vision for the city (and his rationale for keeping it secret from the rest of the world), the scientific discovery that transformed Rapture's citizens, the war for power that transpired to control said discovery, and the eventual decline of the utopia is explained. To me, it was absolutely worth finding every audio recording and observing the environment for lore clues. The world they built for this game is utterly fascinating from a sci-fi standpoint, but I'll get into that later. What's most notable to me are how the decisions and mindsets of the various characters relayed via audio recordings reveal so much, from their respective morals/ethics (or lack thereof), their roles in Rapture's history (big or small), and their different perspectives on various happenings that precede the events of the game. Navigating each character's philosophies and piecing together the history of Rapture was engaging, and I loved how the different perspectives come together and clear things up over time. While the notion of an underwater city during the '60s is a cool sci-fi setting to me, that's actually not the main sci-fi aspect the game's story tackles. A lot of the main story, the world-building, and even what you encounter in the actual gameplay centers around ADAM, a powerful substance that allows for genetic modification (primarily, giving people superpowers). As you go along, you'll learn how this very substance led to Rapture's downfall, the fucked up shit the scientists did with it (or to keep making it), and how ADAM twisted Rapture's citizens. Perhaps the most tragic consequence of the ADAM involves the Little Sisters, very young girls completely warped by ADAM. The story of how they came to be is heartbreaking, and it's probably one of the most fucked up situations in all of Rapture. Believe it or not, I've gone fifteen whole years without ever hearing about BioShock's incredible plot twist. Obviously, I'm not going to talk about it here, but goddamn, the story took something I thought was a little odd (but otherwise innocuous) and completely turned it on its head. It was set up perfectly by the many audio recordings and background elements, too, and the actual reveal casts everything I witnessed beforehand in a different light. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, do everything in your power to keep it that way until you get a chance to play this game. I think it's that satisfying of a twist. The circumstances of Rapture's downfall led most of its citizens to go mad, and it's quite unsettling to see the people you run into in-game driven insane by the chaos. The few people who are unaffected aren't any better, as the likes of Andrew Ryan will upset you with their breathtaking lack of morals. As you meet or learn about many of these characters, it becomes quite apparent how everything went to shit. Not all the characters are bad, however, as there are some who are simply caught in the crossfire of the chaos, and a few who try to do the right thing. Jack himself is a silent protagonist whom you don't learn much about at the start, so there's not much to go off of in terms of an interesting character. However, the story does reveal some incredibly interesting things about him, which makes up a little bit for the fact that he doesn't have anything to say. The game presents a moral choice for you throughout your playthrough: do you save the Little Sisters you encounter in the game, or do you kill them? Your decisions to save or kill will decide the story's ending. Overall, I felt this aspect of the story leaves something to be desired, since the only real conundrum the game presents you with is to tell you one option is less beneficial gameplay-wise (we'll talk about that later). I'd have preferred if the choice to save or kill had more weight to it, not just in terms of gameplay, but also within the context of the story. I never really felt like the game gave me a compelling in-universe reason to second guess my choices throughout the game, and I think that's because the story only gives one side of the argument the time of day. As you can probably guess, you can get three endings: the one for saving everyone, the one for killing everyone, and the one in between. The first two work perfectly fine to me (especially when I consider the gameplay aspect of the moral choice), but I found the neutral ending disappointing since it's way too similar to one of the other endings. I feel like they could have done something different with it, though that may have required giving the save/kill choice the extra weight that I wish it had. PRESENTATION: The remastered version features some nice, upscaled graphics that deliver decently realistic visuals (though it can't really rival more modern games in terms of polish and fidelity). Perhaps the only thing that looks stylized to me are character faces, which have a slightly cartoony appearance to me. It doesn't look out of place, though. What really sells BioShock to me visually is the setting and atmosphere. I love how the mix of "nautical steampunk" (with all the bathyspheres, old-school diving suits, piping, and analog tech), the '60s city vibe (neon lights, retro-style signage), and the creepiness of everything being run-down and abandoned come together to provide a setting unlike any other. A sci-fi world set in a period piece isn't anything new, but the otherworldly vibe of the deep sea makes Rapture feel special. Perhaps the most iconic visual element of BioShock to me is the Big Daddy, hulking figures in those old-school diving suits that walk around defending the Little Sisters. Their designs feel appropriately intimidating, and they're exemplary of the "nautical steampunk" aesthetic of the game (looks like old deep-sea technology, actually quite advanced in-universe). I found that many sections of the game don't have music (relying more on the ambient sounds of the sea and the technology of Rapture to provide an eerie atmosphere), but there are actually plenty of tracks that play throughout the campaign. There's a fair mix of period-appropriate licensed songs (which fittingly sound like they're playing out of phonographs), as well as a beautiful orchestral score. Majority of the tracks in the latter category felt suspenseful or eerie, which adds to the dystopian vibe of Rapture and adds to the more tense moments of the game. There are even a few horror movie-style stings that complement the game's jump scare moments (don't worry, there aren't many of these). GAMEPLAY: BioShock is primarily an FPS where you run around and shoot enemies (as you do), but the game's structure and many of its gameplay elements differentiate it quite a bit. Let's get into the nitty-gritty. The weapons are mostly standard fare as far as first person shooters go. You have a revolver, a shotgun, a machine gun, a grenade launcher, a "flamethrower", and a crossbow. What makes these respective weapons interesting in this game is that they all have multiple ammo types. The revolver and machine gun have both antipersonnel and armor-piercing rounds, the shotgun has explosive shells and electric shells that stun, the grenade launcher has heat-seeking missiles and proximity mines, the "flamethrower" can also throw out liquid nitrogen and electric gel, and the crossbow has both incendiary bolts and trap bolts that set up electric tripwires. I enjoyed the variety in this sense, as they gave me a degree of creative freedom with how to dispatch the various enemies. For your melee, you have a monkey wrench. There's nothing special with it at all, but it's fun to bludgeon enemies with it. You also find a research camera that you can use to snap pictures of enemies. Doing so is actually worthwhile, as each enemy type has a research level that goes up the more of that enemy you take pictures of. As the research level goes up, you get a damage boost against them, and the game also reveals what kind of ammo they're weak to. Amusingly, the camera has its own ammo in the form of film, which is period-appropriate. As opposed to most FPS campaigns that split up the story into separate levels, the world of Rapture is interconnected, and you can move back and forth between zones via doors and bathyspheres (which serves as loading zones). It's not quite an open world, but I like that you can go back to previous levels to check out stuff you didn't look at the first time (there's a solid number of optional areas and secret rooms off the beaten path). You'll also be looting a lot as you go for ammo, first aid kits, money, and other materials, and these things can be spotted simply out in the open or swiped from containers (trash cans, crates, refrigerators, etc.) and corpses. While some encounters feel like shootouts with a lot of enemies, most of the game isn't like that. The game feels more akin to Resident Evil when it comes to combat, as you spend some time exploring, run into a handful of enemies in increasingly challenging situations/areas (with some catching you by surprise with jump scares), and you have to manage your resources to make sure you can readily deal with said situations. BioShock isn't really a full-on survival horror, though, as the situations you find yourself in hardly feel scary (even if many situations or areas have an unnerving vibe to them). You have your three standard difficulty settings (easy, medium, hard), as well as a Survivor mode where resources (particularly ammo) is scarce. I played on Medium and didn't really feel like it posed too much of a challenge, and I'll get into why I feel that way later on. Money is quite useful, as there are many kiosks throughout Rapture that sell you useful items (health, ammo, and more). There's also a crafting station where you can take some of the seemingly useless loot you pick up and turn them into the special ammo I mentioned previously (among other things). What makes BioShock stand out to me in terms of mechanics are the Plasmids. These are the superpowers derived from the ADAM that the story revolves around, and Jack can acquire a small assortment of them. Some have obvious offensive applications (the Electro Bolt stuns, Incinerate! burns the enemy, Winter Blast freezes, Insect Swarm unleashes hornets), others are more defensive in nature (Target Dummy shifts enemy aggro, Sonic Boom pushes enemies back), and a few are creative (Cyclone Trap displaces enemies that step on it, Enrage! makes enemies fight other enemies, Security Bullseye makes turrets and bots fight for you, and Telekinesis lets you pull in and launch loose objects). The Plasmids add a lot to how you can approach combat, and you can do a lot of fun stuff with it. You can electrify water to take out multiple enemies wading in puddles simultaneously, you can shatter frozen enemies if you whack them enough times (but lose out on their loot), you can redirect enemy grenades with Telekinesis, and you can even do hilarious shit like stacking fire damage and Insect Swarm. Some of the Plasmids even have applications outside combat, like melting frozen doors, disabling tech like security cameras with electricity, and pulling in faraway loot with Telekinesis. I feel like what they did in this game with the Plasmids only scratches the surface of what you can do with having a variety of powers to complement your guns (you can't freeze water, for example), but what they do have here, I had a lot of fun with. Plasmids require a resource called EVE (get it?) to cast, so you can't rely on it too much to solve all your problems. EVE is basically just this game's equivalent to mana, and you need to find or purchase restoring items called EVE Hypos to keep yourself topped up. At the start, you only have access to a limited number of Plasmids. To expand your arsenal (both in the sense of your Plasmid choices and the maximum number you can have equipped), you'll need ADAM. You can only get ADAM from Little Sisters, but before you have a chance to interact with them (they're invulnerable), you need to dispatch their Big Daddy guardians. These brutes take a lot of punishment (and dish out a lot of damage), but as your weapon selection and available Plasmids expand, they become less and less of threats. It's a bit of a shame since they're by far the most imposing enemy, but I do find satisfaction in stun-locking them and then using specific ammo to rinse them. Once the Big Daddy is dead, the Little Sister can be interacted with. Here, the game's moral choice is presented: do you harvest them for maximum ADAM (killing them in the process), or do you rescue them, but only get half ADAM? On paper, that sounds like an interesting way to handle morality in a video game: do you go for maximum power in exchange for your soul, or do you clear your conscience but make the game more challenging? But for various reasons, I found the difference in the game itself to be negligible. For the record, I chose to save all the Little Sisters, and it didn't really prevent me from getting most of the Plasmid-related upgrades I wanted. I would have liked if the difference were more pronounced. ADAM is spent in a specific kiosk, and you can acquire more than just new Plasmids and additional Plasmid slots. You can also power up your available Plasmids (making their effects more potent), upgrade your health and EVE meter, as well as pick up passive buffs called Tonics. Tonics are split into three categories: Combat (offensive), Physical (defensive), and Engineering (more on that later), and like Plasmids, you can also spend ADAM to expand how many you can have equipped at a time. Most of the Tonics provide significantly helpful benefits, like greater healing from first aid kits, elemental damage resistance, buffs to certain attack types, and more. Weirdly, swapping and equipping your available Tonics and Plasmids is done in a different kiosk, which makes managing them a bit of a chore since you have to find the kiosk first. This becomes a non-issue later in the game (when you're likely to have unlocked a ton of slots), but I think I would've liked the lessened hassle of just handling my loadout via a menu. There's only a small variety of enemies, with most of them being Splicers (people who have been driven completely insane by ADAM abuse). These Splicers don't really feel all that interesting; there are only a few variants of them (some have guns, others have melee, a few have powers), only a handful of them resist your Plasmids, and their AI isn't all that smart (making stealth relatively easy). If it's any consolation, I delighted in finding new and exciting ways to kill them with my expanding arsenal, but other than that, they only pose a challenge when there's a ton of them at once. The few bosses in the game aren't all that interesting or challenging, either, apart from the final boss. That said, the only thing the final boss has going for it is that they do unique things in the fight, but I actually found them quite easy to beat. You'll also encounter a bunch of machine-based threats like automated turrets, flying drones, and security cameras that sound alarms and summon said flying drones if you're detected. Dispatching them is easy (one shot of lightning is enough to stun them briefly), but the fun thing you can do with them is hacking them to fight for you. The hacking minigame is actually enjoyable and fairly challenging, since it's a variation of the classic game Pipe Dream (that old game where you lay down pipes and direct fluid from one point to another). You can also hack the kiosks such that they sell things at lower prices, as well as hack safes/combination locks to access goodies. Failing the minigame carries serious penalties, as you can take damage from short circuiting or end up triggering alarms that send swarms of drones on you. The Engineering class of Tonics factor into hacking and your interaction with machines, and the benefits range from making the hacking minigame easier (slowing down the flow of the goop, removing unusable pipes, lowering overall difficulty for specific hackables) to lowering the effectiveness of hostile machines on you (turrets and cameras take longer to spot you, for example). Again, quite helpful. Scattered all around Rapture are tubes called Vita-Chambers, and these serve as your respawn points should you die. Conveniently, you don't have to interact with any of these; the last one you passed by will activate automatically. However, there is practically no penalty for dying save for having to walk back to where you just were, since you don't lose inventory and enemy health is retained. This makes combat trivial, and while I didn't have to resort to this tactic, you could easily brute-force threats like Big Daddies, die over and over, and eventually beat them through sheer stubbornness. It's unfortunate that there's really no stakes to death, but I did strive to get through the game without dying too much. The only things that serve as collectibles are the numerous audio recordings of Rapture's many characters, and I feel like the world-building they provide make for worthwhile rewards in themselves. You can also find reels that unlock director's commentary, and while insightful, it's best to only turn this on after you've finished the story once (as some of the commentary reveals spoilers). If you're interested in more behind-the-scenes stuff, this version of the game has a museum that you can walk around and view exhibits showcasing material from early into the game's development. It's quite interesting to see how radically different some concepts present in the game were at the conceptual stage. This version of the game also includes additional content, which come in the form of three challenge modes that have you take on a specific challenge. One has you try and kill a Big Daddy with no weapons or offense-based Plasmids, another has you solve a puzzle in order to rescue a Little Sister with a limited inventory, and the last is a simple combat challenge where you face off against waves of enemies and have the freedom to modify your loadouts. It's not a lot, but the variety is decent. While most of my time with the game was smooth sailing, I did encounter a bug that soft-locked the game by making the main objective disappear (so I couldn't progress). That was annoying, especially since autosaves only occur when moving between areas. I had to reload an older manual save to get back to where I was. VERDICT: I now understand why BioShock is held in high regard as one of the greatest video games of all time. The world and atmosphere of Rapture is one-of-a-kind, the story is a ride both in terms of world-building and the main narrative, and the open-endedness of the FPS combat is a ton of fun. I do have issues with certain elements, but overall, I really enjoyed this game, and am super glad I finally got to play it. BioShock definitely fits in my "essential" video games category given its impact on the industry as a whole and its resonance with many players. You know what that means: this is a game I strongly recommend must be played at least once regardless of genre inclinations. Pick up BioShock Remastered on PC on either of these platforms: - end -
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June 2024
Derryck
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