Bioshock: A Review

Early 2007 and I was glued to my seat, talking to my friend Oliver on XBOX LIVE. It was around six PM, and I was browsing the marketplace, looking for something different to play. I stumbled across Bioshock - a game that was just teasing me to play. Despite it being a demo, I still played on. The moment it started up, I was in a plane-crash towards paradise - I was scared so much by the first few minutes of horror, I could barely breathe. It was.... glorious!

I don't need to tell you that Bioshock is one of the most inspired horror-shooters around. It's no lie that it's a master of its field, and that it has little competition in terms of suspence, originality and story. 2k Games have sent us a gift; something to cherish before the days of darkness come upon us; something that we should've given more credit to, otherwise we wouldn't be in the state we are now. Bioshock was the answer to the video game crash of 2009, where all originality was lost, and the gaming community was in tatters. This is one of the remaining games that we can call, simply astounding.

Yet as much as I'd like to compliment this game with poetry, I must actually start this review off. Bioshock was released two years after the XBOX 360's release in August 24th 2007 - one year and two months before it's release on Playstation 3. While it may have been hyped a lot in it's time and is still mentioned briefly today, it simply cannot be compared to many other games due to it excelling in originality. And even today, I still class it as one of the underrated greats - a game that doesn't deserve to be soiled by the FPS genre's new reputation. It's an excellent start for FPS gamers, as I started with the CoD2 demo and was playing the game on Veteran at the time, but later discovered this. It's not the scariest game in the world, especially when the sequel ruins the horror theme altogether, but you're instantly brought into a world of fear and have little hope of getting through in the earliest stages. So without further adieux, I'll start talking about Bioshock - one of the modern game titans!

Surprisingly, there's a lot of story and it becomes a lot clearer through exploration and progressing through the main questline. Players will find within the first hour of gameplay that they're in the year 1960, shortly after a New Year's Day massacre in the underwater city of Rapture. We learn that people have been enhancing themselve with manufactured genetic coding, allowing them to take more damage, cast fireballs and even turn people into ice! Yet due to the splicing being addictive, it soon made people lose rational thought and start killing others. Each person in Rapture has something called ADAM, which can be spent to buy perks. EVE is seen as the mana used to cast your perks (spells). Often, you'll find little girls wondering around collecting the ADAM from corpses, in which you have to defeat their guardians in order to take their ADAM.

My first comparison would have to be World of Warcraft, about the High Elves and mana. In WoW, the power of the Arcane is highly addictive and dangerous, so the people turned to Fel (demon) magic. This morphed them into monstrocities and - like Bioshock - got them killing each other for Fel shards, etc. I've also noticed with this that the game takes a few quotes from the Christian Holy Bible, and uses terms such as "ADAM", "EVE" (the first humans on Earth, according to the Bible) and Rapture (the unmaking of the Earth). I believe the walls are sometimes smeared in quotes, but I can barely remember from the top of my head.

In Bioshock 1 & 2, you'll be exploring for audiobooks too, where you can listen to recordings of other people's adventures through Rapture. Some just talk about how romantic Rapture looks; others talk about medial findings in splicing; and some even record in the background the screams and killings going on throughout Rapture. There's lots of oppurtunities to learn your lore, but sadly you may need several playthroughs to find all the audiobooks.

Horror fans will absolutely love your first hour or so of Bioshock due to its engaging opening. You'll get flashbacks of a plane, then find yourself in very detailed waters surrounded by fire and your exploded plane. There's some form of lighthouse ahead and it's the only option you've got, so maybe with some hesitation, you still go there and enter the wonderfully crafted tower. You'll get into a submarine and find it locks by itself, going deeper underater. Not good when the power goes down. Especially when there's a hook-handed acrobat clawing at your submarine when you're unarmed and unable to escape his wrath! Indeed, your pants will be filled even if you've seen the videos uncountable times and you haven't played the game once!

Sadly, you feel much more comfortable when you have a wrench in your hand. It begins to look a lot like Silent Hill: Home Coming, and you'll be thinking, "This is going to be combat here on, isn't it"? Well, yes it is. But it still manages to scare you when you first see a Big Daddy and lots of armed people you thought you wouldn't stand a chance against. It manages to stay scary underwater with quite a lot of light, and will contain enough jump-scares to keep you wary at all times.

Combat is pretty average early on, mainly involving you sneaking up to enemies and using your wrench on them, or the power of lightning while they're in the water, unaware they're about to be toasted. When you get your first firearm - a pistol - things start to hot up, as kills are much for satisfying when you shock people with electricity, then give 'em a shot to the head! Further on you'll get weapons like the shotgun, Chicago Typewriter and even a grenade launcher! Yet that's only the beginning: you'll be able to unlock new spells to fling such as insect swarms, mind control, fear spells and really be able to combine them to make super-effective combos! Like weapons, these can be upgraded to increase their potency and reduce the EVE used to cast/channel them - a worthy investment for anyone planning to make the most of the game!

Each enemy is human, but unique in it's own way. We'll be facing all sorts of Splicers from Thuggish (melee) to Houdini (casters who excel in teleportation), and Leadhead (gunners) to Big Daddies throughout your quest to take over Rapture, or destroy it! The variation is high, but you'll notice just how little you see of the first Splicers due to the nature of your weapons. For example, what melee class stands against an explosive-bolt crossbow-wielding, Big Daddy-controlling manowar who's forty yards away? That was rhetorical, by the way, you needn't answer. But for the most part, it's Big Daddies and Leadhead splicers you'll be dealing with throughout the game. Nothing much to handle, until they get upgraded weapons and appear in bigger groups!

For the year 2007, I couldn't expect less. Everything was up to inch detail, from walls to weapons and from Little Sisters to Splicers - everything was near-perfect. Yet there was a major flaw involving textures loading, and this was a major problem for PC gamers playing on the lowest graphics settings, as this was constantly buggy and laggy. Those who could afford the highest specs ran the game with little problems, and managed to see less missing textures than console gamers.

As for the soundtrack, it really gives players atmosphere. Where the combat and jump-scares make us lose the horror, the soundtrack doesn't - it preserves it. It revives it. Plus, it gives some comic relief when we're destroying wave after wave of Splicers and "How much is that doggy in the window" is playing - hilarious moments for a very serious game. Few can pull it off, but Bioshock wins hands down.

I'd hate to end the review like this, but the oly way I can truly give my thoughts and opinions on this game is if I'm to do a commentary of gameplay. And the only way you can get the full experience is to play it yourself. Don't bore yourself with the video walkthroughs (unless you're stuck), otherwise you've just wasted about 10 minutes of your life reading this review. Be sure to get at least the demo of it and give it a try - there's not much difference to that and the full thing, so be sure to give it a shot. Just because it earned several awards at E3 and has been rated 10/10 in most gaming magazines, don't think of it as overrated - while it has flaws that can make your game lag or make it less desirable, remember that it all comes down to how you feel about the suspence, the easiness of grasping it, and the wonderful climax at the end. And if you like this game, I recommend the second, which I'll review later on.

So what does this game score? A whopping 9/9 - the first full score I've given a game on HubPages! It also earns the "Totally worth the cash", "More bang for your buck" and "Mighty!" Awards - some of the best awards I can give a game. It's story is gripping, the tension is high and the gameplay is incredibly addictive. If you're looking for a pick-up-and-play game, you'll love Bioshock!

Thanks for reading, and feel free to give your thoughts on the game!