Bioshock
I hadn’t heard much about this game until about a month or two before it was released. I had always assumed it was some generic shooter that worked off of emotionless emotional choices. After reading a few impressions and watching a few videos though I instantly realized just how wrong I was. I admit, I was a little skeptical that a single game could offer everything that Bioshock boasted but it definitely peaked my interest. Launch day finally arrived (I wasn’t one of the lucky people that found it early; I was about 30 minutes too late) and I eagerly popped in my shiny copy of Bioshock.
I was instantly enthralled by the overall atmosphere of this game and how every little detail was painstakingly scrutinized to make the player feel as though they were a part of this underwater world. I knew from there I was going to be in for an incredible game and some sleepless nights.
Presentation 8.0
Bioshock could stand on its own with its spectacular graphics and wonderful water effects but the game also has a very distinct style that stretches from textures to the character models to the music and even to the story and its characters. Stylistically this game is a masterpiece. At every point in the game I feel like I’m in an underwater world that is in this strange limbo between death and rebirth and it’s just a great feeling. That being said this game has its problems too, though most of them are minor and easily forgivable due to the games amazing style.
The first noticeable bug would be the twitching dead models. If you’ve played the game you definitely know what I’m talking about it, if not, it’s simply models constantly twitch and move even after dieing. It’s a little strange at first but it’s something that is easily ignored.
There are also small bugs in the shadows where they can be seen through the ceiling, bugs in the audio every now and then, textures popping in and out due to distance (especially on security doors) and textures with z-fighting. All in all, they aren’t big things but it does show that the game isn’t nearly as well as polished as it should be. Still though, I can forgive these due to the incredible style this game offers.
What I cannot forgive though is a show stopper bug. This probably isn’t a common bug but it still happened and it still pissed me off. 100% of the time my game freezes up shortly before the end of the game and I just cannot progress no matter what action I take. This is so sad because I wanted to rate the presentation of this game somewhere close to a 10 but I just can’t forgive this. Mixing the show stopper bug with all those other little bugs that shows that there wasn’t much time for polish just makes me score this section low. It pains me to do this, but show stoppers are unforgivable and I have to dock this game because of it.
Graphics 10
I don’t know if you guessed it from the above comments but just in case you missed it I think this game is beautiful. When you mix awesome graphics with awesome style you get Bioshock. There may be games out there with better animations and better lip syncing but that doesn’t matter. Everything in this game just fits absolutely perfectly. The city of Rapture actually feels like a city. The textures are all beautiful and just pop out at you. The all fit that wonderful deco style that the game goes for and everything just feels wet. The characters have that skinny look you think off whenever you think of the 20’s and everything about them is just wonderful. Even the outlines on the characters when the lights are off are great.
It really just is hard to put into words how great this game looks (and the fact I can’t is probably why I’m not looking into becoming a professional reviewer).
The last noticeable thing graphic wise is the water. Since this game takes place underwater the water needed to be one of the most noticeable pieces of this game. Let me tell you that the water in this game is the best I’ve ever seen. It simply is amazing. I sat here for a good 10 minutes trying to think of something negative to say about the graphics and the style but there really isn’t anything negative to say. Since that’s the case, this game gets a perfect 10.
Sound 9.8
The sound of this game compliments the incredible style perfectly. I noticed small sound bugs every now and then but nothing too horrible. All in all, I loved the sound. The most moving thing to me was probably the music. Jukeboxes had the wonderful habit of turning on playing that wonderful 20’s music at the most creepy time possible. I don’t know how many times I was running along and stopped dead in my tracks due to You are my Sunshine or Danny Boy suddenly start up. If you haven’t played this game you have no idea what it feels like to be creeped out by Danny Boy and that’s a bad thing.
The other incredible thing about the sounds is the splicers and the random sound effects. Who doesn’t remember the religious splicer rambling on about God or the distraught mothers? These just do a wonderful job adding to the overall feeling of the game.
Gameplay 8.7
When I first heard about Bioshock I couldn’t have been more excited about the AI and using the many different ways to interact with the AI. The many plasmids, inventions, and everything else were interesting but the AI was my real interest. After playing through the game I’m satisfied but it wasn’t quite what I was expecting. There are multiple ways to go about solving problems and it is a lot of fun figuring these ways out and talking to other people to see how they dealt with the same problems is just awesome.
When I was playing through the game I thought the way I was doing things was obviously the best but after talking to some buddies there were methods of doing things I had never thought of that just blew my mind. This is why the gameplay in this game just wins.
Aside from your basic weapons, you also have plasmids and tonics and this is where you character customization comes in. Players can choose to use different almost magical type powers and special tonics that make you healthier, hack better, quicker, invisible, ect and these just work pretty well. In most games character optimization doesn’t sit too well in my stomach but Bioshock did a pretty good job of keeping things fresh and fun with these powers.
That being said, there are faults. As much as it tries not to be, Bioshock is just a FPS and one that you get pretty stupid overpowered by the end. Towards the end of the game I started getting board with the basic gameplay because I no longer needed money or ammo (because of my awesome wrench) and the game just got boring. I suppose this could have been my fault for being too awesome but they really should have thought of that.
One of the other interesting things about the gameplay was the hacking. Most machines in the game could be hacked to take control of them or make their products cheaper. When hacking, you enter a sort of Pipe Dream mini game that is actually pretty fun. These hacks can get pretty stressful as you’re trying to get a security camera on your side but hacking does get old. About halfway through the game the novelty really starts wearing off and hacking really just becomes boring and tedious. On top of that there are times when you come to a machine you cannot hack. There are certain tiles that you just cannot get past and sometimes these tiles prevent any possible ways of getting past the hack. This only happened to me two or three times but it was still enough to make me unhappy with something I wasn’t already thrilled with.
The next thing that really bothered me with this game were the cut scenes or the interactive cut scenes but not really but are still next gen because they’re interactive. It’s neat that they let the player keep control during the little cut scenes but let me do something, anything during these. I know cut scenes are last gen and the new thing is interactive cut scenes that don’t break immersion, but standing behind a pain of glass or standing next to someone sitting there talking that you can’t do a thing to just isn’t fun. I would much rather just have traditional cut scenes that we could skip rather than still having the option to move around.
And the bad news gameplay wise doesn’t stop there. The next thing on my list is that the game just gets boring towards the end. I know I hinted about this earlier, but once you become so powerful you stop needing money and items and killing the same splicer after splicer just gets boring and annoying. There is no variation in enemies beyond the three or four basic types and the game just keeps throwing those same enemies at you. It's nice that the enemies are more or less completely random but that means that just about every encounter is going to be *exactly* the same and after 20 hours it gets a little monotonous.
Towards the end of the game I found myself not exploring the wonderful world and just trying to get through it as quickly as possible. Just like a waitress at a diner might think if I have to serve one more cup of coffe… I found myself thinking if I have to kill one more of the exact same splicer… It really is a shame that this just couldn’t be varied a little more but as it stands you’ve seen every enemy type fairly early in the game and it never changes.
My last gripe about this game is that it has quite a few fetch quests that just make the boring tedious gameplay even worse. One fetch quest can be acceptable, but Bioshock does it multiple times and each fetch quest often has three separate sub fetch quest involved. I know developers love bragging about how long their game is but fetch quest after fetch quest is a terrible way to lengthen your game. It’s not fun!
In the end, Bioshock is a fun game. It has its flaws but it makes up for those beautifully.
Lasting Appeal 8.9
I know there are loads of people out there that loves to talk about how bad Bioshock is because it’s only a single player game and offers no multiplayer game but this game proves single player only games still have a place in this generation. If this were an 8-10 hour game I might be upset, but this is a 20 hour game that you’re going to have to play through multiple times to get everything and, most importantly, you’re going to want to play through multiple times.
The only downside to this that the boring gameplay mentioned above is only going to get much more boring much quicker. Luckily there are multiple difficulty settings to offset this but the outcome is still the exact same.
Overall 9.0
Overall Bioshock is a single player game with its fair share of flaws but it’s an incredible genre defining single player game with its fair share of flaws and that's what really matters. If you own a PC capable of running this game or a 360 this is definitely a must buy. Games like this are quite rare and you will remember experiencing Bioshock for years to come and when the next generation of consoles comes along you’ll still be comparing games to Bioshock.
