BioShock
August 20,2007 - On a plane about to crash into the mid-Atlantic, you brace for the descent. You come out of the icy water, gasping for air and surrounded by burning wreckage and flames. As you watch your plane slowly sink into the depths, you notice an enormous, monolithic lighthouse in the distance. You make your way towards the structure and into a bathysphere lowering itself into the ocean. After you watch an old projection film, the screen lifts and a strange city on the bottom of the ocean stares back at you. Eventually you enter and arrive within one of the buildings. A man named Atlas tells you to pick up the short-wave radio in the sphere, saying that he’ll guide you to safety. But things aren’t looking good. The lights are dim, there’s blood on the walls, and there’s no one like you in sight. And the deeper you go, the more apparent it becomes that not everything is as it seems, and not everyone is who they claim to be.

The city you have stumbled upon, the city of Rapture, was conceived and built by a man named Andrew Ryan in an alternate 1950’s timeframe. Tired of the constraints of society on the surface, and exhausted with mankind’s inability to progress faster, Ryan chose his own way, enlisting the help of others with similar sentiments. The result is this city under the sea—a society where free thought and free speech are the cornerstones.

BioShock is played from the first person perspective. There is a lot of action and shooting involved in the game but to simply say it’s a first person shooter is a gross generalization. The game borrows elements from many genres and melds them into one cohesive creation. There are elements of stealth, some puzzle elements like the Pipe Dream-inspired hacking mini-game, RPG elements in the form of gene splicing character upgrades, and even a bit of research photography and item crafting. It all flows amazingly well, and nothing stands out as a forced mini-game interlude.

The most interesting and critical part of the game is the Plasmid system. These gene augmentations allow your character to gain new abilities, like setting your enemies on fire or telekinetically catching and throwing objects like grenades and rockets back at your foes. If you want to upgrade these abilities you will need ADAM, and that’s where the Little Sisters and Big Daddies come in. Little Sisters look and act like young children, but they go around harvesting this genetic material from dead bodies throughout the city. You need ADAM to upgrade your abilities, so you will have to deal with the Big Daddies in order to get to the Little Sisters. These hulking beasts look like animated old diving suits, but they’re armed to the teeth to guarantee the safety of the Little Sisters. After taking care of Daddy (or Mr. Bubbles, as the Sisters may call him), you’ll have to decide whether you want to harvest or rescue the Little Sisters. This is a significant choice within the game, and when confronted by it, it’s more complicated than it may now seem. If you harvest them, you’ll gain maximum ADAM, but she won’t survive. If you rescue her you’ll gain less ADAM, but she will be freed from her macabre existence. The choice is left to you.

From a visual standpoint, BioShock is possibly one of the best looking games to come out this year. The world is designed in an art-deco style which fits perfectly with the early 1960’s setting. You can walk around any given area and piece together the events that took place there. This use of mise en scène, as the creators and film snobs like to call it, works surprisingly well in delivering an original and dark story through less blatant means than most games would. The characters all look great and move very well; which makes the enemies you’ll face seem quite lifelike. It’s the little touches that make the game truly refined, though. The stylish animated films that play when you acquire a new Plasmid, the period billboards, and tons of other little touches show that a lot of care went into creating a world for this game.

That same level of care went into the audio as well. The world is just full of ambient audio like the creak of wood and metal, the sound of rushing water, or the farcing of faulty wiring. It all helps to make you feel like you’re in this city that’s about ready to fall apart under your feet. Your enemies all have their own dialogue and their voice-overs are well acted. You realize that they once were normal people, but they’re warped—being controlled, somehow.

The various audio diaries that give you some insight as to what is going on in the lives of these people are also useful and well-implemented. Much like the visuals though, the audio is full of little things that you have to witness for yourself. The tinny, upbeat swing of the music, the advertisements for local establishments and propaganda bulletins that play through the PA system are very well done. The fact that the audio quality on these particular bits is intentionally scratchy is great and draws you in even more.

What is BioShock, then? It will challenge you, it will move you, and it will force you to make hard decisions. It is unbelievably immersive and tenaciously inventive. It is a game that sets the bar high for others to follow—for its art direction, narrative, and gameplay. It may very well be one of the best games to come out this year, and will surely be mentioned for a while to come. If you had doubts about how this game would deliver on its hype, you may now set yourself at ease. Irrational Games has delivered and then some. And you’d be a fool not to get your hands on this now.

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