BioShock
PlayStation 3
BioShock is one of the very first games that I ever played for my PS3. I had read the reviews for the Xbox and the PC versions of the game, and I was intrigued by what I’d seen. I didn’t know too much about the game, other than that the city of Rapture was supposedly so intricate and had so much personality that it almost seemed like a character in and of itself. I had always been a fan of older games (and I still am). The idea that the setting of a game could almost be like another character was a foreign concept to me, so I made it a point to check this game out.
It wasn’t too long before I picked up the game at a used video game store. I remember vividly how long the game took to get set up. I came home with my girlfriend (at least she was at the time, now she is my wife) and wanted to get it installed so that when I came home later that night I could just play it right away and not have to wait for it to get set up. I thought it would be a quick ten minute thing, if that. I had things to do, places to be. Instead, it ended up taking what seemed like hours to get set up. The 50’s style music that played while the game installed was pretty cool, but I was still annoyed. And so was she. Oh well. She still married me.
For those who are not familiar with the game, Bioshock is a first person shooter that takes place in the fictional underwater city of Rapture. You play as a silent protagonist named Jack. His plane has just crashed into the waters above Rapture. Stuck on an island with no food or supplies, Jack is forced to make the long descent down into Rapture. There he finds that the city has gone to absolute hell. All traces of civilization have been destroyed. The people of the city have become addicted to “Plasmids”, which are essentially drugs that gives special powers to whoever takes them. Jack is contacted via radio by a man named Atlas, who promises to guide Jack to safety... if Jack will help him out first.
As you play, you must fight the former citizens of Rapture. They have gone crazy from the Plasmids and will attack you as soon as they see you. You must also battle your way through Rapture’s defenses. There are security cameras that, if they spot you, will deploy drones after you to take you out. There are also turrets and mounted rocket launchers that will blast you into oblivion if you aren’t paying close attention. You can either fight these things or hack them so that they fight the enemies for you. The game’s most iconic enemy is the “Big Daddy.” These giant and lumbering creatures protect the game’s “Little Sisters.” These Little Sisters are used to harvest ADAM, which is the main ingredient used in the Plasmids that everyone has gotten hooked on. When you kill the Big Daddy that is guarding a Little Sister, you can then choose if you want to kill the Little Sister and steal her ADAM for yourself, or free her and be gifted a smaller amount of ADAM for your troubles.
My first playthrough of the game was a pretty mixed bag. At first, I actually liked the game a lot. Loved the graphics, the detail of the game, and its setting. For whatever reason, I put the game aside for a week or two and when I came back to it, I struggled to get back into it. I kept getting killed by a Big Daddy. I’d respawn, and then come back and attack it again, chipping off a little of its health bit by bit. But then I’d get killed again. Come back and attack. Get killed again. So on and so forth. Of course, now I know that this is a natural part of the game’s design. But at the time it felt like I was doing something wrong, and I got discouraged. I put the game aside for yet ANOTHER week or two.
Luckily, when I came back I was able to get back into the swing of the game and move on from the area in which I was stuck. The setting and the gameplay really sucked me in. I just couldn’t stop exploring, shooting things, and collecting as many items as I could. It was a ton of fun. I played the game nonstop and ended up beating it in a couple of days. I liked the game so much, I even went out and bought the DLC, which is a rarity for me. Even rarer, I played through the game twice in a very short period of time. I killed the Little Sisters and harvested their ADAM on my first playthrough, so I just had to take the benevolent route the second time around and see what would happen.
Since then, I have played both Bioshock 2 and Bioshock Infinite (twice), but I had yet to return to the first game. Until now! I figured it would be a good game to come back and revisit after having not played it in about seven or eight years.
My initial reaction was that the game had aged quite well. Considering that the PS3 version of the game came out ten years ago, it still looked quite nice. It sounded nice too. Technically, everything held up very well over the years. The game was still fun to play, but I did find that its combat was not as crisp as I’d remembered. It is very hard to aim and hit your enemies, especially considering the herky-jerky controls and the fact that most of your enemies move very quickly. And then when you do hit your enemies, it seems like the damage doled out from your weapons is minimal. You have to empty out three or more clips of handgun ammunition just to kill one enemy. I actually had better luck just hitting things with my wrench than I did using the game’s guns. This bugged me all game long. Like really? My fricking wrench is doling out more damage than shooting someone with a shotgun at point blank range? Okay.
The main draw of Bioshock, however, is not the combat. It is the game’s setting and the game’s storyline. I have mixed feelings here. I’ll start with the good: the setting. How could you not like Rapture? It truly is one of the best settings in video game history. An underwater city that has fallen apart after months/years of neglect and internal warfare? Yeah, it is super cool. You see things like casinos, apartments, recreation areas, arboretums, laboratories, museums, offices, shopping areas, and the like. You can tell that at some point these areas used to be brightly lit and well maintained. Now they are dingy and grungy, with obvious signs of battle scarring everywhere. Ominous creaking and dripping noises haunt the otherwise silent atmosphere of Rapture. It really is a treat to just walk around and explore and take things in. I question the practical layout of the city, but I can forgive that just because it is so freaking cool to explore. In addition to just being cool in and of itself, the city of Rapture is filled with all kinds of colorful characters and personalities. My favorite was always the psychotic artist, Sander Cohen.
Now I am going to complain about something that I complain about in every single review of a game I play with audio logs: I hate audio logs! My brain doesn’t work when they start playing. I can’t listen and play the game at the same time. 95% of the time I end up completely missing everything said in the audio log because I am too busy fighting, exploring, or scrounging for items. Seeing as how the majority of this game’s storyline is told through audio logs or walkie-talkie communication from other characters, this is a huge problem for me. This is the third time I have played through the game now, and each time I miss massive plot points that are essential to understanding the game. Even after three play-throughs I can still barely tell you what happened here. Who are half these characters? What happened in Rapture to make it the way it is now? What are these people rambling on about? Why is this relevant? Why am I here? Why do I have to turn myself into a Big Daddy? I am sure all these questions are answered through audio logs/communications with other characters in the game. If they are, I don’t have solid answers to them, simply because I can’t play and listen at the same time.
It is a shame too, because I always hear people raving about the story line of this game. I know that there is a big twist where you find out you are under mind control to kill the leader of Rapture, Andrew Ryan. The whole thing was set up from the plane crash in the very beginning of the game. Maybe it is because I didn’t pay close enough attention to the audio logs, but there are a ton of things about this twist that don’t add up for me. And why does Ryan just kill himself when you show up at his door? Again, these are things that are probably explained in-game. But when you struggle to follow along with things like I do, it really hurts your overall opinion on the game. For the most part I liked this title’s game play, its settings, and its graphics. If only I had been able to follow the story line better, this could have been an A title for me.
A few other nitpicks of mine. One of them is the hacking system. The system itself is fine, but there are a LOT of things to hack in this game. Not only is it time consuming, it gets repetitive and tiresome after a while. Another nitpick is that it never seems like the stakes are very high in this game. You don’t have to worry about dying because you know that if you do, you will just respawn nearby with all of your items and ammunition intact. Dying over and over again carries no penalty, so there is never a reason not to just rush into any area, guns blazing. The enemies you kill stay dead, and the ones you damaged will stay damaged. So you can rush into a room with 15 enemies, kill 11 of them, die, respawn, and come back and mop up the stragglers that were left over. When you have unlimited attempts and no repercussions from dying, this makes the game very simple and easy to conquer.
The major question for me is if the good parts of the game outweigh the bad. I would say for the most part the answer is yes. If a game is fun it doesn’t matter if it has a good story line or not. For example: Doom and Quake for the Nintendo 64. Do either of these have fun stories? Not really. So I just play them and enjoy each game for what it is. That is exactly what I did with Bioshock, too. Ignore the story line and just play the game for fun. And it is indeed still a fun game. Not only is it fun, but the world and the atmosphere of the game are amazing. So are the graphics and sound effects. Story line aside, this is still a really good game. I just think I would have liked it even more if I could have been able to follow what was going on!
If you had asked me several years ago what grade I would have given Bioshock, I would have said at least an A. It pains me to say that I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as I did in the past on my most recent play through. It is still an entertaining game, and it does a LOT of things right. But combine the game’s weak combat system with audio logs that are difficult to focus on and that brings the game’s score down just a bit in my opinion.
Overall:
B
If you liked this review of BioShock, please check out some of my other reviews:
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