BioShock Revisited.

Hopefully by the time you're reading this I'll have my computer back (Locke: I don't), I'll be down like £200, paying for someone else but right now I'm so angry I've kind of looped back into myself to the point of utter calm. As of time of writing though, my computer is in the repair shop and so I decided to take this week off to go on holiday...to Rapture. This means a rereview of BioShock and my first ever review of BioShock 2, a game I never finished because as a massive fanboy of this game, the second could never compete. Expect the BioShock 2 review a few days after this one. Enjoy!

So to get this out of the way, for my two readers from Afghanistan that have never heard of this, it's about a city under the sea that was once a Utopia and it's all gone to shit. And even that is more spoilers than I'd like to give. The story is that worth it. Also as I'm a massive fanboy of the game, I'm going to subtract myself from that and attempt to review this as a critic. I know some people will disagree with this choice, but it's the only way I can write a proper, in depth review.

Why BioShock? Mainly because it's one of my favourite games ever, and so if I have to be £200 down and have no laptop for a week, I'd rather spend my time playing something I know I'll enjoy and give myself the chance to review something I'd probably never normally get the chance to review.

I've actually replayed this game several times, it's probably my all time favourite game and one of the first games I completed without cheats or without frustration and having to come away from the game for a few days to come back and try again. I just spent a week addicted to this thing like crack and I beat it and I loved it so much I came back several times more. And you have to understand, that is something truly special for me. I don't get the people who play a game and then right after just start a whole new game again, even on games with multiple choice systems, I just don't care about a game enough to play it even twice. This and Mass Effect are the only games I've played multiple times.

What makes BioShock so special, you may ask well simply...I care about it. You play all these RPG's with these huge 'epic' stories and these massive worlds populated with these 'great' characters but they still never really elicit any real response from me, I just don't care. And I think one of the biggest problems is because 'linearity' has become a dirty word. When modern games aren't about brown and chest high walls, they are all multiple choice make your own path crap and although it can be enjoyable, when you go out and find your own missions with the freedom to piss around between them, the story ends up a fragmented mess and has to be really vague so it can be played in any order.

BioShock says 'fuck that' and it says 'would you kindly go here' and 'would you kindly do this' and because you have a set path with a limited amount of exploration the story is able to be coherent, the world living and the characters fascinating and detailed. BioShock is just such a complete product, that you can't help but care. Every room, every lobby is filled with stuff to look at, and not just stuff to look at but stuff you want to look at. The detail almost hurts. They use the visual and interactive medium aspects to tell the story as much as the story does. Every word written in blood, every leak, it all tells the story of the perfect world ruined by human nature.

Rapture is just something I can't stress enough as to what an incredible setting this is and just how far the sheer amount of detail is put into it visually and story wise just completes it all. The story and the visuals, even after multiple playthroughs still blow me away. I still find myself listening and hunting for all the audio diaries, I still find myself looking at posters, reading the bloody scrawls of Splicers, I still find myself wanting to look in every nook and cranny to find even just an empty room with a poster in it, because the detail is just something else.

There is one thing I have a problem with the Audio Diaries as a critic, that in themselves they are well acted, enrich the Rapture experience and lead to some really quite horrific discoveries but that being said... why aren't these sidequests? They are just side...stories. I mean they often involve you hunting something down or whatever but really there isn't much gameplay involved in these and considering you have to hunt down the diaries in themselves, there is no reason they couldn't have been done as full fledged missions without making the game fragmented, because it'd be your choice to go out and find them and do them without impact on the main story other than emotional involvement meaning nothing is really lost if you don't do them. But it still ends up feeling like a massive cocktease, the story itself is fantastic and no arguments from me but I can't help but feel this game could have basically been perfect if the focus was 'what the fuck happened to this place?' - I mean the rest of the story could still work even with that focus but I love the city of Rapture so much just those tiny windows into the past are not enough, I need more! I mean don't get me wrong, in themselves The Diaries are great and as a player I never really had a problem with it, but as a critic I feel it my 'duty' to at least point this out.

And that really is where the problems begin. You see in my mind a game can just be looking around at stuff, it's an interactive medium and although it's hard to believe in the mainstream videogame markets, every game doesn't have to include gratuitous violence to be an enjoyable experience and you can see the devs thought this too, Rapture and the story of its downfall is just an experience unmatchable in my mind, everyone should experience it. But of course this is the digital age, the age of Call of Duty, the age where if shit isn't being tossed at you every three seconds then you get bored, so they couldn't just have an art game. A game where you explore a brilliant setting and soak up the sights - so thrown in is the most half assed, soulless RPG FPS gameplay I've ever experienced.

And the combat itself is so fucking clunky. You have two attacks, Plasmids and Weapons. Plasmids are like these drugs that alter your genetics to give you superpowers, they are the main reason Rapture is so fucked and the Plasmids are a really cool take on the usual magic and weapon balance but they fuck it up with easily some of the worst controls I've used. In the heat of battle you have to hit the attack button twice to both change and then attack because they won't let you use both weapons and plasmids at the same time. Also you need Eve to power the Plasmids, so you're standing there getting shot while you inject yourself before you then have to hit the button twice more to attack while desperately cycling through your attacks to find the right one, it's just a clunky, chaotic mess that makes an otherwise pretty easy game really quite frustrating.

The Plasmids in themselves are actually pretty useless. I mean they look nice and there is always that initial excitement when you get a new power. Plus the game keeps telling you that there is noway to survive without Adam but I'd honestly argue that Plasmids are just fluff, window dressing and weapons are a much more useful thing to fight with especially since they can be upgraded too. Tonics on the other hand, which is where most of the RPG elements are, are really useful..They are how you shape your character as you wish to play him with tonics split into Combat, which obviously allows you to improve and shape whether you want an offensive character, a defensive character or an all rounder, Engineering which changes how you interact with the world of Rapture through hacking and interaction with the many sentries and security measures. And Physical which allows you to play around with your characters physiology. That does mean it isn't your basic points in slots to certain attributes and instead specific Tonics that do specific things for you to choose. I personally concentrated mainly on defense because especially early in the game, with the constant reloading of both Eve and bullets means the enemies get a lot of free hits in and it's nice to at least have something to stop that. But it's your choice.

Although the weapons are much more practical they are also a lot more boring. There is a wrench, that you can upgrade to the most powerful weapon and a camera that can help you get special upgrades by taking photos and every weapon has a unique BioShock look and multiple ammo types but it's really the usual pistol, machine gun, shotgun, grenade launcher etc

The pacing is all kinds of wrong, the game is brutally short. I mean of course the experience will last longer if you soak in Rapture (arf) but just because you've slowed down doesn't mean the game has. The first 'boss' the twisted Dr. Steinman can be a royal pain in the arse simply because at that point you don't have many weapons or ammo or plasmids and Eve and so it becomes this frustrating test of endurance. Then simply after a few levels the game has no difficulty at all, you have so many weapons, so many plasmids and tonics that you're so upgraded you just steamroll through every level. And since the FPS mechanics aren't particularly fun anyway, the fact it becomes so easy means that not only are the FPS aspects shitty but irritating as well. And this is a shame, especially in regards to Big Daddy's - they are given a huge amount of hype, shaking the ground underfoot, tearing people apart, causing the Splicer's to scatter just by roaring, then when you fight them they are just bullet sponges not really scary or challenging. They do try and make it harder like enemies who teleport so you can't just empty your ammo into them but honestly it's just more of a nuisance because it means you have to wait for them to reappear shoot them some more, wait for them to reappear and so on, it's the same for any enemy with 'tactics', since they provide no threat to you it's just annoying that the fights are unnecessarily prolonged, you just want to move on and look at the next bit of beautiful scenery! Even playing this game while juggling it with job applications, interviews, coffee breaks and getting my PC fixed I still finished this game in two days and that was stopping and making sure I was looking at everything, so the game itself is probably less than ten hours long.

And perhaps the greatest disappointment is the level where you must become a Big Daddy, I mean I know they aren't much for you but with enemies scattering in all directions from them you'd expect to feel more... powerful. I mean I know you're already godlike with all your Tonics by this point but you're turning into a Big Fucking Daddy, that should mean something - feel like something. But in practice you just play like you have all the way up to this point, only now the helmet you are wearing means everything is harder to see.

The best aspect of the gameplay is BioShock's version of the moral choice. Plasmids and Tonics are possible thanks to Adam, which is harvested from a sea slug. Adam is what keeps Rapture turning and ultimately turned it into the hellhole that it is. Little Sisters are young girls who in twisted experiments were symbiotically merged with the sea slug and sent out to gather Adam from the corpses around Rapture, Little Sisters then give a certain amount of this to Big Daddy's in exchange for protection. Big Daddy's are these huge, metal monsters. And basically the moral choice boils down to whether you save the Little Sister, taking less Adam which means less superpowers for you but other benefits including saving a little girl or Harvesting the Little Sister for all her Adam but killing her in the process. Although in the end the results don't vary all that much except maybe the ending of the game, there is nothing quite as horrifying as watching a little girl cry over her Big Daddy you just murdered, before she cowers away from you, swatting you away as you reach out and grab her, taking her life in your hands. I personally chose to kill them and get the maximum amount of Adam and the maximum amount of shame on all my playthrough's prior to this review but this time around I chose to save them and there are benefits of their own, which I won''t spoil but they are more than just feeling good for yourself and worth discovering, but like I say, it's your choice bro/sis!

So do I recommend this? I know I've been reviewing this a critic so I've found problems but honestly Rapture is a world unlike anything else, BioShock's story is mindblowing and it's an experience that I recommend to everyone, an experience I recommend to experience over and over and I promise you it won't get old. BioShock is flawed, but the flaws will never get in the way. You will love this. I love this.

Think About It!

-Locke