Bioshock Impressions
I just spent a few hours with Bioshock tonight and it is amazing. Truly a fun, creepy, stylish game that looks like it is going to be a thrill to play. I have to admit, I really put playing this game off for too long. I have to imagine that nothing I can say about the game hasn’t already been said elsewhere by someone else. But I am not going to let that stop me from talking about it anyways.
For those who don’t know, Bioshock is a first-person shooter with a heavy dose of RPG elements. Basically the game plays like a shooter, but instead of wild huge firefights with you running through the wilderness (ala Halo) you are exploring the underwater city of Rapture and trying to find your way out. But if it was just a shooter, it wouldn’t be as impressive as it is to me.
The city of Rapture itself is amazing. A huge art deco, stylish city at the bottom of the sea. The story is that it was built in the late 1940s by a man named Andrew Ryan who sought to leave behind a lot of the ‘outdated’ morality and beliefs of the world above the waves. So he built a city where, as he puts it: ‘the artist need not fear the censor, the scientist need not by bound by petty morality’. The environment of the game is beautiful. The architecture, the music, the signs on the walls, all of them really do seem like they came out of that period of history. But as beautiful as Rapture is, it is horrible and terrifying at the same time.
The story is that while the city worked fine for a while, it all fell apart. I don’t know why yet, I am only a couple hours into the game, but the place now is filled with raving lunatics trying to kill one another in order to harvest ‘Adam’ or just because they have gone insane from having spliced in too many ‘Plasmids’.
Hmm, I got ahead of myself a little here. It turns out that scientists in Rapture figured out how to manipulate a person’s genetic structure, and with those manipulations give people what can only be called super-powers. These powers are called ‘Plasmids’ and you get your first one, Electro-Shock, pretty much at the start of the game.
Electro-shock fires a bolt of lightning that does some damage and stuns foes for a few moments, but the real fun is to get some foes into a puddle of water and then hit the water with it and electrocute them all at once. Yes, the game engine is just that fun. So far I’ve found Electro-Shock, Incinerate (set people on fire (which they can douse by diving into water) or ignite a patch of oil), Telekinesis (throw stuff in the air, catch thrown items), Enrage (make someone go insane and attack others near them), and one more which I have just forgotten. All of them have their uses and are fun to play with but you can only have a couple of them equipped at a time, which brings us to Adam.
What let the people of Rapture make these discoveries was something called ‘Adam’. Basically you need Adam in order to purchase more Plasmids and upgrades, and you need Adam in order to unlock/purchase more slots to equip Plasmids in. Doesn’t sound too bad, except Adam only comes from one place and that is the ‘Little Sisters’. Basically crazy little girls who go around stabbing corpses with a giant syringe, sucking all the blood out, drinking the blood, and distilling the Adam from it. Sounds more creepy then dangerous, but they have guards that travel with them called Big Daddies. These guys are nasty. I’ve only fought a couple so far and both fights were really and truly brutal. Definately a fun challenge to be had in the game without it being too easy or too over-the-top hard.
I am sleepy and aware that I am beginning to ramble so I’ll break my impressions of the game down real quick here. It is a game that plays as a first-person shooter with a bit of creative weapon and environment manipulation thrown in. It has a hint of an RPG element in the powering up of your weapons and plasmids, plus it has a much stronger story then any shooter I can think of. The art design and environments of the game are beautiful and memorable and terrifying all at the same time. It is fun to play, the interface and actual game controls are simple to use.
Definately a game worth owning if you have an Xbox 360. I am definately going to sink many more hours into playing this game, but right now I need sleep.
Tags: Bioshock, Impressions, Xbox 360