Bioshock (PC) Review

Okay, so everyone’s already played Bioshock. In fact, it was many people’s GOTY for 2007, and ranks thirteenth over at gamerankings. So why review it now? Well, since I don’t have an Xbox 360, it’s the closest I can get to doing a review of a 360 game. I also already played through it, so that’s a plus.

That being said, what of this game they call Bioshock? Unless you actually live in a failed underwater dystopia, you probably know that the game’s an incredibly atmospheric FPS. The art design in Bioshock is so good, it’s ridiculous. The entire city was forged, yes forged, in modernist art deco. The designers poured through tracks of music from the 1940’s to find the ones that best fit their game. These tracks play over the city’s PA system between ominous public service announcements. The menu screens play unsettling piano notes as you scroll through them. The amount of detail put into the underwater city of Rapture is ridiculous. I can only imagine a world where every developer combs their environments with 2k’s level of scrutiny. It’s a sunny world.

Bioshock doesn’t really use story and time-based events to railroad the player through a specific level, such as a game like Half-Life 2. Instead, 2k took an approach that’s more like corralling the player. You’re given an objective in a particular section of Rapture, and then you’re free to move about at your leisure until you complete it. You then uncover the story at your own pace. You can also backtrack to previous levels, if you want to pick up extra power-ups, or tie up some loose ends, but it’s not required to do so.

This pacing method is cool, because it makes you actually feel like you’re one of the many crazed, underwater junkies that you find yourself killing. But, that’s not to say the execution is without problems. For one, you’re constantly being sidetracked. And not just, find the key, flip the switch. It’s more like, travel to the opposite side of the city, collect X amount of certain items, then flip the switch, and then it didn’t work so…you get the point. This wouldn’t be so bad, but the overarching objective is never really that complicated that I feel like I shouldn’t have been able to accomplish it and keep playing the game. It’s a discouraging element, because the real meat of the game is parts that make you feel like you’re side tracked from what you’re actually supposed to be doing.

There’s another problem with the miniature sandbox approach; it’s just not a big enough sandbox. The style works great for the first hour or two. After that, things get fairly repetitive. For one, there are only so many different types of enemies. While it’s cool that there’s tons of ways to kill enemies, that’s really all there is to do. Well, technically you can also use hacking to take control of turrets, security robots, and even get deals from vending machines. I enjoyed the hacking minigame, but it was something that occurred so frequently that even it got redundant after awhile.

Boil the game down, you have to get from point A to point B and there are enemies blocking the way. Granted, this is what any action game boils down to, but unlike games like Half Life 2 and Resident Evil 4, there’s nothing that breaks up the pacing in Bioshock. You’re immediate objective is almost always, “kill these enemies.” And fighting each enemy is almost exactly the same as fighting the enemy before it. Even the ominous Big Daddies become boring after awhile. This is especially true due to the fact that there’s no penalty when you die. You simply respawn at one of the overly abundant regeneration tubes. Because of that, there’s no real reason to worry about strategy against the Big Daddies. All you need is enough firepower to kill one and a nearby regeneration tube.

What kept me playing Bioshock was the games atmosphere and impressively well executed story. The tale of the fall of rapture and the tragic lives of its doomed citizens is undoubtetly one of the best plots in a video game, ever. It’s not perfect though. 2k attempted to use a morality based fork in the story to offer multiple endings. The problem is that that all the game really cares about is your attitude towards the creepy little sisters, who are essentially walking power ups. Killing even one of them means that you get the” bad” ending. It just seems archaic when compared with the sort of morality systems that much older games like KOTOR implemented.
Bioshock is basically a simple FPS with incredible art design and a well thought out plot. It was disapointing that the game started out so strong, and the proceeded like a downward spiral, ending on a low note. It just didn’t pack the punch that I wanted it to, and that I thought it was capable of.