THE REVIEW:
I regret
nothing.
WARNING: This review is Spoiler-ific
Bioshock is, for the uninformed, the massively popular first-person shooter/survival horror game from 2k studios. Since its 2007 debut, it's won numerous awards, mountains of fan-issued praise, and a near-perfect 96% rating on Metacritic; for its spectacular action, deep, intelligent story, and inordinately imaginative concepts.
So it logically follows that eventually this Xbox and PC-exclusive game would eventually move to the massive, nex-gen pastures of the PS3; and when the demo for it came out over the Playstation network, it sent me over the moon; after much badgering and bargaining, I finally got a copy of it in my hands, my expectations dancing madly to the tune of its strobe-light seizure-inducing beauty.
What was my final opinion, after so much pained anticipation and fanboyish glee?
A resounding "Eh...".
Things got off to a flying start when I was introduced to the faceless mute du jour, Jack--but wait! Jack actually does say something: he says the opening line of the game, in a voice so deep and melodious that it would have re-defined what a voice actor should be. Unfortunately, this opening line is all he says, save some whiny, high-pitched screams whenever someone shoots him, electrifies him, bludgeons him...you get the idea.
The game kicks off with your plane crashing into the Atlantic Ocean, whereupon you frantically swim onto a nearby lighthouse jutting out of the sea.
...Oookay, then.
If, like me, you've been in this business long enough to know that there are no such things as coincidences, you automatically realize that someone wanted you--yes, you in particular--to survive the crash.
There goes half of the game's mystique right there.
So, inside said lighthouse, you find your way into a bathysphere (one of those circly submarines), which takes you down thirty-odd fathoms under the sea and into the underwater metropolis of Rapture.
Rapture is, undoubtedly, one of the most impressive ideas I've ever heard of: for a summary, please read
Atlas Shrugged while listening to Ringo Starr's "Octopus's Garden".
While the game was praised all over for its innovative and complex story, the entire experience fell apart for me around the second level, where I found a taped phone conversation that revealed to me that only the city's founder or his relatives could use the very spheres I got there in.
Then, ten minutes later, I found one detailing recent genetic engineering experiments.
Translation: Guess who you're a clone of!
So the story is piss-poor and thin if you apply even a minute amount of critical thinking, which leaves the game with the one thing no survival/horror game should ever have to rely upon: its gameplay.
Combat revolves around using weapons and plasmids--gene-altering materials that grant the user incredible abilities--against the usual Baskin-Robbins assortment of zombies, turrets, lumbering giants, and little girls.
Hang on...what?
As it turns out, nobody was kidding when they said the only way to upgrade your power repertoire was to do horrible things to young children. Before long in the game, you're introduced to the genetic supplement known as ?ADAM?, which is key to the process of creating and upgrading plasmids. Of course, ADAM is produced by the "Little Sisters": girls who have been genetically altered, zombified, outfitted in pink, and condemned to forever wander the sprawling corridors of Rapture.
Dandy.
Naturally, if you want said ADAM, you'll need to either beat the sisters to death; or, contrarily, grab them by the face and shove a needle in their necks and cure them of being zombies.
Isn't that grand?
As logic would dictate, this particular treasure, like any other, has a guardian: the game's infamous, astounding "Big Daddy" Characters. The Big Daddies wander the sprawling, non-linear streets of Rapture using dynamic A.I; accompanied by a little sister at most or all times. To the best of my knowledge, they're unique in the enemy industry in that they will refrain from attacking you unless you hit first.
_______________If you see this, you are soooo fucked. That is, unless you use your lightning attack. And you WILL.
However:
Sprawling, non-linear world maps being what they are, there will quite assuredly be numerous times where you?ll throw down a proximity mine or cyclone trap, only to kill its intended target through other means. However, there?s no way to pick said mines back up, and if you put one of them down in a high-traffic area (and you WILL, because they ALL are), you can bet your bionic implants (reference!) you?ll be blindsided at the worst possible moment by an irate drill-waving mecha.
Bah.
Luckily, you'll stumble over health, ammo, and money with every alternate step (and again!). I am NOT f**king kidding--towards the end of the game, I was literally having to RANDOMLY FIRE INTO THE AIR just to make sure I could pick up the massive amounts of ammunition I found. My wallet was full, I had maximum health and energy hypos, and whenever I was faced with adversity, I could just play a crowbarred-in
Pipe Dream minigame and restore my flawless status quo.
Okay, so there's little to none of the game's touted survival/horror atmosphere. But that doesn't matter, right? We can still have a good time, assuming we stick to the much more refined first-person gunplay, which is tactical and intelligent and--Ho-ho, as if.
The game's variety of guns, which stick dutifully to the established order of things (Melee, Shotgun, Pistol, Sniper, Machine gun, Missile launcher, Overpowered exotic thing you
can never find ammo for and never use anyways), are quickly rendered moot by the fact that the first power you get electrifies enemies for a massive amount of damage and three seconds of immobility. Around your first encounter with this power, your supporting character helpfully chimes in to tell you that you can instantly kill people by beating them with your wrench after zapping them; so naturally, that's all you'll ever be doing, which makes your wide variety of weaponry aggressively unnecessary.
And speaking of the support character, I'd like to mention that he's the center of the game's second big twist--and writer, I know your plot is transparent, and Imma let you finish, but this thing is one o' da most predictable things of all time. OF ALL TIME.
Other than him, there's only two other characters with a name--one's the villain, and the other appears over the course of this sixteen-hour-long fol-der-ol exactly twice.
Yay.
So, maybe the shooting is lackluster and simple, the story is thin, the atmosphere is moot, and the difficulty curve wavers like the knickers of an indecisive prostitute, but maybe there's an aesthetic angle to it--
Oh, wait.
Two words:
Strobe Lighting.
Bottom line: Bioshock is painful to look at, tedious to play, and easy to predict. The sound repeats itself, the difficulty is inconsistent, and the open-world aspect is a flop.
Recommendation: Avoid at all costs (unless you plan on leaving it on your shelf as a memoire)
This review was based on the PS3 version of the game.
