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All right guys, back from my break, got settled into my dorm again, it's review time. Let's not waste a second here.
AZ, would you kindly read this review?
Bioshock:
Plot: You play as Jack, a plane crash survivor who makes his way into the underground city of Rapture. Based around the idea of a completely free market and total capitalism, Rapture is a city where everything costs and science isn't limited by ethical and moral problems. Due to this, scientists developed a substance called ADAM, which alters a person's genetic structure and allows them to change several features of their body, from physical attributes to basically gaining superpowers. However, ADAM was hard to produce. After more experimentation, it was discovered that by implanting a sea slug into a human host, the human could produce ADAM within their own body. So for whatever sick reason, it was decided that young girls make the best hosts. Ew. The girls became known as Little Sisters. The real problem started when people began to become addicted to ADAM, injecting themselves with so much that they developed major disfigurations. It came to a boil on New Year's Eve in 1959, when the addicts, known as Splicers, attacked and waged war in Rapture, tearing the city apart. They hunted down and killed Little Sisters for their ADAM. Entering the broken city, Jack receives correspondence from a man who calls himself Atlas. He says that his family is trapped down in Rapture, held hostage by the city's creator, Andrew Ryan. Atlas asks Jack to stop Ryan and save his family. To do so, Jack has to inject himself with ADAM. Along the way, he also encounters a woman named Dr. Tenenbaum, who urges him to save the Little Sisters from the Splicers.
Your goals in Rapture are as follows:
-Rescue Atlas' family
-Save the Little Sisters
-Escape
-Survive
Controls: Not a whole lot to say here. The controls are pretty smooth, you move at a solid pace, and you have a pretty standard HUD. There are two things I would like to mention though.
First, you pick up several guns throughout the game, and quite a few of them have tiny hit circles, particularly the revolver. And since Splicers tend to move pretty quickly, it can be a little frustrating trying to shoot them in their stupid faces. Maybe it's because I just haven't played an FPS in a while, but it was just easier for me to walk over and hit them with the wrench you pick up in the beginning.
Second, the game teaches you at the beginning to fire at enemies with electricity, a power you have thanks to ADAM, and then hit them with the wrench for an instant kill. Using this method, whenever you run out of EVE, the substance that acts as your MP bar and according the story keeps your genes in order or something, you automatically refill it when you switch back to using ADAM if you have more. However, if you decide to stick to using ADAM, you don't automatically refill your EVE when you run out. You have to do it manually. More than once I have had this conversation with myself while playing:
"More Splicers! Eat lightning, suckers! Ha ha h-CRAP WHY AM I NOT SHOOTING LIGHTNING"
Gameplay: I'll be honest with you all. I'm not a fan of the horror genre. Aside from not liking to pee myself when I play a game or watch a movie, the plot tends to be pretty stupid. However, I think that Bioshock did a pretty good job of keeping the pot engaging. I also enjoyed playing a horror game that wasn't about zombies, ghosts, or that kind of thing. Disfigured drug addicts was a new one for me.
The actual gameplay impressed me a lot. First of all, the game takes you through the back story of Rapture without a bunch of stupid cutscenes or people telling it to you through exposition. You actually get to find out for yourself through clues left all over the place, like messages written in blood on the walls or things like that. You also get to see its history through recordings that are strewn across each area, which contain accounts from scientists and doctors in Rapture. Often times before a boss, you'll find several of their recordings, indicating to you the motivations behind their actions. It's a nice change from the way most games tell a story, and it makes the player want to explore more to find the recordings.
One of the main points of the game comes from the moral choice you encounter when you find a Little Sister. You have the choice to either be a good person and Rescue the Little Sister, which lets her live, but you don't receive very much ADAM as a result, or you can Harvest the Little Sister, which kills her, but you receive a mess of ADAM from it, allowing you to purchase new abilities at stores, most of which are incredibly useful. This choice also affects how the game ends, and it adds an enormous amount of depth to the way the game is played.
My favorite part of this game, however, was the way that it pulled off its theme of horror and survival. The background did this to some extent, as the debris tossed everywhere indicates the nature of the city, but the theme is most effectively portrayed through music and sound in general, or lack thereof. Along with the standard jump and scare, Bioshock uses a sound technique known as infrasound, which at its highest frequencies is barely audible to the human ear. Infrasound has been scientifically shown to produce feelings of fear in humans, and its use in this game is brilliant. You just get an uneasy and unsettling feel through the whole game, contributing to the theme magnificently. Other sounds help bring the horror point home. Things rustle all over the place, you hear voices in the distance all the time, and the environment is somewhat interactable and makes noises as well. Several times throughout my gameplay, I have nearly freaked out when I'm walking down a hallway when all of a sudden something clatters near me, only to find out that it's a bucket that I happened to kick over. When there is music, it's faded and muffled 50's era music, once again showing how Rapture was corrupted.
Overall Appeal: Unfortunately, there's not a lot to this game other than the main story. Exploring is fun, but all it really yields you is supplies and maybe a couple recordings. It's not that much of a problem though, since mini games or side quests would kind of ruin the flow of the game anyway.
Lastly, I'd just like to add that this game is not for everyone. Especially the squeamish. There are corpses and and mutilated people all over the map, and sometimes people are killed right in front of you to watch. Definitely not something to play in front of your 6 year old niece, but if you're into this genre, and even if you aren't that into it, it's absolutely worth a play, if you have the stomach for it.
9.5 out of 10
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[Citation Needed] wrote: your superinsulatory properties have always been a founding tenet of our friendship
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