Bioshock

Bioshock 1 & 2

I recently purchased, after a recommendation from a friend, Bioshock. I quickly played through the game and then bought its sequel, Bioshock 2. This I also rapidly completed. The two games are very similar so I will comment on both games in one go. This will contain some spoilers so you have been warned!

Before I bought Bioshock, I had heard very little about the game. I half read a couple of reviews and decided that I would wait for the game to come down in price before I got it as it wasn’t at the top of my gaming priorities at the time. I tend to go through a lot of games in a typical year and forgot all about Bioshock until a friend recommended it to me a few weeks back. So I found the original Bioshock and Bioshock 2 for a bargain price and eagerly started playing.

The first thing that really stuck me was the awesome setting. In the first game, you play Jack, who after a plane crash, lands beside a mysterious lighthouse in the middle of the ocean, which leads to an undersea city called Rapture. As the game progresses, you learn that Rapture was founded by a wealthy business magnate called Andrew Ryan, who wanted to build a city away from the rest of the world that was based on the philosophy and teachings of the Russian/American philosopher Ayn Rand, although this is never directly stated. Here he gathered all of the world’s best scientific thinkers and philosophers to create a perfect utopia, which inevitably falls apart leading to a vicious civil war and plenty of opportunities for violence and destruction.

Throughout the distinctively art deco submarine city, its dark dank locations and eerie atmosphere created a great setting for the game. Rapture looks very much like an underwater version of New York or Chicago, complete with skyscrapers, parks, train systems and huge underwater billboards and advertising. The presentation is great, with the city rendered in great detail, plenty of opportunities for some exploration as the player moves through the city. Thankfully there are lots of large panoramic windows allowing for some fantastic views of the city, but its usually not too wise to linger enjoying the view as the city’s fearsome inhabitants are constantly on the prowl.

The sequel is set 8 years after the original, and the effects of these 8 years of neglect and conflict on the city are very evident as it slowly crumbles. Much of the city is in ruins, leaks and damage are much more common and it is obvious that it is only a matter of time before Rapture is reclaimed by the ocean. The two games look very similar with only minor graphical differences between them.

The games combat system is fairly standard, with the usual array of weapons found in many other FPS games today e.g. shotguns, machine guns, rocket launchers etc. Each weapon also features different ammo types such as anti personnel or armour piercing rounds. Bioshock’s main defining combat feature is that of plasmids. With plasmids, the player can bestow upon themselves a number of different abilities, such as electric shock, freeze, incinerate, telekinesis, as well some more unique ones such as insect swarms and the abilities to confuse enemies or security systems. Your plasmids use EVE, which is the equivalent of mana or energy in other games, and can be easily replenished using readily available EVE hypos.

While many of the abilities are far from original, the games combat is lots of fun. Using your weapons and plasmids in interesting combinations during frenetic fire fights can be very rewarding, such as catching grenades thrown at you and hurling them back with telekinesis, or electrocuting someone then impaling them against the wall with a well placed harpoon through the face. The sequel is very similar, but with some noticeable improvements, namely being able to dual wield both your plasmids and weapons. The weapons in the sequel have also been noticeably refined and some fun new ones such as the drill.

The games enemies are known as splicers. These are drug addicted lunatics where the effects of too many plasmids have taken their toll and devolved many of them into rambling lunatics. It would have been nice to have had a bit more variety in the enemies, with the same couple of enemies appearing through the game. But this is not a major concern as they suit the environment well, and listening to their insane ramblings can be quite entertaining before you euthanize them with extreme prejudice.

One of the coolest and most original parts of the game I found were the Big Daddies and Little Sisters. The Little Sisters, are genetically enhanced, brainwashed young girls, whose job it is to wander around Rapture, collecting a substance called ADAM, used to purchase abilities and upgrades, from dead bodies scattered around levels. They are guarded by hulking monsters, known as Big Daddies, who attack anyone who tries to interfere with the Little Sisters’ work. This was a very interesting idea, and one what was executed very well, especially in the first game. It is an unsettling image of an innocent little girl, covered in filthy blood spattered clothes, happily humming to themselves as they stab a large syringe into mutated bodies, all the while completely oblivious to the nightmare surrounding them. The hulking escorts, or Big Daddies, are extremely tough opponents, who make any approach towards their charge a very hazardous proposition indeed. The little girls affectionately call the Big Daddies Mr Bubbles and constantly talk to their monstrous companions in a cute, innocent way, completely in contrast to the reality of the situation.

The player is then given a choice. While you don’t necessarily have to attack the Big Daddy in every instance, you do need to collect ADAM to gain certain abilities that are required in order to progress the game, like needing to gain the incinerate plasmid in order to melt a frozen door. When you finally manage to dispatch a Big Daddy, you can then collect the ADAM from the Little Sister in two ways. By either harvesting them, which results in a large amount of ADAM, but also kills the girl, or by rescuing them, which gives you less ADAM but breaks the brain washing and allows the girl to escape. Now I must say when I initially started playing the game, I planned to be a ruthless bastard to the Little Sisters. But upon seeing the Little Sister run up to the smoking carcass of her Big Daddy crying ‘Wake up Mr Bubbles! Wake up!’, I could not bring myself to do it, and by the end of the game had saved every single one of the girls.

In the second game things are a little different as the players character is type of Big Daddy, and you can carry the Little Sisters around on your back collecting ADAM from bodies. You still have to kill the original Big Daddy in order to ‘adopt’ the Little Sister. This new method of doing things is interesting, but I didn’t feel it made a huge difference to the overall gameplay. The sequel also introduces new types of Big Daddies, and the extremely tough Big Sisters, but they are very rare and you only have to fight a handful throughout the game.

The game also contains a unusual system regarding death. Throughout most of the levels are scattered what are called Vita Chambers. These cannot be activated or influenced, and are usually placed in convenient locations around the maps. When the player is killed, and you will be, you automatically respawn at the nearest Vita Chamber. You have no choice over which one you respawn in, but they are common enough that you usually don’t have to trek too far across the map to get back to where you were. When you respawn, you do so with all of your items and weapons as they were the instant you died. I found this to be a little counter productive as I felt it removed much of the penalty of dying, and gave an unfair advantage to the player, as you could just come straight back to the fight as if nothing had happened. One example would be attacking a Big Daddy, causing as much damage as you could, then letting it kill you. You would then respawn, and the Big Daddy would ignore you again, but it would not have regained any of its health while you were free to fill up on health and ammo and then easily dispatch it at you leisure. The only situation where this was otherwise was the final boss in the first game, but by then you should be powerful enough to defeat him without too much trouble on your first or second try.

In terms of replay value, there are a large number of upgrades available to use and customise your character. There are also different endings depending on how you deal with certain situations, namely whether your save or kill the Little Sisters and how you deal with certain NPCs in the game.

The sequel was much easier than the first game, even on hard mode and lacked any sort of bosses, even at the very end of the game. In the first game, Big Daddies were dangerous even toward the very end, but in the sequel, once you are sufficiently powerful, they can be killed quite easily, which I felt undermined the whole point of this aspect of the game. I was also disappointed about the end of the game as it wasn’t that difficult and I felt a bit under whelmed when I finished it. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy the game, far from it, but I would have liked it to have been a little more challenging.

Despite these quibbles, I did find the games very enjoyable. The city of Rapture is a beautiful and original setting, with great atmosphere and some very satisfying combat and moments. The Big Daddies and Little Sisters were a fun idea, and I thought it was well done. While there wasn’t a great deal of weapons or features I haven’t seen before, the Bioshock games are a worthy addition to my collection.