BioShock

"This game isn't ready for dreamtime, Mr B."

Bioshock is probably one of the most eagerly awaited and hyped up games in recent memory. Unfortunately, although it's a good game, it just doesn't quite match its expectations.

The basic plot is a fairly familiar one to players of FPS: The hero finds himself in 'An Unusual Situation (TM)'. In this case he is the sole survivor of a plane crash in the middle of the ocean. Fortunately, he is in swimming distance of a tower which contains an elevator to the undersea city of Rapture.

Rapture is a city full of the great and the good, deliberately out of sight of mainstream society where artists do not have to fear the censor and science isn't constrained by petty morality. In other words it's a kind of "Do as thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" kind of place and, as such, it has gotten a bit out of control - and by 'a bit out of control' I mean it's now populated by homicidal lunatics with superhuman powers. Your task is to get out of there in one piece.

The atmosphere for Rapture is actually well done. The whole game has a 50's vibe to it with the architecture and design reflective of this. You can see adverts on the walls and hear taped bulletins that remind one of a long forgotten era where it was OK to smoke in public and women had one career option - mother and wife. Obviously as the populace has gone completely mad the place has seen better days and there is now extensive damage to the buildings not too mention liberal numbers of cadavers which you can search for loot. So there you are: All alone with only your trusty wrench and the ability to shoot paralyzing sparks from your fingers between you and certain doom. Yes it's going to b-

Wait. Paralyzing sparks? What the heck?

Bioshock's upgrade system is two fold. On one hand you can pick up various weapons throughout the game and upgrade them a certain number of times at one off stations. On the other you can pick up a number of active and passive abilities that give you superhuman powers to help you through the game. Some of these abilities - the active ones (i.e. linked to your mouse button) are called Plasmids whilst the passive ones (i.e. always on) are called Tonics - are found as the game progresses. Others can be purchased from machines along the way or earned by other means. The trouble is that you don't buy the abilities with cash, you buy them with a substance called ADAM which can only be obtained from one particular source. More on this later.

You can buy other items with cash from different types of machines though. Some will sell you various bits and pieces such as first aid kits or EVE (the fuel that powers your ADAM abilities) whilst others will sell you ammunition for your weapons. You can also try to hack the machines which involves a mini game where you have to rewire a circuit. This starts off as fun but quickly becomes quite tedious especially later on in the game when it suddenly becomes exponentially more difficult. Fortunately you can buy or build hacking tools to help you if you really need to find out what's in a safe or get a discount on your ammunition. You can also hack security cameras and turrets to be friendly to you but this is probably more trouble than its worth except in some of the set pieces where it pays to have a bit of extra firepower. Oh yeah, you can also rewire the First Aid stations so that they harm enemies who try to use them. Again, it sounds like a good idea but in reality you're better just blowing them up as you get free first aid kits for doing so. Finally, the game also allows you to construct various items out of bits and bobs you find later in the game. This is actually quite a nice feature and very useful later on.

So: ADAM. How do you get it?

Unless you've been living under a rock you'll have heard about the Little Sisters and Big Daddies. These oddball pairs wander around the ruined city searching out corpses to drain the ADAM soaked blood from. The Little Sister is a genetically modified invulnerable toddler who carries a big syringe for this purpose. The Big Daddy is her protector and is essentially a seven foot plus armour plated man with either a rail gun or a big drill on his arm. When you first look at them you might think they'll be slow and cumbersome. They're not. They hit fast, they hit hard and they can kill you in seconds.

In order to get the ADAM you have to first kill the Big Daddy. This is a tough task at first and represents the hardest fights in the game. You really have to plan your approach and it's a great feeling when you ice one. Unfortunately, later in the game you can use a weapon combination that kills the Big Daddy in about five seconds with no risk of danger to yourself. This is a huge disappointment and really detracts from the experience.

Once you've killed the Daddy you have the option of Harvesting (i.e. killing) the Little Sister or Rescuing her. If you choose the former you get more ADAM initially, if you choose the latter you get less although you do get bonuses later on in the game. Much has been made of this moral choice but it's really not one you feel attached to. Ultimately it's just a choice of whether you want your reward now or later.

So that's Bioshock's premise: Escape from a ruined underwater city using only your wits, weapons and superpowers whilst possibly killing a few toddlers along the way. Of course, there's more to it than that; there's bags of atmosphere, some great set pieces and the attention to detail is lovely. It's just that the game suffers from a few issues that drag it into the 'good' rather than 'great' category.

The first problem is that you can't die. No, seriously. You can't. If you get killed you simply respawn in a chamber with absolutely no penalty. In addition the enemies you were attacking when you got whacked don't regenerate their health - or if they do they do it very slowly - so you can leap straight back into the action. This makes the quicksave function a bit pointless and also brings into question the need for first aid packs. If you can't be permanently killed then why bother? There is only one part in the game where this becomes an issue and that's the end, the rest of the time you can pretty much just cack handedly bash away safe in the knowledge that nothing's going to inconvenience you too much. This feature alone knocks a point off the mark and somewhat ruins the atmosphere.

The second issue is the abilities themselves. Although they look nice and there are a range of them there are actually very few that you need. The most beneficial ones are probably the passive combat Tonics and you soon find yourself saving up for them rather than the flashier active Plasmids. There is a certain strategy to getting through the game that relies on one particular weapon, one Plasmid and a few combat Tonics and it works every time aside from a few specialized situations. So, nice idea, but not really essential.

Then there is the weapon balancing. This is one of the few games where your first weapon is actually your most effective. Although there is a nice range of weapons you'll just find that it's not worth using them except, again, in certain situations. To compound this the balancing in some of the weapons is all wrong. Some are so weak or so awkward as to be useless. Others just make bits of the game far too easy (earlier I referred to the Big Daddy instant kill. This is one such example).

Finally there is the main issue. The first half of the game is excellent. It really draws you in and gets the heart racing as you struggle to find your way through. You won't die that often although you will run around desperately looking for a health station. It's well paced and just hard enough to make it worthwhile. Then it just goes... wrong.

To give you an idea it's almost as if the developers took the first half of the game to the suits in marketing and were told "Hey, it's great, but we need to get it out before Halo 3!". It just feels rushed and derivative. Suddenly the enemies become exponentially harder - although the character models are the same. You're sent on multiple scavenger hunts. The hacking becomes stupidly difficult. Finally you get to the end and have a brief and dull battle with the final boss in the same way you do with any mediocre shooter. All these examples seem to show that it's been hurried out when it might have been an idea to give them, say, another six months to get it right. It just becomes a bit boring and that's sad because it starts so well.

In summary this is a good game and has enough going for it to be recommended. Unfortunately it can't be called great because there's just too much wrong with it and it feels incomplete. Worth a play but then you'll probably put it back in its case where it'll gather dust for the rest of eternity. Shame that.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 09/10/07

Game Release: BioShock (EU, 08/24/07)