Bioshock is the heavily anticipated successor to System Shock 2, and it manages to live up to the hype. Now while Bioshock is an incredibly good game, and it has everything that a good shooter needs, it still feels incomplete. Maybe it’s just my habit of nitpicking everything, but it seems as if things like inventory management, balance, and a flashlight would have severely improved the game. Although, despite those issues, I would still say that Bioshock is a great game, and a recommended buy, it’s just that that its not everything that it was promised to be.
The story starts out with you being the only survivor of a crashed plane in the middle of the ocean, with a conveniently placed, underwater dystopia nearby. After going to said dystopia, you find out how everyone and everything went crazy after a new and coveted substance called “Adam” could make you have superpowers and whatnot.
The game play consists of you running from point A to point B, and along the way you find three different types of enemies; The “Splicers” which are really just Adam addicted druggies, the “Big Daddies” which are super strong enforcers of peace, and the “Machines” which are just turrets, cameras, and security drones. There are six guns, a wrench, and a camera for you to choose from, with each being good at certain things, such as the shotgun for close range, and the crossbow for shooting from afar.
You also get to choose various powerups, such as shooting lightning from your fingertips, or turning invisible when you stand still. The element that makes this different from most shooters is that you can set up the conditions of meeting most enemies.
You can hack a turret or security camera to prevent someone from stabbing you in the back, and you can put down proximity mines and electrified trip wire to make mince meat out of tough enemies. Hacking is a bit tedious, as it is really just a 50 second version of the old Lucasarts game, Pipe Dream. You could play this just like a normal shooter, but you would keep getting killed every 10 minutes. In this game though, death doesn’t mean anything since you just revive at a point 10 seconds away from where you got killed. Also, the game offers you choices, but it only changes the story by changing which of the three endgame movies you see. The game lasts about 20 hours, if you take your time, and around 12 to 15 if you just rush it.
Bioshock is a finely polished and fun game, but it seems as if some of the game play elements were shoehorned in, or rushed a bit. I’d recommended you get this, but keep in mind that it isn’t as perfect as it was promised to be.
Bioshock gets an A-
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