Bioshock
By Kenneth Glenn
Monday. Oct 22, 4:55 PM
Comes pretty close to being perfect.

Bioshock is one of those games I've been watching for a while now but people weren't really paying attention to until lately. That has obviously certainly changed, what with the barrage of perfect scores coming from multiple sources. So is it really all that? Well, I think it is a really great game, but perfect? I have a hard time saying any game is perfect, but this game sure comes close.

Right off the bat, you are assaulted by stunning graphics. In fact, I didn't realize that the playable part of the game had begun for a moment because it looked so good. The water in every part of this game, be it flowing, sitting still, or in any other form, looks fantastic. Now, water is something that is difficult to make look good in any game, but Bioshock tackled it and succeeded. This is, of course, very important, given that shortly after the game begins you find yourself in the underwater city of Rapture. The water, however, is not the only good looking part of the game by a long shot. Environments are highly detailed and a wonder to behold: they invite you to explore them thoroughly. Character models are beautifully expressive, and animations are carried out incredibly smoothly. All of this on a high definition TV and you have something that will make any graphics junkie salivate.

The music and sound effects are likewise brilliant. There are songs from the time period of the game that are piped out through jukeboxes or sound systems within the city of Rapture, as well as a fantastic symphonic soundtrack laid over the top of the game. The sound effects are over the top as well. It is a crime to play this game with anything less than 5.1 surround sound. The voice acting is superbly done, giving real feeling to the story as it is laid out in front of you.

The story of Bioshock is without a doubt one of the best storylines in any game, period. It is the tale of one man's desire to create a utopian society unperturbed by the rest of the world. When your character stumbles into the city, though, it is already in shambles, a once perfect paradise destroyed by the shortcoming of humans and the zealotry of scientists. You are the sole survivor of a plane crash, and find yourself swimming to safety on what looks like a miniscule island. There is a building sticking up out of the ocean so you swim to it and enter. Lights come up and music starts playing and you find a vehicle that seems like an elevator. Soon, you are descending into the depths of the sea to get your first glimpse at Rapture. Once you enter the city, you see a person being killed by what looks like a mutated human. You are soon free to move around and begin equipping yourself to fight off what is left of the inhabitants who have all gone mad or are no longer human.

Your arsenal starts small with a wrench, and then guns and eventually powers. These powers, called plasmids, are instilled in you by collecting Adam and spending it to upgrade. When used, they consume your Eve, which is displayed in a second gauge below your health meter. This, of course, is part of what makes Bioshock very interesting: these powers are what you use not only to fight enemies, but to get them to fight each other. You can freeze, electrocute, incinerate, swarm with bees, enraging people to attack everyone around you, or make enemies the targets of automated turrets and security cameras. There are also a myriad of other skills you gain that help you with your offense, defense, weapon skills, hacking skills, and so on. There is a good bit of depth to all of these powers – and you can only choose a certain amount of them to be active at any given time – so you have to play around and figure out what configuration works for you. These plasmids add a great deal of depth to the gameplay and give more inspiration to search all of the nooks and crannies in a level.

So with all of this gushing praise, what holds Bioshock back from being perfect? Well, I have some minor gripes. I played this on the Xbox360 because my computer wouldn't stand a chance, so I cannot comment on its shortcomings on other platforms. On the 360, though, there was definitely some choppiness later on in the game. It also seemed to get worse if you played for an extended amount of time. That was the only real technical issue I had. There was, however, some problems with pacing and setup as well. The graphics are beautiful, but some levels just look downright boring after a while. The enemies are also problematic in that there are only 10 or so varieties of them in the entire game. So between the same enemies and similar environments, the later parts of the game felt very repetitive. There is also some debate about the way you respawn after dying. Since you never really die and just end up back at a vita chamber, which acts like a checkpoint, you can just continue on as if nothing happened. The enemies retain the amount of damage you have already inflicted upon them, and everything remains just as you left it. So in a way this does make the game easy, but playing through on “hard” makes you learn how to stay alive. Otherwise the frustration of starting back at these checkpoints becomes overwhelming.

Bioshock is not very long (clocking in around 10 hours), so you might be fine just renting it. However, subsequent playthroughs to find everything and experience the story again are definitely fun. Plus, when a game comes along that is this great, I feel it is a valuable part of my library so I can come back to it whenever I feel the pull of Rapture and its inhabitants.

Kenneth Glenn

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