Hi everyone hope you're doing well, and welcome to my review of Bioshock! It's October again and it just so happens to be my favorite time of the year. The leaves changing color, the weather cooling off, and of course Halloween being right around the corner just gives me a good feeling. Plus my birthday is right in the middle of the month as a little bonus. So I'm going to try and review some creepy games in honer of this special time of year, and one of the best creepy games I could think of is the original Bioshock. When this first came out I couldn't wait to try it, the premise was so interesting, and everything I'd seen about it looked amazing. When I finally got my chance to play it I was blown away, just the opening sequence was enough to pull me into it's strange world. I don't think I'll ever forget going down the bathysphere into Rapture for the first time, it was a truly iconic way to start a game.
Bioshock is a first-person shooter developed and published by 2K Games. It was released for Xbox 360 in August of 2007, then later ported to PS3 in October of 2008. The lead designer on the project was Ken Levine, who also worked on the two sequels, but has recently left 2K. He has stated that inspiration for the original Bioshock came from such authors as Ayn Rand and George Orwell, and is based on the ideas of Objectivism. One of the main antagonists name is, Andrew Ryan, a partial anagram for Ayn Rand. People loved this game when it was first released, it was highly praised by critics and went on to sell very well. Two sequels were made following the success of this original one, and recently a collection of remastered versions of all three Bioshocks hit the store shelves.
The main things that make Bioshock so special are it's story and setting. The mystery of Rapture, the twists and turns that the plot takes, and the incredible atmosphere dripping off the world 2K created, makes you so immersed in what's happening. The year is 1960, you are protagonist Jack, and you're in an airplane flying over the Atlantic ocean. Suddenly something goes wrong with the plane and it crashes down into the water. Jack is the only survivor and is now floating in the black waters of the Atlantic in the middle of the night. As he watches the wreckage of the aircraft sink into the ocean, he swims towards the only thing in sight, a mysterious lighthouse. Oh and by the way, you're controlling Jack this whole opening sequence too, it's not just a cut scene.
As you climb the steps and enter, it's apparent that this is no ordinary lighthouse. There's the fact that it's located in the middle of the ocean, but also inside you find a bathysphere, a device used for deep sea diving that withstands the extreme pressure. A voice comes over your radio and introduces himself as a man named, Atlas, and tells you to get in the bathysphere and ride it down. So you get inside and pull the lever starting your decent into the water. This is the big reveal, the first time you get to see the underwater city of Rapture. As you sink lower and lower into the blackness, the lights of the city become more clear, until you get a good look at where your going. Rapture is a city, similar to New York City, at the bottom of the ocean, with thousands of people living there. Nobody on the surface knows of it's existence and you just stumbled upon it, coincidence I think not.
When you touch down at the bottom and go to exit the bathysphere, there's nobody there to welcome you, in fact the place looks like there was a riot or something. Before you can even get out the first thing you see is a man get brutally murdered right in front of you. The first person you come across, besides Atlas on your radio, seems to be completely insane and attacks you. Once you're safe Atlas comes on the radio and tells you to inject yourself with something called a "plasmid". Doing so gives you the ability to shoot electricity out of your hand, and will help to dispatch the dangerous people lurking around down here.
The founder of Rapture is a man named, Andrew Ryan. He built this hidden city as a place where the smartest and most creative people could work to discover new breakthroughs in science and medicine, without interference from any government or laws. The people of Rapture created plasmids, splicing their genes to give themselves superhuman powers, but over time too much of it drove people insane. This was the beginning of the end for this utopia, and on New Years Eve 1958 it all came to a head and the city has been in ruins ever since. The Rapture you see is a mere shell of what it once was, seemingly frozen on New Years Eve, crawling with psychos and Big Daddies.
The big discovery that led to the creation of plasmids was a substance called ADAM, harvested from sea slugs deep on the ocean floor. One scientist created the "Little Sisters", orphan girls genetically modified to wander around Rapture collecting all the ADAM they can find. To protect them he also made the "Big Daddies", huge creatures in massive diving suits that follow the Little Sisters around. They are by far the most intimidating enemies you'll come across, and really give the game that extra sense of dread, never knowing when you might run into one of these. If you kill a Big Daddy, you will then have the choice of killing and harvesting the Little Sister giving you a large amount of ADAM you can spend on plasmids. Or you can save her, turning her back to normal where she'll thank you and run off. If you save every Little Sister you come across you get the "good ending", if you kill more than one you will get the "bad ending", giving you a moral choice on how you want to play.
In addition to the incredible atmosphere, Bioshock also has fantastic gameplay. It's essentially a first-person shooter, giving you a pretty good selection of guns to use. But you also get to use the various plasmids, giving you powers like, shooting electricity, shooting fire, shooting bees, telekinesis, and more. You can use any combination of the two and this makes for some really fun and fast paced encounters with the residents of Rapture. You can even use the environment to your advantage. If you see a group of enemies standing in a puddle of water, shoot the water with electricity to zap them all at once. If you see a barrel of oil has leaked onto the floor, hit it with some fire and watch the room burn. There are so many different ways to go about fighting enemies it gives the game a unique feeling, and makes it more memorable.
The story has a lot of twists and turns, and if you're not paying close attention to what's going on, by the end it might get a little confusing. I don't want to spoil anything so I wont get into detail about anything past the beginning. Rapture is a pretty huge place with quite a few distinct looking areas. There are secrets all over rewarding you for exploring every room, giving you even more of a reason to take in the beauty of the city. Most of all though this is just a fun creepy game to experience, from beginning to end. The dark spooky corridors with the flickering light, the claustrophobic underwater passageways where you can see water leaking in, and the ever present threat of a Big Daddy around every corner. It's certainly one of my favorite games from last gen, and with the release of the Collection for new consoles, there's no excuse for not playing this masterpiece. I give Bioshock a score of:
95!