Bioshock
PC, Xbox 360
Rating: 4/5
Rapture: an ecstatic joy, or delight. At least that’s what fictitious madman Andrew Ryan envisioned when he built the underwater city of Rapture, which he describes as a place where “a man is entitled to the sweat from his own brow”.
Rapture lured scientists and intellectual geniuses to its underwater haven and allowed them to fulfil their wildest fantasies without the constraints of a moral society. But the Rapture that players discover when playing BioShock, a new first-person-shooter developed by 2KGames, is barely a shadow of its former self. Genetic modification has turned the population into a race of twisted creatures, known as Splicers.
Young girls known as Little Sisters, infected with parasites that provide the source of an addictive genetic modification substance called Adam, roam the leaky halls of Rapture accompanied by the mysterious and powerful Big Daddies.
Your character, after crash landing in an aeroplane into the ocean surrounding Rapture, is unsuspectingly drawn into the city to seek refuge. He soon discovers that Rapture and its mutated life forms are out to destroy him.
He can either help the few remaining humans or kill everything to save his own life.
After your first dose of Adam, which reconfigures your genetic makeup, you are then eligible to use Plasmid super powers including fire, ice, electricity and even a swarm of insects to overcome your foes.
In addition to the super powers is the typical range of first-person-shooter weapons, including a pistol, shotgun, machine gun and grenade launcher.
The irony of Rapture’s defiance of morality is that the one man who can save it must test his own morals to progress through the game. Players must choose to save or harvest the Little Sisters for their powerful Adam. Saving Little Sisters halves the amount of Adam gained, but pleases the insane genetic scientist who created them. She then promises the player a great reward at a later stage.
The theme of ‘choice’ is a recurrent one in BioShock. Thanks to the next-generation graphics on both PC and Xbox 360, players can interact with details such as pools of water, oil spills and ice on doors, by using their Plasmids to melt, electrocute and set alight the substances.
The main criticism is that the Big Daddies can sometimes be too powerful to destroy, depleting players of their health packs and Plasmid powers beyond what is necessary.
Not even six grenades, 300 bullets, a plethora of shotgun slugs and a combination of powerful Plasmids could destroy one Big Daddy. The arsenal they fall to – armour piercing bullets – are far too scarce in the game world.
Furthermore, the game is not as revolutionary as hyped. The formula to defeat foes can be repetitive, and aside from the Plasmid combination and few tough decisions, there’s nothing that hasn’t already been done in video games.
However, BioShock is a delight to play and E-Talk believes it is the first single-player FPS experience since Half Life 2 that is worthy of a purchase.
