by: Chris Vavra

September 04, 2007

The music is both haunting and invigorating at the same time, again evoking memories of a film noir world. The themes draw you in without calling attention to themselves. The voice-overs are very strong. Andrew Ryan, in particular, is a compelling character who wanted to create the perfect society and failed. Now he’s trying to keep it all together and he will do anything to keep his society. Other characters include Atlas, who is your guide and in some ways your conscience; Frank Fontaine, a character who plays an important role late; and Dr. Tenenbaum, who works as a contrast to Atlas in some ways. She is running her own agenda, but so is Atlas. The voice-actors do a superb job of keeping up the ambiguity and drawing us deeper into Rapture.

The gameplay is first-rate. 2K games did a magnificent job of mixing FPS and RPG elements together with your standard weapons and the plasmids, which give you a potent one-two punch when it comes to action. The guns are a little too weak for my tastes and I think they could have been stronger, but the plasmids are center-stage in this title and it is clear 2K Games wanted to give the “magic” side as strong a role as they could. There aren’t as many plasmids as I would have hoped for, but the ones we do get serve useful purposes and you can get more of them, but that depends on the role you want to take regarding the Little Sisters. They are there to protect ADAM from being taken from the Splicers (your common enemy) and what you do with them sets up the moral center of the game. I won’t reveal too much, other than what you choose to do will have a significant impact on the outcome. Morality has already been explored by games such as Splinter Cell: Double Agent and Metroid Prime: Corruption, but what they achieved is miniscule by comparison when you play Bioshock. This multi-faceted dimension also applies to the game design, which is layered with secrets, hidden items, and many other surprises. 2K took a few pages from the Metroid playbook and incorporated them into their own design brilliantly.

Bioshock does come with a few minor flaws that detract somewhat from the main quest, which is close to twenty hours long. The stilted dialogue and the lack of powerful guns are two minor quibbles I’ve already mentioned. Another small complaint is some of the mission objectives are pretty stupid and seem to exist only to pad the length of the game. The rules of death also don’t carry very strong precedence. If you die at any point during the game, you rejuvenate at the nearest Vita Chamber and any damage you dealt to an enemy stands. This cheapens the difficulty somewhat and allows the gamer to pretty much run through the level with impunity, knowing full well they can just pick up where they left off. Bioshock is still a very challenging game even with this system, but this does feel like a bit of a cheat.

All told, however, Bioshock is a game that is to be experienced as much as it is to be played. You can’t go wrong with this absorbing, brilliant title.

John Olin’s Second Opinion
Bioshock oozes with atmosphere, and as you traverse the hollowed halls of Rapture you can feel the history of the fantastic structure. The combination of super-natural powers with your run-of-the-mill weaponry goes together just as well as peanut butter and jelly.

The satisfaction you get out of freezing a Splicer, then smashing him to bits with your trust wrench is great, and this game telekinesis power is done better than any other game I have ever played with a similar element. Throwing back rockets at a RPG turret, or moltov cocktails at a twitchy townsperson is very satisfactory, and helps encourage ammo conservation. The beginning to the end of the game you don’t really feel like you are playing a game, rather unraveling a movie, with a soundtrack that blends the old late 50’s flavor, and the treacherously orchestrated soundtrack that heightened the suspense at just the right moments. It matches the equally well-done sound effects and voice acting found throughout the game.

The story is incredibly engrossing with enough turns and twists, that even helps separate out each level, as you will almost always find that each level has it’s own unique twist. One level you find yourself at odds with a madman that would have Van gough raising a brow; another the game cleverly lets you sample a lot of the special powers, just in case you don’t already have them. The story twists and turns at the right times, and adds some moments that will make you jump here and they’re just for good measure. You start to feel for all of what Rapture stands for, and will sympathize with characters that otherwise you wouldn’t even think about.

Bioshock is great, though it only takes at most ten hours to go through the game on the hardest setting; and chances are you will even get all of the achievements in one try if that is your thing. The game also has a lot of great powers, but many of them end up being of limited use, or just variants of stuff you already have, most of the powers that you will probably use you get within the first third of the game, and the rest is essentially useless. The developers really could have pushed and encouraged that a wider variety of powers to be used, and they do this early on in the game, but it kind of trails off and it seems that they are more worried about plot development than actual gameplay.

The gameplay is great, and you can set-up traps and plan your battles out with the hulking Big Daddy monsters and the Splicers, but it ends up being the same thing over and over again, still that isn’t to say that is bad, it is actually rewarding all the way through, just with little variety, unless you push yourself for such. Something else that takes away from the game slightly is the fact that you can regenerate and keep going from where you left off; something that will make the game accessible and beatable to all but the more hardcore players will even find the hard mode to easy because of that. Overall it is a fantastic title, possibly Xbox 360’s best this year so far, and I highly recommend a purchase, but you could also probably get most of the experience in a full day experience with a rental.

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10 9 9 9 9 9.2

This is the best game so far for 2007 and a must-buy for any 360 owner. Next to Gears and Elder Scrolls, this is the best 360 title to date.

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