Reviewed by: BobiRoka
Developer: 2K Boston/Australia
Publisher: Take Two Interactive

First of all, I challenge you to find another first person shooter with such iconic and immersive production values. Those infamous Big Daddies, all diving suits and enormous drill bits for hands, stomping about flooded art-deco corridors with glass ceilings exposing the ocean overhead. Water cascades down walls resplendent with memorabilia suggesting a place that's seen better times, whilst gramophones crackle out famous tunes of the period to give the place a disturbingly real world edge. Cinema doesn't get THIS cinematic.

And it's mostly thanks to an elaborate back story, revealed in audio logs and journals littered amongst this densely enriched game-space that will have collect-o-maniacs sucking up everything there is to find and poke and prod. I have not spent this much time staring at the floor in a game, nor the ceiling should a Spider Slicer scuttle along and jump down to attack me from behind.

You're probably aware of the setup by now, but for the benefit of review conciseness here goes: An arrogant toff called Andrew Ryan gets sick of paying his taxes so builds his own underwater utopia. He invites the cleverest, fittest and most elite people he knows to live there, free from the shackles of governments that penalise and hamper their dreams and ambitions. At some point a discovery is made which uncovers a means of genetically altering DNA to the point of Xmen-style mutation (Adam) and this soon becomes the currency within Rapture. Everyone wants it and eventually Civil War breaks out. In it's aftermath, you arrive...

In terms of variety of denizens, Bioshock plays with a slim deck, but anything more would seem quite absurd within the constraints of it's setup. Everything, down to the fact that those wee little sisters are impervious to physical harm has a water(sorry) tight and/or plot based reason for being there, though I will admit the introduction of plasmids and your first injection of eve could have been better handled than a simple on screen 'Inject' prompt. It doesn't ruin the game at all, but for such a story-led game it just seems a bit at odds with everything else.

Anyway, the populace. Enemies come in several different flavours of 'Splicer', the term used to describe the act of using Adam to genetically modify one's self - so in many ways, you play a splicer yourself, but again I digress. You can usually hear a splicer chattering away to themselves before you make out their shadow against the flickering light, or jump off your chair when they appear right in front of you from round a corner brandishing a wrench and screaming "I'm trying to control myself!" or "Ruuuuun!" or just screaming, for that matter. They wear different masks, some are male, some... used to be female? Those that don't carry wrenches have guns, or throw bombs at you and leg it. Some are double-hard, others go down quickly if you're using the right ammo-type. Set them on fire and they'll throw themselves in water. Elecrify the water and they'll try to get away. Fill them full of lead and they'll peg it for a med station. Hack the med station and they'll unwittingly fry themselves. Spider Splicers run along the ceiling and throw circular knives at you. Some may complain that they tend to repopulate the environment, but then if you can use the respawning vita chambers that negate the need for a quicksave/load function, then why can't they?

So the enemy quota is lean, but the AI is evolved enough to allow for some amazing firefights. Combined with optional (though strongly advised) Big Daddy battles, and levels that feel more like locations than corridors, it would seem that 2K have finally bridged the gap between FPS and sandbox adventure to some extent. It also means there's no loading, something that seems to have been largely overlooked and taken for granted by everyone. The other point of contention concerns the implementation of 'vita chambers' and the 'lack of death/war of attrition' factors they bring to the table. It's a debate that could go on forever and a day: people moan about quicksaves, so you do away with them. People then use a manual savegame option instead. Disuade them from saving with a respawn feature and the game becomes too easy. In Bioshock's case, it would seem the respawning combined with a very generous default difficulty level has led to the game becoming something of a cakewalk. Me? When I was offered the option of 'Hard difficulty - have played A LOT of First Person Shooters' I listened to the game's advice. You still can't die in hard mode, but it's enough of a challenge to appreciate the satisfyingly meaty encounters provided by the top notch enemy AI.

It's hard to talk about any one aspect of Bioshock without completely veering off at a tangent. Hell, I haven't even described any of the Plasmids yet. Anyway, Big Daddies. These big golems were created to protect the Little Sisters who harvest the Adam required to buy and upgrade new plasmids and tonics (I so need to talk about these soon). Go anywhere near a Little Sister and the Big Daddy guarding them will make an unholy racket and maybe even give you a bit of a shove. Attack a Big Daddy and you have to commit to taking it down, pegging it or dying (i.e. respawning at a nearby resurrection chamber). Big Daddies are quite tough. They're also surprisingly fast. You need to have a ton of the correct Ammo and/or a plan. It's also usually quite helpful if the area is fairly empty of enemy splicers, because you'll quite often find yourself navigating the length of an entire level to take down just one of these things. At least until you're properly tooled up towards the end of the game. It's in these encounters where clever use of your surroundings and ALL of your abilities unlock the true heart of the game. It's all about the Adam and Eve see...

As well as it's plentiful selection of ordnance (the whole spectrum from pea-shooter, thru rocket launcher and flame-thrower, with three ammo types for each makes it possible to play the game almost exclusively with conventional weapons) Bioshock's biggest spin on the genre is it's inclusion of Plasmids, which basically amount to a selectable bank of 'magic spells' powered by an 'eve' gauge which needs to be maintained via the application of hypos, similar to your health bar. Plasmids come in many forms, from your common or garden incinerate power, to your 'Half-Life 2 inspired' telekinesis and more unique 'hypnotise big-daddy', 'security-bullseye' and 'enrage' varieties. Tonics, also funded by Adam yet not so reliant on Eve are passive abilities which increase resistances and help out with things like hacking and melee damage. Plasmids and Tonics are more numerous than the number of slots you have, even after buying all the extra slots available, so the RPG aspect really comes in when you decide which suite of abilities you want to load out with. Personally, I favoured the environmental opportunities afforded by hacking turrets and security cameras, and sure enough, the game allows you to tweak yourself in this way.

Research and Invention are perhaps two less well executed aspects of the game. At a scripted point in the game you're given a camera, and snapping away at foes from close range when they're about to cause you considerable harm is the name of the game when it comes to increasing your research score. Increasing your research score nets you damage bonuses against certain types of enemy as well as extra bonus plasmids and tonics later down the line. The other (maybe an after-thought) minor aspect of the game involves the collection of useless items which can be exchanged at 'U-Invent' stations for proper stuff like anti-personnel ammo or grenades. Gameplay mechanisms such as these don't especially invorgate the core gameplay dynamic, but they don't mar it either. They may seem superficial time-sinks at first, but when used in combination with combat and hacking, they further enrich those types of gameplay respectively. If they weren't there they wouldn't be missed, but their inclusion adds to the immersion and customisaton of the game's real bread and butter: combat.

Some might find the lack of multiplayer unforgiveable, but appealing as a big daddy hunt co-op mode might sound, there are a million more dedicated multiplayer games that do it better. Some have complained that it's split PC/Xbox 360 development has compromised it's execution as a PC specific title. Rubbish I say. There's no auto aim in the PC version and it supports Direct X 10 - though you'll need a fairly hefty PC to play the game at a comparable visual/audio quality to it's console counterpart.

2K have taken a game from concept, through showcasing and promotion and served up pretty much everything they promised. People expecting another System Shock game may complain about the omissions of a proper inventory system and the streamlining of item creation and upgrading pales in contrast to the complexity offered by more conventional RPGs, but Bioshock isn't an RPG. It's just a very clever First Person Shooter that everyone - and their mother - should play. The fact that it's charms seem to have captured the world by storm can only be a good thing, though potential sequels are gonna have a damn tough act to follow.