Platform: Xbox 360
Release Date: August 21, 2007 (N.A.)
Publisher: 2K Games
Developer: Irrational Games
ESRB: Mature
Genre: First Person Shooter/RPG
Multiplayer: single-player only
Format: DVD release ($69.99 CAD)
Notes: none
Official website

What thought process or pharmaceutical gave birth to the idea of a Little Zombie Girl being protected by a Giant Old Timey Diving Suit Monster?

That is the heart of the much-anticipated Xbox 360 title from Irrational Games (who were absorbed into the 2K Games collective hours before the BioShock launch, where no one could hear them scream). That image, the Big Daddy and the Little Sister, has already entered the collective consciousness of video game iconography.

The story details and execution are what keep BioShock apart from every other shooter. Because the gods know, there are a lot of them out there right now. As of this writing, BioShock sits on the shelf next to Halo 3, Valve’s Orange Box, and around a half-dozen other high profile Xbox 360 shooters. Just first-person shooters. What makes this title a contender for Game of the Year awards? Why does this one, and not something like Area 51: BlackSite or TimeShift, get all the attention?

Three things: it’s extremely well-executed, it has fun core gameplay, and it’s deeply weird.

It is the allure of the setting that sells a game like this, the atmosphere that differentiates it. BioShock has more atmosphere than anything you’ve played this year, sometimes almost to a fault.

Let’s start with the stage. This may contain spoiler details, depending on your disposition. (Game background, but nothing plot-destroying.) I encourage the reader to take a moment and get comfortable, adjust your frame of mind, maybe take a sip from a nearby beverage if such a thing is handy. Good? Alright.

During the 1950s an eccentric tycoon named Andrew Ryan set out to create a rogue city-state that adhered strictly to Objectivist principles by constructing a massive Art Deco-infused underwater Atlantean urban environment named (somewhat trollishly) Rapture. After building the aforementioned city – which surely would have been the most stupendous architectural and engineering feat ever accomplished by the hand of man were it remotely plausible – and presumably populating said city with at least a few hundred extremely dedicated yet staunchly Objectivist citizens who agreed to forgo proper sunlight and all prior social and familial bonds to dwell in an experimental miraculous undersea Gotham, they then discover these sea slugs that dwell deep in the ocean. The slugs generate large amounts of a raw genetic material called ADAM that enables all kinds of magical transformative superhero-type powers to be conferred on it’s imbiber, but the slugs are parasitic in nature, so naturally they (the Objectivists) do the logical thing and embed the slugs within the stomach lining of a bunch of little girls, which turns them into semi-creepy zombies. They also genetically engineer the diving-suit-wearing Big Daddies to protect these Little Sisters from anyone who would do them harm. Meanwhile an entire economy is apparently in full swing down there so Ryan Industries and upstart competitor Fontaine Futuristics are openly selling mutant powers to the populace with no medical testing, because they are Objectivists after all and this is how they roll. Predictably, all of Rapture goes to hell. Ryan cracks down hard on the now-insane genetically modified citizenry who then run amok using their newfound powers.

With me so far? You’ve got: underwater, art deco, 60s, pseudo-steampunk gothic horror with overtones of genetic manipulation. And spells. Which you kill or capture little zombie girls to get. Enter protagonist, “Jack”, with no past and no setup and no reflection. Jack’s plane crash-lands in the middle of a flight from Somewhere to Somewhere Else, miraculously surviving, and swims to the nearest lighthouse on a small island. And you’re never going to believe this, but there’s something unusual about this island.

Once the player makes their way down to Rapture, they can avail themselves of various quaintly styled firearms, as well as the plasmids which bestow the mutant powers. When you first arrive, you find a radio which has a sort of narrator character named, yep, Atlas, who guides you and issues instructions. A lot of this consists of fighting or dodging splicers, which are the fucked-up remaining denizens of Rapture, presumably driven mad by… consumption. Of ADAM. This bit is sort of hazy but suffice it to say, the place is full of crazy fast zombies who spout all sorts of biblical/nonsensical drivel and occasionally do things beyond the laws of physics.

As do you, so it’s not a totally unfair situation.

The plasmids are interchangeable with biotics or psionics or spells or powers or any other label you care to use. Examples include: throwing flame, throwing ice, throwing lightning, throwing furniture (telekinesis). These get more exotic as you move through the game, branching into security-hacking abilities, invisibility, and mood alteration. (There’s one involving bees that is memorable.) Much of BioShock‘s combat is arranged as a series of semi-freeflowing situational encounters that you are encouraged to exploit, using appropriate combinations of plasmids, weapons, and environmental manipulation. At its shallowest level, this would be things like using electrical bolts on enemies standing in water, or flame on a group of oil barrels. Other plasmids confer the ability to enrage splicers – which makes them attack other splicers – or hypnotizing Big Daddies to fight for you. Using these tricks is key to surviving some of the later fights in the game where you are required to do some major crowd control.

Also scattered throughout the game are various semi-intelligent mechanical things such as alarm cameras, flying security robots and stationary gun turrets. The design sensibility shines here: for instance, the turrets being office swivel chairs jury-rigged with machine guns. These bots give the impression of having been thrown together quickly and placed haphazardly around Rapture, either in an attempt by the population to resist Ryan’s iron control or by Ryan himself to quell unrest and guard sections of the city. The bots can be hacked, so that they fight for you rather than against you. A quick lightning bolt stuns anything mechanical and provides the player with an opening to get up close and rewire the thing. The hacking itself is played as a minigame clone of Pipe Dream.

Meanwhile each level has a certain number of randomly roaming sets of Big Daddies and Little Sisters, which you must figure out how to deal with if you want to keep expanding your plasmid powers (the game issues a stern warning if you try to leave the level without doing so). The choice: use a remedy on the Sister to “cure” her of the slug parasite for a certain amount of ADAM, or harvest the slug directly, which kills the girl but imparts double the ADAM to you.

This is an interesting setup, but one that I found to be a little toothless. There are endless pages of discussion online regarding the relative differences between harvesting and rescuing the Little Sisters. And in the end, they are slight. ADAM not recovered from rescue choices is gifted to you later on by the Little Sisters regardless. (Also, Irrational totally wussed out on the harvesting cutscene. Just a green mist and then you’ve got a slug in your hand. I mean, really, if you’re going to put the choice in the game, don’t sterilize it that way. The game’s already rated M.)

You’ll also pick up tape recorders, which are lying all over the place. Raptur…ians (?) were very big on voice dictation so these provide a handy way of dealing with background and plot exposition while the player is free to keep moving and exploring. They’re like mini-podcasts within the game, and most of them are optional, but they are also the primary way of finding out what the hell has happened, in terms of story history. This includes your own opaque background and character development, which is limited to groans when being hurt and a pair of chain tattoos on your wrists otherwise.

While BioShock is often billed as a “shooter/RPG”, the “RPG” portion of that label is definitely the lesser one. The plasmids are upgradeable of course, and you are also afforded permanent stat bonuses in the form of tonics. Both plasmids and tonics go into limited slots divided into categories like technical, combat, athletics, etc. These form the core of the RPG elements. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it that, and the reason for this is the lack of real dialogue and NPCs. There are probably hundreds of hours of voice recordings in the game, from the tapes to the extremely chatty splicers, and all of it is well-acted and produced, a rare thing in videogames. Sometimes you’ll get to have a conversation with a pane of glass between you and another character who isn’t an insane bloodthirsty freak (there are a scant few), but that’s about it. The developers have taken the ‘silent protagonist’ approach. While I understand the immersive reasons for doing so, it does leave the player with the feeling that they are being talked at more than anything else.

Technically the game is quite solid, showing off some rather spectacular water effects (you can tell they had a whole team just for that) and pitch-perfect art direction. This is an Unreal Engine 2.5 game so it makes good use of the additional physics and other tricks that engine provides. Unfortunately, it also inherits some of its defects. Corpses had a completely unnerving (yet oddly appropriate) twitch to them that was so pronounced, I thought it must be intentional at first. Then I noticed that most of the splicers I killed would have an arm or a foot that endlessly rocked back and forth after collapsing. For the most part, it looks really great, but this fact owes more to the accomplished aesthetic, and the skill of the implementation, than to any fabulous engine tech.

The style and design are the real showpiece. Occasionally I found find myself scrutinizing the environment, checking out the wealth of set dressing on offer. Bloody protest signs litter the hallways near the exit bathysphere. Lights pop and crackle, video screens dance and occasionally channel Ryan’s paranoid rantings. Chunks of plane debris from the crash collide with the city. Water drips and pours and pools everywhere. It feels like a horror film ride at certain moments, in a manner strongly reminiscent of Half Life.

You hear the footsteps of something heavy ahead. A warning shot into the dark reveals a roar – that was a mistake. Backpeddling now, you raise your left hand and release an ice plasmid at the Big Daddy hurtling towards you. It flash-freezes only steps away, giving you time to reload your clockwork shotgun. A twist of metal from above and two splicers drop from the ceiling. Switching tactics, you toss an Enrage plasmid at the Big Daddy, then dive behind a doorway, listening to the splicers scream as the monster turns on them…

It is within moments like these where the culmination of atmospherics, clever action, and thoughtful mechanics conspire to suck you into the experience like few games can. This does require a little creativity on the part of the player, as what you put into the mix, and the fuzzy-logic pattern matching you do to conjure these scenarios, forms an rush that is both intellectual and white-knuckle at the same time. It provides a wonderfully varied situational toolbox for dealing with the game’s central challenges. That’s handy, because the fact that certain enemies freely and randomly roam the floors means you always have to be on your toes; disarming traps and setting ones of your own, using distractions, and generally being a lot more creative with your killin’ than most any first person shooter out there.

On a down note, the hype about so-called moral choices is overblown. The harvesting/rescuing choice is not an insignificant detail, but really only provides a shallow illusion of choice between the two possible endings in the game, good and bad. Also I was curiously disappointed to find that you never actually get to exit Rapture and go into the open ocean at any point.

Despite the minor plot holes and weirdly contrived structure, BioShock is a fascinating, left-field surprise that really came together nicely. It nails the combat and situational mechanics, and does it while expertly leading you through a real place, full of wonder and mystery and psychotic mayhem.