Rapture is an underwater city, an idealistic utopia that one man had enough money and power to make into a big brass reality. Rapture is a haven for the Earth's intellectuals, her artists, her athletes, her scientists. It's an art-deco paradise, a slice of mid-20th century American glamour placed on the floor of the Atlantic.
Rapture is a place untouched by capitalism, communism or altruism. It's a place where a man's virtues are in his own skills and not the skills of his peers, where the needy are deemed parasitic, where life is perfect. In the words of its creator, Andrew Ryan: "It was not impossible to build Rapture at the bottom of the ocean - it was impossible to build it anywhere else."
Isn't that clever? Games rarely credit their players with this much intelligence, and this is only the outset of the story too. The collective genius of Irrational has spawned something amazing, something more intriguing than perhaps any other game we've come across. BioShock has so much depth, and not just because it has a complex, mature storyline that touches on various philosophies, politics and the notions of ego and free will, but also by having so many implicit layers of exposition.
What I mean is, you can play BioShock without caring about the characters within Rapture. You can ignore the carefully woven series of events that have led to its downfall. You can merrily wade through the enemies, never let the word 'existentialism' cross your mind, treat the game like a shooter and enjoy yourself at a very base level.
But then, you could take your time. You could search for the portentous audio diaries scattered throughout the city, discover the meaning behind every facet of the game, and come out the other side with a proper understanding of the beautiful world in which the game is set, and the characters that populate it, or once did.
NOVEL GAMEPLAY When you finish playing BioShock, and you've played it properly by becoming engrossed in the whole thing, you come away feeling like you've just read a great novel. A novel that you were truly a part of, and one that made you feel things games generally don't tend to make you feel.
Play BioShock and you'll feel scared, you'll feel disgusted, amused, shocked and thrilled. It is every inch a masterpiece, a finely polished experience, something people might point to when they're going off on one about games being an unappreciated art form. It's all very good. It's as good as all the previews made it sound, and maybe even just a bit better.
In fact, it's hard to say exactly why it's great without simply blubbing about the story and the characters before stopping, putting your hand to your mouth and saying: "Oops, can't tell you that - spoooilers!"
WHAT WENT WRONG Simply put, Rapture went a bit cuckoo-bananas when a gene-altering slug was discovered and certain people began to profit from it. One mutated thing led to another, more mutated thing, and you find yourself arriving in the silent aftermath of a civil war, in the year 1960.
The citizens, grotesquely disfigured by the constant reconfiguration of their DNA, and probably a bit embarrassed about the whole situation, skulk about the darkened hallways and bars, moaning to themselves, desperate and willing to kill for more of the gene-changing substance they crave. They wear, with unnerving humanity, fancy dress masks from the New Year's Eve party during which the fighting first broke out.
Their plaintive cries, as with every piece of audio in the game, are disturbingly well rendered. They're walking tragedies, each of them, and they form the bulk of what you'll be killing.
To defend yourself, you've got not just weapons but your own genetic abilities, called Plasmids. These work pretty much like magic spells (but they're not magic spells, let's be clear on this), and are bought from stations placed throughout Rapture - the whole gene-splicing business had become so commercialised in Rapture that buying the ability to shoot flames from your hand is as easy as buying amusingly flavoured condoms from a pub toilet.
This division between weapons and Plasmids, and the ability to use the environment to your advantage in a fight, feels a lot like the fighting system of Dark Messiah, with right-clicking switching between the two modes. Use your 'Electro Bolt' Plasmid to electrify a pool of water, and watch paddling enemies fall down or become stunned long enough to be thumped with a wrench.
Use your 'Incinerate!' Plasmid on some spilled oil and watch the flames spread. Use your 'Telekinesis' to catch explosives and hurl them at your foes. As the enemies get tougher, you have to make better use of your Plasmids and the surrounding environment.
UNDER PRESSURE Rapture's own security system is one of the most powerful weapons in this environment, and coupled with Plasmids that can force enemies to turn on one another, you begin to realise how much scope for emergent combat is actually here - far more than in Dark Messiah, whose options didn't extend much further than kicking fleshy things into conveniently placed sharp things.
Security cameras, helpfully fitted with red spotlights to clearly indicate where they're pointing, set off alarm systems and release security bots - little flying gun turrets with helicopter blades, to hunt you down. Disable a bot with a blast of electricity and you can hack it, reprogramming it to follow you around and help you out. Or even better, hack the camera itself, and it'll spot and send bots after any enemy that wanders into its field of view.
Use your 'Winter Blast' Plasmid and the camera freezes, either giving you more time to hack it, or just to listen to its little motor strain against the ice. Even the alarm itself is done with wonderful artistic flair, sounding like an old fire station bell ringing its little metal heart out.
This freeform approach to killing things eventually culminates in fights with the Big Daddies - the monstrous, hulking mutants in modified diving suits plodding around, protecting little girls as they extract genetic material from corpses. Fighting one of the things (and winning) puts such a strain on your limited resources - first aid kits and ammunition - that some amount of preparation and consideration needs to be undertaken before you finally go for it.
Big Daddies are placid, neutral things, right up until they're drilling into your torso. Stand too close to the child he's protecting and the Big Daddy's fatherly nature kicks in - the kid cowers behind one of its tree trunk legs, while it revs its drill and takes one or two threatening steps towards you.
The animation is perfect, worrying on some primal level, urging you to back away without saying a word - the subaquatic equivalent of baring teeth. It won't actually attack until you provoke it some more though, and generally you'll need some plan of action before you do that - a nearby enemy to use your 'Enrage' Plasmid on, a hacked security camera for the Big Daddy to run in front of, a series of electrified tripwires, some proximity mines. Basically, anything to stop the huge mass of metal and anger catching you and tearing you in two.
BODY HARVEST Then, with the Big Daddy out of the way, you're left with the choice of whether or not to kill the small girl, the Little Sister. They're innocent things, and they'll cry over the death of their protector, but murdering them allows you to harvest their genetic material to spend on more Plasmids. The alternative is a little less morbid: release them from their corpse-harvesting occupation by turning them back into real girls.
You get less of an immediate reward, and less to spend on Plasmids, but a warm feeling inside, knowing that the game will undoubtedly reward you somehow for choosing the good path.
The drama surrounding this moral choice is diminished somewhat by the prompt to press one of two buttons bleakly labelled 'Harvest' and 'Rescue', but there's really no other way Irrational could have done it - and the animation behind each choice is chilling enough as it is without the opportunity to kill a small girl using bees. (Did I mention you can shoot bees from your hand if you have the right Plasmid? Well you can.)
The morality thing is something we've gushed about before, and to be honest, a bit of experimenting reveals that one way is better and more rewarding than the other. But it's not this particular choice that makes BioShock such a fantastic game - it's more the surroundings, the story, the secrets, the characters and their dialogue, the unfaltering pace and the breathtaking set-pieces. The enemies rarely feel like fodder, and the Big Daddies actually feel more like boss characters - like hunting big game.
SMART MISSILES The combat system shines when you're taking on the Big Daddies as well. In one instance, I'd hacked a rocket launcher turret to target my enemies, fired a pistol shot at a Big Daddy to lure it within range, and then repeatedly froze it in place using Winter Blast while the rocket launcher went to work firing round after round into its back.
Another situation saw me setting up a series of electrified tripwires, standing in such a position as to place the wires between myself and the Big Daddy, firing that all-important aggravating shot and watching as he ran through my trap and died, his limp body sliding to a stop just in front of me.
The weapons you pick up along the way can be modified to make them faster, more powerful, or capable of holding more ammunition, with each individual upgrade becoming visible on the weapon in the form of a DIY retrofit - increase the pistol's capacity and you'll see a large tin can appear on the side of it. Some weapons can also be loaded with ammunition effective against armoured enemies such as turrets and Big Daddies, or effective against personnel.
Later weapons offer fire, lightning and ice alternatives, which work effectively against enemies who have genetically modified themselves in such a way as to become vulnerable to those things.
Almost every other aspect of BioShock is lifted from its spiritual predecessor System Shock 2. Even the weapons upgrade system just mentioned is a reworking of the OS upgrade system of the 1999 classic. The vending machines of SS2 also find their way to Rapture in pretty much an identical state, albeit with more catchy jingles.
Dollars can be used to buy ammo and supplies, while the machine itself can be hacked for lower prices or exclusive items. The level structure is similar too, with Rapture being composed of about eight large zones separated by bulkheads.
Locations include the medical pavilion, the recreational area with its ironically nautical-themed bars, strip clubs and record stores, theatres, arboretums, fisheries, power stations - Rapture is a massively varied place, becoming more and more industrial as the game goes on. Although, you can walk freely between Rapture's zones in search of Little Sisters or to track down things you think you might have missed.
WATER EVERYWHERE System Shock 2's research system, meanwhile, has been completely rethought: picking up a camera and snapping Rapture's inhabitants gives you info about them, leading to increased damage against that particular enemy. In the style of the Xbox 360's Dead Rising, you get a better grade for taking photos containing multiple subjects and action, and a worse grade for shots of dead bodies.
As if it needed stating, BioShock is a dark game. The characters of Rapture are demented egomaniacs, each with their own insular agendas and psychotic tendencies, and all of them are brilliantly scripted and voice-acted.
The game has a fitting soundtrack, from '50s pop standard crooners to classic American swing, and it's used perfectly alongside the ruined locations and upsettingly grim locals - nothing else quite feels like hearing a bedraggled citizen mournfully cry out, "They made me and everything I see!" repeatedly and with rising anguish until he's sobbing uncontrollably, while How Much Is That Doggy... crackles from a nearby gramophone.
The menace of Rapture, the almost palpable feeling of foreboding, is brought to life by the sound design. Random clunks and scrapes punctuate quiet exploration with a continuing reminder of exactly how much ocean is trying to get inside of Rapture's glass walls. And of course visually it amazes too, with detail that not only draws your interest at every turn, but allows for danger to come from any direction. Not once does it ever drop the style it's created for itself, not even in menu screens - the game's got atmosphere coming out of every pore.
BioShock is an expertly crafted game in every respect, a truly worthy successor to what's considered one of the PC's greatest games, and a game that, we feel, will be a milestone in PC gaming. Never has the medium been used as a storytelling device in such a beautiful and engaging way, and never have we been drawn so deeply into a game world.
Captivating, well-told story Movie quality voice-acting and script Emergent combat allows for huge variation in tactics The soundtrack, the locations, the visuals The many, many Plasmids and the brilliant final levels
But how long is it, gameplay wise? And what machine did you run it on? And why no talk of how it runs on an average machine? And why no talk of the technical side in general, in terms of what options you have to max it or help it run on lower than recmmended PC's?
In fact, why just a sales pitch? A sales pitch to hardcore gamers with uber machines that can just read about the ambience and maturity and art direction of the game?
First and foremost, gamers need to know if and how the game will run on their PC. While 10% of PC gamers have the latest greatest system to hand 24/7 as they upgrade every 3 months, the other 90% don't. they can only afford to upgrade every two or three years. So PC Zone, how does this play on a 2.4ghz 6800 1gb ram system? Are you ever likely to write a review for the rest of us?!
A rather valid point! More info on system specification, possibly even a benchmark test to go with reviews can only be a good thing.
A review of a PC game with state of the art graphics and design with no mention of its performance on a mid level PC much less the one the reviewer was using..interesting. And quite useless to most of us. I could have gotten all of this information from reading an XBOX 360 review of the game.
agree - there's nothing on the actual gameplay or technical issues.
The killer for me is that there is no mention of the game requiring shader model 3. Given Valves surveys on pc users, bioshock will alienate an awful lot of gamers.
Why's this not mentioned? I wonder how many people may buy bioshock not knowing they cannot run it, especially if they've only seen this article - no mention of this in the magazine as well!
I'm sure the recommended and minimum system specs are available on the official website. I would have liked a bit more on the gameplay like you said, but system specs and performance I don't really class as something that is essential in a review. In the magazine (last time I purchased anyway), they had 5 different sets of PC systems, and in each review they labeled it with which one it runs best on.
Plus the demo can offer a good insight into how it will run on 'your' PC. Or, if you really, really are worried, send an email to them, with your exact specs, I'm sure they'd be willing to answer you questions about performance, person to person.
Great review, great demo, and looks like its going to be a great game.
Erm you do realise that on the pczone mag they got the system requirement listed? So you can just go and read the mag to get the info. If your really skint why don't you just go to a game store and read the back of the box of bioshock?
For such a rich game with a wonderfully twisted, well-acted and indepth plot the tack of this review is spot on and focused on exactly the right areas.
My only real gripe with the game is the copy protection root-kit, erm, software being included in the deal.
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Captivating, well-told story
), this is one of the best PC games i've played in a looong time.
