BioShock: Freaking Fantastic
September 07, 2007
As some of you may know, I've sort of disappeared completely from the face of the Internet lately. Why's that? Well, there's two games currently dominating all of my free time... utterly. Between the coolness that is Prime 3 and the epic win of BioShock I have no free time for anything else, at all.
I made my way to Hephaestus last night to engage Mr. Ryan in a kindly conversation. I'm completely pulled into the game in ways that I haven't felt in a long time. I cannot remember a game in recent history that has gripped me so well and made me yearn to play it at all times.
I think that there's three major points making this game so incredibly awesome.
Firstly, there's the immersion. You're not just playing a game... you're a part of a vivid fully fleshed out world. To me, at least, what makes this first point work even better for the game is that you actually end up caring about the world. The storyline is deep and very real. It's not a game about "Orcs invading a dungeon" - it's a very serious, realistic and most of all human story. Combined with the way it is interweaved with the world makes you really feel like you're a caring part of it... and you want so strongly to help make it better.
The second point is the gameplay itself. What good is a wonderfully made world if there's nothing to do in it? O little moth, there is plenty to do in this world. Your missions and the drawing of the storyline are far more than "go here, good. now go further. kill this guy in your way. keep going!". You end up encountering serial killers, drugged out doctors and a myriad of men in sea-suits while working your way to Atlas' family and trying to get yourself out of Rapture. What's most interesting about the gameplay interactions though is that you're not just there to kill these people - you actually end up getting sub-missions of interest from them, and some of them will tug at your ethical heart-strings.
You'll also find that the game harps heavily on exploration of the environments. In a move that's very different from most First Person Shooters is that the environments are incredibly open ended and well laid out. This wonderful level design also adds immensely to the immersion factor that I had mentioned before. It allows for something that you don't ordinarily get in other shooters of modern times... a feeling that this is a real place - not just a series of corridors populated with enemeies who all want to kill you. In order to entice your desire to explore these added areas and find all the little clues piecing together Rapture's fall, there are generally around 3 Little Sisters for you to rescue per level which (I think) randomly spawn and generally require you to explore extra areas that you might not ordinarily visit.
The raw shooter gameplay itself is quite awesome in it's own right. When it comes to the action sequences it's a visceral shooter that feels perfect. The speed, the fluidity and ooooh the weapon combinations. The Plasmids that have caused the fall of rapture end up beign one of the most fun and interesting aspect of the gameplay itself. With powers ranging from shooting a swarming hive of bees to laying tornado traps it ends p being an interesting romp indeed.
The third point that adds to teh epic win that is BioShock is the amazing quality of the artwork demonstrated. You get a feel that while 2k has a bevy of highly skilled devs, poorly skilled business people - they also have a horde of amazing artists. The audio visual quality of BioShock is fantastic. As soon as your plane crashes into the ocean and you're faced with Ryan's tower in the middle of the ocean, you will begin to appreciate just how much work ended up going into this game. It goes so far as to have gotten me banned from playing it on the TV.
So, is this an epic game for the ages? If you're on the PC SecuROM will prevent that, for sure. It will not hold up to the test of time, simply by virtue of the copy protection precluding playing it more than a few times. However, is this an epic game for right now or for the 360 that you'll be sorry that you didn't play if you don't? Most definitely. An awesome storyline, an incredibly well rendered world, amazing artwork and fantastic gameplay make this a grade-A classic. Look forward to the end of your free time for at least a week.
My Verdict: Definitely Obtain
Note: I am playing the PC version w/ a 360 controller. It's-a-ver-ay-nice. Also, the image was taken from destructoid. I really need to get some attribution stuff coded in to the picture backend...
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| Tagged: BioShock, VideoGames
