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“Man is Free to Attempt to Survive by Any Random Means”
By bukkhead | September 27, 2007
VIDEO GAME REVIEW: ‘BIOSHOCK’
Developed by 2K
Distributed by Take-Two Interactive
Platforms: Xbox 360, pc
Genre: First Person Shooter
Immersive. This is the word that comes to mind again and again when considering Bioshock. Here is a world so complete in detail and execution that you really do find yourself just wandering around in it. Good graphics are no longer what make a game great; they’re an expectation. It’s not enough to make the leaves, water, and lighting look realistic. We don’t want to see how accurately mother nature can be mimicked in HD. We want to see what can be designed, how the game can bring to life a particular imagination. Good games now have to have art direction.
Bioshock is set in Rapture an undersea city of the 1930s, architected along Art Deco lines with just enough of a steampunk feel to make it both nostalgic and futuristic at the same time. You play the faceless, voiceless hero, trapped by an airplane crash, trying to find a away out. Along the way you are drawn into Rapture’s final chapter, the struggle between it’s founder and the citizens it has created.
This is survival horror, mixed with a little bit of philosophy. Ayn Rand’s objectivism is the name of the game, (though you’ll have to make up your own mind if that’s the survival part or the horror part). At your disposal are a handful of weapons, and speaking of hands, since your survival is in your hands, you also have powers that you can see in your hands—plasmids, giving you the ability to electrify, set fire, freeze, and a variety of other wizard-like skills.
As you make your way through the various levels, each as unique as a city’s boroughs, but consistent in their art deco variations, you encounter Splicers, people driven insane by the same plasmid you need to evolve and survive. Shoot them, freeze them, evade them if you have to. You’ll also encounter Little Sisters, who harvest the dead bodies, and Big Daddies, their protectors. Without going into a lot of detail, this combination of remaining citizens completes the immersion, as you’ll spend much of the game creeped out, if not down right terrified.
Bioshock delivers because nothing is superfluous in the game, and yet you are not riding rails along a fixed game timeline. The first weapon I picked up, a wrench, was the one I used through most of the game. In some place I used the shot gun, the insect swarm plasmid, or a hacked flying security bot. But in no place was there only one solution. Yes, you have to survive to win, but you can evolve to suit yourself. Objectivism indeed!
There’s a narrative in the game as well, complete with the expected big surprise twist, but for once, the developers didn’t just toss this into the final cut scene, but made it part of the game, and require that you deal with it before the game is complete. This is the stuff a satisfying gaming experience is made of . Other developers, I hope, will take note.
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