BioShock for Xbox 360

Bioshock was one of the first games on Xbox 360 that looked appealing to me. I'm a sucker for anything relating to the ocean and exploration, but when you mix in horror elements, a chaotic and sinister plot, and awesome first-person shooter dynamics--I'm sold. I bought it as one of the original games to go with my 360 (the others including Halo 3 and Assassin's Creed), but I was helplessly addicted to this game. This was created by the same folks responsible for the slick System Shock games in the arcades so if you're a little familiar with those then you know what goodness to expect here--only on a whole different level.

The beginning of the game has the main character Jack (you) on a commercial airline, which plunges into the Atlantic Ocean in 1960 killing everyone on board--except you. You swim throughout the burning wreckage until you discover a lone lighthouse in the middle of the sea. You take a submarine down to the lower depths and find a city hidden away--a perfect underwater utopia named Rapture created by a man named Andrew Ryan, who serves as the leading bad guy for a large portion of the game. A radio is at your disposal connected to a lone survivor of this city, Atlas, who is trying to get home to his family and who is trying to help you survive. You must fight through this epic place full of Splicers (human inhabitants controlled by madness) and other enemies in order to get to the bottom of the plot and find out why this all happened to you.

It's simply impossible to do this game's story justice. There's a lot of ins, a lot of outs, and so much background detail that you'll be impressed by the script mechanics. That's not to say that the story is complicated. Bioshock's been compared to Ayn Rand's work in numerous publications and while the sentiment and atmosphere might be similar, this game is easy to get into and understand. Strictly speaking this game deals with power in interesting ways.

Ryan's an easy character to dislike and as you explore the levels of this magnificent city you find audio recordings which you can listen to in order to get a deeper understanding of the political climate and chaos under the sea--to try and figure out what went wrong down there. The place is desolate and spread out, but when I say "city" don't think of it as a Grand Theft Auto game underwater. Everything is separated by levels and while you can explore maps and find hidden rooms and places a la Resident Evil--the game's linear enough to help you navigate around and there are no real puzzles to solve at all. You just shoot your way through the game--but I mean that in a GOOD way.

Being a first-person shooter, there's a lot of action in the game. There's a variety of weapons at your fingertips from the humble wrench to the machine gun all the way up to a grenade launchers and "chemical throwers" (annihilate your enemies with liquid nitrogen!). As fun and responsive as these weapons are in combat, another facet to the game's interface is the use of Plasmids. This is a neat catch to Bioshock's system. Plasmids are these manufactured genetic alterations that people in Rapture would use to change themselves.

They're at your beck and call as well--giving you special abilities that you can equip and use. These abilities range from Telekinesis (to be able to find items from far away or throw grenades BACK at your enemies) to Winter Blast (freeze your enemies to gain time in laying down some heavy gunfire) and others. There isn't a lot of variety to these abilities per se, but they do come in handy when facing a lot of opponents at once (which WILL happen) and coming up with tactical maneuvers to help you stay out of danger. They also come in handy as far as the level-crawling goes since you can melt ice with the Incinerate (fire) ability and so on and so forth. It was a little disappointing because they tried to be Zelda about this concept, but a lot of the Plasmids actually went unused by me on my first initial play throughs.

There are different difficulties when playing this game and I've played it on Hard and Normal, but it gets pretty hectic and scary when swarms of enemies are attacking you and I found it pretty tough. Overall...the game is pretty mild. It's challenging enough as far as enemies are concerned and how often you fight, but it's not too hard. Adding to this is the whole Vita chamber business. These serve as your checkpoints in the game and you can also save at these areas. When you die, you simply re-spawn back and continue on. The thing of it is...there are a ton of these everywhere and I thought that it took away from the scariness of dying somewhat because you didn't have much to lose. However it's a small nitpick as I rarely died so whatever.

What needs to be said is that the enemy types are fairly disappointing. Splicers are the only real enemies you face in Rapture and while they have differences like mad females with knifes, Houdini-creatures who throw fire at you, and Leadheads who fire nonstop rounds at you--all of them get pretty repetitive. They're terrifying as all get out--as they are pretty smart and shout at you while attaching you quickly. There are even points of the game that made me jump where I'll look at something and turn around only to have one staring right at me--as if it were behind me the entire time breathing down my neck. These moments are fun and keep things exciting.

There are other enemies--like the Big Daddies that are everywhere, which are the only formidable opponents for your character. The big lug on the cover of Bioshock is a Big Daddy. They guard these possessed little girls called Little Sisters, which you can either kill or rescue--each determining a path that will affect the ending of the game. Big Daddy's are scary colossal foes and are fun to go up against. Other than them you have security cameras, which, when alerted, target you with security bots that fire at you until the alarm goes off as well as security machines that fire RPGs and other kinds of ammunition at you. They can be taken care of quickly, but I thought of them more as filler material. There are some boss battles, but they all resemble Splicers fairly closely and don't offer heaps of challenge or alternative tactics to defeat them.

Whoa, there--I'm making Bioshock sound like the opposite of a five-star game. Let me reassess the situation. Aside from some repetitive AI and plasmids that don't really come in handy, this game is intensely entertaining. The story line was quite gripping and I loved exploring this underwater world. I felt the concept was one of the most original and satisfying ones ever created for a videogame and I loved being inside this horrific place. This is a horror game by most conventions, but not necessarily in the Resident Evil vein. It's psychologically horrifying at times--with parts reminding me of The Suffering for the original Xbox, which I really dug. The game experience is pretty intense and the story is quite brilliant. You know you have a good game on your hands when you want to keep playing to see what happens next. This is one of those games.

As far as first-person shooters go, this doesn't have a multiplayer function and while that might make some people upset, us single players will revel in the dexterity they put to the story and experience. The sound effects and eerie period-music playing ("...how much is the doggie in the window...") are masterfully done and edge out the creepiness factor while all of the periphery visual effects give the game a scary atmosphere. The game mechanics are mostly well done and the controls are quick to get down--very user-friendly and easy to work with even if you've never played a first-person shooter in your life. On the flip side, hardened first-person shooter fans will still dig the controls as well. This game offers a ton.

While there's not a whole lot to do after you beat the game aside from collect Achievements, there's an alternate ending that's pretty good and the game's fun enough to play over and over again because of the cool story and overall theme. Let me put it this way: I stupidly sold the game a few years ago to buy another 360 game...and then I re-bought it immediately knowing the mistake I made. My friend's 360 died in the whole "Red Ring of Death" debacle and he said the only reason why he bought another 360 was to play, you guessed it, Bioshock. The game isn't too long, but it's not very short either. I'd say it could be beaten within a week and you'll still be dreaming up your next adventure in Rapture; to be scared, entertained, and amused again at the production design of the game.

© Jason Haskins, 2010