izigame.me

Can you name a better intro to a first-person-shooter? No, seriously. Can you? Half-life 1 is perhaps the closest, and both share striking similarities. A catastrophic disaster, an awe-striking yet mysterious location, no cutscenes whatsoever – complete player immersion. Yet Half-Life 1, for all its beauty, is still nowhere near as well written as Bioshock.
The player is immediately swept up in an airplane disaster and ushered into an underwater carriage. From there, the charismatic Andrew Ryan introduces the iconic Rapture:
‘A city where the artist would not fear the censor.
Where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality.
Where the great would not be constrained by the small’
Introducing: Bioshock. Wait, the city is in ruins. What gives?
Bioshock explores the results of a city – a world – entirely driven by a free market. In Andrew Ryan’s mind, charity, morality, ethics (and to a large extent, law) have very little place in society, and instead relies entirely on the market to dictate the world. While this would naturally lead to a sort of ‘victorian workhouse’ society, Rapture’s twist is that the city is almost entirely populated by the already materially wealthy. This leads to not just a free market psychosis, but also hedonism. Despite taking place entirely under the water, Rapture’s inhabitants have an unrelenting quench for more.
This combination leads to obsessive drug use through a substance called “Adam” – a riff on the biblical story of Adam and Eve – which lets its user alter their DNA to gain new inhuman powers. This leads to a gruelling case of crabs in a bucket, as the city destroys itself in search of the next fix to push it towards something beyond human.
Bioshock was initially pitched to me as an Immersive sim, but I wouldn’t go quite so far. While it models its gameplay closely to System Shock, and for all we know it is in the same universe, it’s heavily stripped down mechanically. There’s no inventory management, complicated puzzles, or wandering maze-like levels. This might put off the hardcore player, who relishes in complex details and micromanagement. I know because this is me, and to an extent I do feel Bioshock is a bit *too* stripped down. Most notably there’s a lack of a stealth mechanic, which I think truly rules it out of immersive sim territory and feels like a missed opportunity. You’re railroaded into killing people, which I feel detracts from the morality of the narrative. There are also no skill trees, with character upgrades consisting solely of passive upgrades occasionally picked up over time.
Part of this did sour my enjoyment, and I had to put my expectations to one side momentarily and re-evaluate it purely as an FPS game. To those standards, it is exceptional. While the shooting is a bit floaty, and the enemies sponge bullets, the combination of elemental attacks (lightening, electricity, fire and more) alongside traditional bullets creates a fun combat loop which encourages experimentation. The first half of the game I stuck closely with the electric zap + whack combination with the lightening plasmid and wrench. However, in the second half I stuck to freezing enemies then blowing their head off with the crossbow.
The straight forwardness of Bioshock’s interface is certainly more accessible than its predecessors. This is a game anyone can pick up and play, and so some depth had to be sacrificed as a result. That being said, no other shooter will have a narrative this strong, or a world with so much environmental storytelling. Every corner there are audio tapes with their own contained storylines within levels.
As someone with Body Dysmorphic Disorder, I really enjoyed hearing the obsessive compulsions of a woman tampering with her physical appearance with reckless abandon due to Adam. These stories are woven optionally throughout the game and tie into the levels themes and environments, with many exploring a distinctively human brand of hedonism. Whether physical looks, or artistic license, each self-indulgent greed is explored to its conclusion in Bioshock, questioning what too much of a good thing can truly be.
In terms of the remaster, I wouldn’t say the visuals are the most striking I’ve ever seen. However, I was extremely satisfied with the performance; the game didn’t drop from 60fps for a single-frame during my entire playthrough. As someone acutely aware of performance dips of any kind, even the frametimes were perfect. The achievements were well-placed throughout, and there’s directors commentary and controller input too. There’s 2K DRM, but it’s non-intrusive and doesn’t try to embed itself deep into the depths of your computer. I did have one glitch where an enemy tied to an objective didn’t spawn, which broke the game and seems to be a commonly encountered bug, which was disappointing. However, this was the only real bug I encountered (please fix!).
Overall Bioshock is a streamlined, slick entry into the, uhm, ‘shock’ series. More aimed at newcomers and mainstream audiences, Bioshock’s deep undersea world has plenty of depth in story and narrative, but is perhaps shallower in its mechanics.