Bioshock review by daniel eve/st john eve

The year is 2007, 'Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare' had not yet hit store shelves by the time we were exposed to  the world of 'Bioshock'.

Synopsis

The entire story of Bioshock revolves around its fallen city, Rapture;an underwater paradise for the worlds greatest intellectual minds, where they can operate in a government and oppression free environment. By the time the player arrives in 1960 it is clear that the place has seen better days and it is up to them to explore this dystopia while combating the horrors within the city and themselves.

Gameplay

At its heart Bioshock is a first person shooter (FPS) and the player is given a variety of weapons, so they have the freedom to choose how they dispatch each threat that arises: some methods are more creative than others, of course you can do just fine with your machine gun or shotgun but why be so dull when you could rework drones and sentries to mow down your enemies, or perhaps indulge your self in the myriad of 'plasmids' that the game has to offer.

'Plasmids' not only cover your basic video game powers (lightning, fire, ice etc) but also more odd and satisfying ideas such as being able to shoot swarms of bee's out of your hands or or blasting enemies away with cyclone spring trap. While you cannot have a plasmid and a weapon active at the same time the player can still find synergies; shutting down machines with electricity to hack them, or using 'Enrage' to convince an enemy to try his luck against his friends while you sneak on by ,pillaging the near by trash can. One of my main criticisms of the combat is the inability to have a weapon and plasmid active at once as it can feel bothersome and clunky to constantly switch if you want to try and be creative.

The ability to hack machines allows more patient player to gain several advantages; turning drones and turrets into personal body guards or dropping vending machine prices are extremely useful. You connect a series of pipes in order to get the machine to comply, failure results in light damage being taken. The problem is that this mini game becomes very time consuming as the entire game comes to a halt while you hack, and because there is so many machines that can be hacked an opportunistic player may feel bogged down after their 200th hack; there are auto hack tools the player can use but they are quite scarce and expensive, so for the majority of the game the player has to deal with pipes or face the security (including drones, cameras, turrets and rocket turrets) head on.

when the pieces come together the combat feels very enjoyable and varied but it is held back by its relatively clunky and time consuming nature.

Sound design

I have no qualms with the sound design in this game. First of all i'd like to mention the fantastic voice acting. It is very easy to extinguish characters and their personalities and even with the voicing of the enemies it feels genuinely scary. most of the games dialogue comes in the form of audio logs which gives the player many small glimpses into Rapture's history; in fact the majority of Bioshock's narrative is told by the player listening to the audio logs and exploring the environment  in order to piece it together.

 Bioshock's soundtrack can be split into 3 sections: music intent on invoking nostalgia (reminiscent of 1940-60's style music), music intent on invoking fear (usually playing when ever key combat encounters or key events occur) and music intent on invoking discovery/amazement (which helps indicate to the player the meaning of what they're witnessing).

Graphics/aesthetics

Graphically, Bioshock does not hold up that well by even xbox 360/ps3 standards; but because of the marvellous aesthetics of rapture, it is still a joy to explore and feels like a fully realised world. The main problem is player models, as even without closer inspection they look ugly; one could argue that this actually works in the games favour as they are meant to be grotesque, but it is still worth addressing.

Conclusion

To conclude, Bioshock is fantastic game and one of the most gripping first person shooters. Even despite its few flaws in gameplay and its rather poor graphical quality the game will still be worth playing ten years down the line.

9/10