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- Reviewed on: Xbox 360 (viewed on an HP PL4200N 42-inch plasma television in 720p mode)
- Also available for: Windows PC
- The Good: Everything. From the wonderfully bizarre and elegantly fashioned narrative to each and every deftly placed polygon, BioShock is as good as it gets in the world of sci-fi shooters.
- The Bad: I would say the lack of a multi-player mode, but, in all honesty, a chaotic online fragfest would do an injustice to BioShock's carefully crafted story
- The Verdict: One of the most gripping, gorgeous, and unforgettable video games ever made
2K Games' lavishly produced new shooter begins with no foreword and no back story. Upon starting a new game I suddenly found myself peering through the eyes of an airline passenger smoking a cigarette and looking at an old family photograph. Within seconds the plane nosedives and crashes violently into the ocean.
My character somehow survives the disaster. I find myself paddling between plane debris and pools of burning jet fuel toward a tiny island with a tall lighthouse. Upon entering the building I'm greeted by a creepy violin rendition of "Beyond the Sea" and an enormous bronze statue of a man holding a red banner that reads "No gods or kings. Only Man." I discover a submersible beneath the sculpture that whisks me to the sea floor, where an enormous and stunning underwater city awaits.
Much like my hero, I began the game with no idea why this city exists, how it was built, or who might inhabit it. These things are gleaned slowly through an ingenious mixture of organic clues scattered throughout the game. I found dozens of candid tape recordings left by the city's inhabitants, read the countless billboards and signs that decorate most of the city's environments, and listened carefully to the words of the few people wandering about who weren't genetically enhanced maniacs intent on murdering me.
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I won't ruin any of the many clever twists, turns, or revelations I stumbled upon as the story unfolded, but I will say that BioShock is a parable for anyone who would dare to create a Utopia. It shows us what can happen when extremist ideas and philosophies are allowed to flourish, as well as the aftermath of criminally brilliant inventions gone horribly awry.
Put simply, BioShock is the videogame world's equivalent of a dystopian film.
A game worthy of a gallery
On the topic of dystopian cinema, a movie worth referencing here is Fritz Lang's classic 1927 film Metropolis. The game and movie have similar themes—what the world might be like if the most gifted and amoral among us were to rule unchecked—but, more than that, they share a reverence for the cold, modern beauty of art deco.
Indeed, much like Lang's conurbation, the underwater city in BioShock—fittingly dubbed Rapture—is a gorgeously rendered study in the most popular design movement of the 1920s and 30s, filled with geometric angles, futurist arches and hallways, and brown and grey metals. The theme extends to in-game marketing and propaganda as well; billboards and posters feature narrow, rounded lettering, and murals and carvings portray men with broadly curving shoulders and square noses.
But BioShocks's superlative aesthetic goes beyond a vividly and expertly executed motif. The game's random details are simply unsurpassed; it took me 20 or so hours to work through the story, and I suspect that I spent as much as a quarter of my time simply examining and admiring my surroundings.
I would often look out of the city's glass walls at the ocean beyond, marvelling first at the thousands of tiny pieces of sea detritus floating in the water, then the various fish swimming by. Eventually my gaze would come to rest on Rapture's towering buildings looming off in the murk, almost all of which can be explored at some point in the game.
I also found myself fascinated by location specific minutiae, like a sign detailing pricing for funeral services in the city's medical pavilion, the ornate carvings and fibrous cloth wallpaper in the Fleet Hall Theatre, and the forested hallways of Arcadia, home to Rapture's oxygen producing hydroponics system.
And then there's the sophisticated bits of dark humour scattered throughout the city. "Aesthetics are a moral imperative!" reads a hand-scrawled message on the floor just outside a deranged plastic surgeon's office. There is a clever wit at play here that goes beyond the obvious; to include such a phrase in a game the artistry of which is virtually unparalleled either suggests that the designers have a hubristic nature (which would be ironic, given the game's overarching theme), or, more likely, speaks to their awareness of the futility inherent in the struggle for perfection.
Smart and fun
I should clarify that taking the time to study the game's magnificent environs wasn't just an idle exercise in art appreciation, but also a vital part of the game. Item collection is an essential activity in BioShock, and the most valuable objects to be found are typically well stashed. Indeed, one of the consequences of such highly complex level design is that players have virtually no hope of finding everything hidden in the game.
Though, truth be told, I wasn't interested in finding everything in the game; just specific objects. Like agents of genetic enhancement called plasmids and tonics—BioShock's quirky, addictive, and undeniably entertaining gameplay shtick. These DNA rewriters offer benefits as simple as increased stamina and speed or as fantastical as the ability to levitate objects and shoot fire from your hands. And they create all sorts of entertaining possibilities within the game. I melted mounds of ice to reveal hidden objects, electrocuted enemies standing in half-flooded rooms, used telekinesis to retrieve otherwise unreachable items, and froze fast moving foes in place so that I could take my time hacking away at them with a monkey wrench.
Of course we've also been given a bevy of standard weapons—pistol, shotgun, machinegun, and grenade launcher, among others—but once you get used to your genetic enhancements (which doesn't take long, given their creative fun factor) these less sophisticated implements of death become tools of last resort, employed only when you've depleted your store of genetic enhancement empowering blue goo.
And while fast paced fights are BioShock's bread and butter, we're provided plenty of other distractions as well. Hacking locks and gun turrets initiates a quick and enjoyable create-a-circuit puzzle. I took more than a hundred virtual photos as part of a research project to discover my enemies' weaknesses. And I invented dozens items—including tonics, ammunition, and first aid kits—by combining various objects at U-Invent machines scattered around Rapture.
In other words, BioShock is more than just a pretty game with a smart story—it's also a ton of fun.
The greatest game ever played?
I'd happily continue to sing BioShock's praises, but every word I write equates to one moment longer that both you and I are kept from playing this splendid videogame.
So I'll finish by putting it to you that BioShock is a masterpiece of interactive entertainment that moves the medium forward on all fronts: organic storytelling, art direction, and game design. Put more succinctly, it's one of the most memorable games I've ever experienced.
