An amazing story, nice customization and an original setting make Bioshock a must play for anyone
GRAPHICS:
This was an amazing looking game back in 2007/8, but nowadays, it is rough around the edges. On the one hand, the enviroment is still incredible looking, and the water effects are some of the best ever in any game, but the character models often have awkward animations, and facial expressions are quite hideous, most notably on the Little Sisters, but this still manages to be a great looking game to this day. 4/5
SOUND:
In terms of music, it is mostly ambient to enhance the mood, and it does create a great atmosphere. Whenever there is music, it is normaly jazz tracks, which are pleaseant to listen to, even if they sound a bit odd at times. Voice acting wise, it's fantastic. Since you get a lot of backstory through voice diaries, it is great that the actors managed to sound very convincing on their roles, each sounding distinct and fitting. 5/5
STORY:
Bioshock is about a man named Jack, and how he got into the underwater city of Rapture, and his adventures there trying to escape back to the surface.
Now, while the gameplay is still good, this is where the game really shines. The story of how Andrew Ryan created this place to be a haven for the Earth's most brilliant minds, but ended up being destroyed by greed and the dissatisfaction of some is a lot of fun to see, and just the concept, of this underwater utopia, is fascinating, and the game really makes it work. The characters you interact through the game, like Ryan, Atlas and Tennenbaum all make lasting impressions, and seeing how each of them think and how it affected the city is very interesting.
Not only is the premise and setup great, but the excution is even better. The plot twists apear just at the right moments and are all great, and the good ending is seriously one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen in a video game. Not joking, it made me cry a bit after watching it again. It is also worth noting that a majority of the inspiration of Rapture came through the works of Ayn Rand, with a bit of other dystopian writters. The references to her novels are intelligent, and how it incorporated Objectivism in the game is quite fascinating, definitely a great example of how philosophy can influece a game's story and setting.
A tale to be told and remembered, you will definitely want to explore and undercover all of Raptures nuances, and embrace its full story. 5/5
GAMEPLAY:
The game is a first person shooter, but with some RPG elements. As Jack, you have to traverse Rapture, in order to bring an end to the chaos that ensues the city, and leave the palce alone.
To do so, you have two things on your arsenal: guns and plasmids. These last ones are powers that you can obtain throughout the game, and they act as suports for you weapons. They give you abilities such as setting things on fire, telekinesis and electric jolts. They are definitely a welcome adition, and using these diferent powers against enemies is a lot of fun and really really usefull. Guns in the game are rather standart, such as a shotgun and pistol, with only a few sticking out, such as the chemical thrower and the crossbow. While they do a fine job of killing enemies, there isn't a whole lot of variety for them, and their small ammo capacities makes running out of ammo a frequent case, but you are never unable to fight. It just can get a bit frustrating.
Speaking of frustrating, the main enemies of this game, Splicers, come in diferent varieties, but are all a pain in the crack to defeat. They never stop moving, never run out of ammo, and often have way too much health. The fact that they also only go after you, even though the rules of how they work would say that they should attack each other is also not fair. So, it is not uncommon to get outnumbered and mobed by many Splicers, but your arsenal is good enough to take care of them. The presence of machines, such as turrets and security cameras which deploy bots to kill you also adds to the annoyance, but, again, you have more than enough ways to finish them off.
There are two types of currencies in this game, regular money and ADAM. The latter one is used to buy power ups, like plasmids and health upgrades, but one may ask: how do you get it? To do so, you have to find a Little Sisters, little girls who have the power to get this thing. They are always acompained by Big Daddies, which are large, strong and resilient enemies who protect them. You have to kill the Big Daddy (easier said than done) and then get to the kid. There you have the game's ''moral choice'', where you can either kill or rescue the Little Sisters. The first gives you a lot of ADAM, and the other not as much. So, why should you save them? Two reasons: that is what determines what ending you get (saving or harvesting) and you get gifts from their ''mother'' latter on, which more than compensate the smaller amount of the substance. Now, many people overstate this as huge moral choices, but they boil down to just making a difference in the ending that you get. It definitely enhances the replay value, but that is about it. That is, if you do not mind slaughtering the little cute creeps, which I have never been able to bring myself to do.
Probably the best aspect of the gameplay is how much you can customize yourself. You have a wide variety of powers up to get, and by the end of the game, there is a large amount of diferent ways that you can play the game. Another side but fun thing is the hacking minigame. Every time you get to a vendor of any kind you can try hacking it to lower the prices and get more things to buy. The minigame itself is a conect the pipe minigame, where you have to place pipes to make stuff flow one side to the other. It can even get pretty tough latter on, with more traps and faster flow. It is always worth to do so, and it never feels like a hassle. If you don't like doing that, you can get hacking tools to do the job for you, so there is even that.
This underwater journey will take you something between 10-15 hours to beat, and there is incentive to play again to try diferent ways to beat the game. While I may have complained about the combat being annoying due to the enemies, it is still a fun shooter. If you manage your money correctly, buying just the right amount of ammo and first aid kits, the journey can be pleasant and a lot of fun.
4.5/5
OVERALL:
Bioshock was a fun time. While playing it, you will hardly be able to put the controler away, since this is such an immersive world. Definitely worth to be checked by fans of FPS and just those who apreciate a good story.