X06: BioShock Updated Impressions
Events go from creepy to downright crazy when a fight breaks out during the latest demo of BioShock.
BARCELONA--At the Electronic Entertainment Expo earlier this year, we saw a demo of Irrational Games' BioShock, and we were so impressed that we named it best in show. It's been several months since we last saw anything new from the BioShock team, but we finally got another glimpse of the game in a brand-new demo for Microsoft's X06 event in Barcelona. The title of the second BioShock demo is "Hunting the Big Daddy," and as you might expect, the focus of the demo is on combat. Specifically, the demo focused on the incredible flexibility of the combat system.
According to Ken Levine, lead producer on BioShock, the development team has set out to "redefine first-person shooters." From what we saw, the team is on the right track. The demo skipped the introduction and cut straight to the action, but just in case you missed our previous coverage of the game, we'll fill you in on the details.
BioShock takes place in the fictional city of Rapture, which is a mostly deserted retro-futuristic city at the bottom of the sea. The city is populated by strange creatures known as little sisters, who carry special genetic material known as adam. You need this material to enhance your own physical attributes and increase your odds of survival in this eerie metropolis under the sea. You don't have to hunt the little sisters--who are creepy enough since they look like innocent little girls. The little sisters aren't easy to get to, though, because there are massive creatures known as big daddies. These hulking creatures will do anything and everything to protect the little sisters, so if you want that precious adam, you'll have to work for it.
Taking down one of those big daddies is the focus of the second BioShock demo. The demo takes place in the first level of the game. The main character is dropped into the city of Rapture with no way out. The city is entirely submerged beneath the sea, but it's fully contained, so you can explore it at your leisure. The city is perfectly preserved in many areas, to the extent that you can even still hear the local radio station and see the signs for movie theaters and casinos. It's a strange look at a once-vibrant world that has been left to slowly decay at the bottom of the ocean.
For a game with such a solitary atmosphere, it didn't take long for the action to pick up. As the demo began, the main character took a short walk past a casino and entered the medical pavilion. Inside the pavilion stood a shambling creature in what looks like a doctor's outfit. This creature is known as a splicer, and it has the ability to teleport to evade attack. In a nice, if gruesome, touch, the splicers leave behind a cloud of lingering flesh particles when they teleport. When the character approached the splicer, it teleported away and then threw a gurney across the room. The main character was able to kill the splicer quickly enough with a few well-placed rounds from his revolver.
This is where the real trouble began. The dead body of the splicer attracted a little sister in search of adam. When the little sister arrived, the main character tried to get at her to get the precious adam, but as mentioned earlier, the little sisters don't go anywhere without the protection of a big daddy. In this case, the big daddy grabbed the little sister and put her out of harms way. It's an interesting, bizarre, and almost touching relationship between the hulking monstrosities and the tiny little girls. In fact, as the demo went on, we saw the big daddy put itself between danger and the little sister several times, and the protection of the little sister was clearly the only priority of the big daddy.
The big daddies are well equipped for the job, and they take a heck of a lot to put down. In the demo, we watched the main character shoot the big daddy first with a pistol before moving on to a shotgun. When neither of those weapons slowed the big daddy down, it was time to run. In fact, it was time to teleport. The main character teleported around a nearby corner, and the big daddy lost track of him. While ducking the big daddy, the main character used a special ability to grow a puss-filled pocket of flesh out of his hand. This pustule is apparently a splicer irritant, meaning that splicers will attack it wherever you throw it. The main character threw a pustule at the big daddy, which caused a nearby splicer to attack. At this point, the big daddy and the splicer turned on one another and began fighting. It seemed like the coast was clear as the main character quietly slipped out of harms way...at least until he stepped in front of a security camera. When he made the mistake of tripping the security system, a handful of hovering security robots showed up in seconds and began attacking.
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- 2K Games
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- Sci-Fi First-Person...
- Release: Aug 21, 2007 »
- ESRB: Mature
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