Would you kindly read this review and not complain about Spoilers? This game is old enough to be considered retro!
Overview
Can a game truly be considered a work of art? If yhou’d have asked me that a few weeks ago, I would have said “not really”, but after this morning, I have somewhat changed my mind. The reason why? This game. One of the things that I love about this job is that I don’t choose which games I get to review. So, as I checked my games rota yesterday, I got very happy to find out that I had Bioshock to review on my Xbox. The game, in my opinion, after my most recent playthrough, is nothing short of a masterpiece. Because we’ve to keep to our homes at the moment in Scotland, this review is my thoughts in prose. Sorry folks, when this pandemic ends, you can see what I think in video format.
Bioshock is a game developed by 2K Boston and 2K Australia, then later published by 2K Games in 2007. Whilst it’s the start of the Bioshock franchise, it’s the spiritual successor to System Shock 2 (published in 1999) and Deus Ex (2000). The concepts for this game had been developed byt Ken Levine, and it incorporates ideas and philosophy from free thinkers in the 20th Century. Philosophers such as Ayn Rand, George Orwell, Henry Ford and JD Rockefeller inspired the ideas present in this game, as well as drawing some inspiration from Robert Heinlein and Philip K Dick. Seeing as I’m a huge science fiction fan, there was no way I was passing on this game, and I ended up buying this game on every console that I could.
That being said, the version of the game I’m using for this retrospective is on the Xbox One X, and I’ve played through this game hundreds of times as a gamer, but for this, I’m putting on my thinking cap and writing as a reviewer, so if you’re attached to this game, be warned: I’m not going to be overly complimentary about this game if I find any flaws.
The Premise
In Bioshock, you start with the way that every horror movie starts, with you opening up on a dark and stormy night. Your vehicle breaks down, and you reach to safety. The difference between this and a horror movie though is that you’re in the shoes of the protagonist, as this game is a first-person narrative, and your safe place isn’t a hotel in the desert, or a cabin in the woods, but a lighthouse in the middle of the ocean. Once you reach the lighthouse, you’re transported in a descent, straight to hell.
Rapture is where you’re sent, and it’s a metropolis under the sea. However, you notice something’s wrong by the absence of people from the very start, and the arches leading your bathysphere inside seem particularly ominous. “into the city all good things flow” may be directly over you, but the arches might as well read “abandon hope all ye who enter here”. From the moment you enter inside the abandoned underwater city, you’re plunged straight into hell as you fight people twisted by ADAM, murderous dentists and musicians, as well as the attempts to murder you by the city’s founder, Andrew Ryan. The name’s an allusion to Ayn Rand, and it’s really not subtle. That said, Rapture was founded as a city based on Ayn Rand’s ideals, and her novel, The Fountainhead.
Your mission is to fight your way through this hellscape of a place, replete with art deco architecture and horrifying monsters. From Spider splicers to Big Daddies, you’ll fight the stuff of nightmares before one very big twist.
Gameplay
As I said before, Bioshock is a first person shooter, but whilst this game does nothing uncommon for today’s FPs gamers, the game was nigh-on revolutionary for its time, and honestly, it’s not hard to see why. The story of your eyepiece character might see generic, but wielding various powers and a mixture of weapons in the same beat is still pretty unusual for the game’s type, and feels like a breath of fresh air. The powerup I liked the most during this game was the beehive powerup, where you can fire shitloads of bee swarms at your enemies, which comes in very handy when you face hordes of splicers and need to make a quick escape. This happens increasingly often as you work your way through the dystopia.
The Stealth sections of this game can also be incredibly challenging, particularly if you play this game on harder difficulties. The one part of the stealth which kept getting me was a moment about a third of the way through, where you have to photograph a spider splicer before shooting it. Terrifying, tricky and frustrating, even if I seem to be the only one to have struggled with it.
The powerups are amazing in terms of their variety. From a powerup where you can throw fire at your opponents, to telekinesis, most of your powerups early on are pretty standard for games like this. Once you get to a certain point though, they just keep getting crazier, to the point where the aforementioned bees make their appearance. Seriously though, fuck the bees. They did my absolute nut in during this playthrough. My favourite of the lot is one where you can control machines around you to make them friendly, which helped me take down a Big Daddy in remarkably quick fashion. Speaking of which…
The Enemies
A sharp word of warning, in this section of the review, I’m going to spoil this game’s twist. If you haven’t played this game, fuck off now and come back once you’ve played through it.
The first enemies are the former residents of Rapture themselves, all addicted to a chemical called ADAM which has granted them temporary superpowers. The powerups I mentioned in the last section is what drove Rapture’s citizens stark raving mad and murderous. We call them Splicers, and they’re primarily there to slow you down, but some of them come straight out of horror movies. The first one you see in the game is possibly the worst of the bunch, as Spider Splicers can get you from above, Assassins Creed-style, and dear lord, they’re frustrating.
The most iconic enemies of the Bioshock Franchise make their appearance here too. The Big Daddies are huge hulking figures that take a lot to defeat and sadly, there’s no negotiating with them. You need ADAM to progress, and they’re guarding the Little Sisters (we’ll get to them). To get rid of the Big Daddies, you’re going to have to throw everything you have at them. It’s definitely no cakewalk, and you have roughly 3 Big Daddies per level.
It’s after you defeat the Big Daddies where the central theme of the game comes into play: Choice. You can harvest the little sisters of all their ADAM, or you can save them. If you harvest/kill them, you get all the ADAM. If you don’t, you only get half of them. It’s entirely up to you, but if you want the happy ending, save the wee horrors.
Finally, we get to Andrew Ryan and Atlas. Atlas, an irishman who’s helped you all the way through turns out to be Frank Fontaine, who coded your character with post-hypnotic suggestions, and even worse, you’re actually Andrew Ryan’s son! Anyway, the final battle is lacklustre, frankly, but the execution of the twist reveal is possibly one of the best twist reveals in video gaming history. Before you think “oh, Davey, that’s a big statement”, don’t. Most of the industry agrees with me.
The Verdict
At the beginning of this retrospective, I posited the question about whether a video game could be considered to be a work of art. Quite simply put: yes. This game is the point where video games transcend their medium and become something much bigger. For proof, when you go to the next convention for gamers (or anything pop-culture related), I bet you’ll at least see a Jack, Andrew Ryan, or even a Big Daddy and Little Sister combination.
Seriously, if you’ve not played or owned this game, it’s well worth owning.
Til Next Time,
Davey
