That's not to say that I think Bioshock is bad (far from it). It just didn't "wow" me like I'd heard it would. To start with though, I'll begin with what I liked. From an artistic standpoint, this game is excellent. The setting, character design, atmosphere, music (an anthology of 1950s classics), voice acting, sound, etc., are all spot on. A lot of care clearly went into making this game as immersive as possible. All these things initially pulled me into the game very well. And one of the things I absolutely loved about the game in its earlier stages were how much playing it felt like being on a ride at Disney World--I mean what could be a greater feat than making you believe you're somewhere you're not and in danger when you're not?
From a technical aspect too, the game is quite good. Almost everything works when it should (I did get stuck in a glitch once and had to kill myself to get clear of it), and the controls are intuitive.
So with all this good, what problems could I have with the game? Only the most toted part: the storytelling. For that, I turn you over to IGN's five minute recap if you're unfamiliar with the game (or need a refresher) and don't mind spoilers.
BioShock 2 PlayStation 3 Video - BioShock In Five Minutes
To start with here, I need to finally return to a complaint I left unspoken when I lazily reviewed Half-Life 2 and its other first-person shooter clichés: I hate video games that make me a "gopher." You know, "Go for this, go for that." That's Half-Life 2 felt like to me most of the time. I felt like an extremely well-armed errand boy. And Bioshock made me feel exactly the same way. The initial splendor of the game's environment, mystery, and survival horror elements wore off after I received about my 50th order to "go find this key," or "kill this leader," or "deliver this ice cream cone," and I'd even quit playing for a couple of weeks.
Now, before the backlash begins, I realize that about half-way through the game, the story conjures up an explanation for this cliché in this game (whereas Half-Life 2 had me continually asking, "Really?! I'm the only one in the entire resistance who can open that door/kill that bad guy/save that kitten stuck in the tree?!"). The "would you kindly" catchphrase of supposed ally Atlus/Fontaine is probably one of the best video game twists ever. And it was when I got to that point in the game I became re-interested enough to finish it. That this double-agent has been subconsciously ordering you around (like an errand boy) is a brilliant way of masking what is a very guided/directed game. The only problem there is that it doesn't mask anything at all! There's no hint or clue concerning your subconscious slavery until just before you discover it, so I think my quick annoyance with the game prior to this is fair, especially since this game mechanic continues after breaking from Fontaine's mind control.
My other major problem with the game is how its difficulty undermines its atmosphere. That is to say, this game is much too easy to be as interesting as the story. Now perhaps I should also point out that preceding this game, I'd been on my second play through of Demon's Souls (what is considered one of the most difficult games ever). And in comparison, I can see how any other game might seem trivial, but even still, I've got to point out some odd development choices here.
For starters, we have the game's hacking mechanic. You can pretty much hack your way through this game: hack vending machines and you can access cheap items and ammo; hack turrets and security and you can add some extra fire power to your side; hack safes and combination locks and you can find all kinds of goodies to make your game easier. Hacking something begins the mini-game mentioned in IGN's recap above. If it looks familiar it's because this is puzzle that's been around in gaming for over two decades. It was 1989, and the game was Pipe Mania for the Amiga personal computer. And while I never played it's original version, incarnations of it have been appearing in games for almost a decade to my knowledge: I remember playing through the same thing as far back as Batman: Vengeance for the GameCube. Now, why on earth would you choose to build a game changing mechanic into your video game based on an older video game my 8-year old brother could figure out?
And as if that didn't make things easy enough, there are an entire set of plasmids for making hacking easier! In fact, there are an entire set of plasmids for making everything easier! Which brings me to my next critique: Bioshock's moral choice system. This was all the rage when this game came out, and we're seeing it's continued evolution in games like inFamous and the Mass Effect series. When you find a Little Sister toting her ADAM (your source of superpower), you can either kill her for tons of the stuff or take just enough to rescue her from the ADAM's influence will keeping her alive. But your choice makes little to no difference in the game. There's little reason to kill them for their ADAM, as just rescuing them allows you more than enough ADAM over the course of the game to max out your best plasmids. And aside from a change in the game's ending, little else changes based on your choice except that for rescuing Little Sisters, their caregiver provides you with powerful presents as a reward, which essentially balances things out. The real choice with Little Sisters then is whether or not to deal with their bodyguards, the Big Daddies.
However, as the game progresses, you have less and less reason (if any at all) to fear these encounters. While powerful, these foes are not particularly difficult to defeat. There are several ways of dealing with them in relatively safe means: whether it's laying traps for them or taking advantage of their weakness to electricity. And should you happen to die, you're immediately brought back to life via the city's Vita-Chambers. And when I say immediately, I mean immediately. The Big Daddy in question sticks to where you were last fighting him and even stays at whatever health level you took him down to before dying, making death essentially a minor inconvenience (in fact, with a little patience, there isn't even a reason to buy or seek out health sources at any point in the game save the final boss fight). And while the rest of the game's enemies continually get better armed, armoured, agile, and by extension, difficult to kill, Big Daddies seem to stay about the same for the entire game.
This is one of the more disappointing parts of the game, as the Big Daddy has become revered as one of the more ominous and infamous gaming baddies in the last few years. And the only reason I got excited about being one at the end of the game was getting to make their tell-tale stomping sound when I walked.
Now, of course, as some will no doubt point out, I could have just raised the game's difficulty (which can be done at any point, little on screen messages kept telling me). But I simply wasn't that interested to do so. I was mainly playing the game for its story anyway, and the game's mechanics didn't jazz me enough to voluntarily prolong the experience.
In the end, I appreciate that Bioshock is a very important game. It pushed the medium forward and gave us one of the most engaging and atmospheric first person shooters ever. But for me, it was marred by several poor choices in execution that kept me from really appreciating it--in fact, as much as I like the "Would You Kindly" twist, had a more standout phrase been used, I could see how this game might have lived on in "The Cake is a Lie"-esque infamy. As it is, though, this was merely a game just a little above average for me, when what I was expecting/promised was a completely mind-blowing experience.
Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?
To start with here, I need to finally return to a complaint I left unspoken when I lazily reviewed Half-Life 2 and its other first-person shooter clichés: I hate video games that make me a "gopher." You know, "Go for this, go for that." That's Half-Life 2 felt like to me most of the time. I felt like an extremely well-armed errand boy. And Bioshock made me feel exactly the same way. The initial splendor of the game's environment, mystery, and survival horror elements wore off after I received about my 50th order to "go find this key," or "kill this leader," or "deliver this ice cream cone," and I'd even quit playing for a couple of weeks.
Now, before the backlash begins, I realize that about half-way through the game, the story conjures up an explanation for this cliché in this game (whereas Half-Life 2 had me continually asking, "Really?! I'm the only one in the entire resistance who can open that door/kill that bad guy/save that kitten stuck in the tree?!"). The "would you kindly" catchphrase of supposed ally Atlus/Fontaine is probably one of the best video game twists ever. And it was when I got to that point in the game I became re-interested enough to finish it. That this double-agent has been subconsciously ordering you around (like an errand boy) is a brilliant way of masking what is a very guided/directed game. The only problem there is that it doesn't mask anything at all! There's no hint or clue concerning your subconscious slavery until just before you discover it, so I think my quick annoyance with the game prior to this is fair, especially since this game mechanic continues after breaking from Fontaine's mind control.
My other major problem with the game is how its difficulty undermines its atmosphere. That is to say, this game is much too easy to be as interesting as the story. Now perhaps I should also point out that preceding this game, I'd been on my second play through of Demon's Souls (what is considered one of the most difficult games ever). And in comparison, I can see how any other game might seem trivial, but even still, I've got to point out some odd development choices here.
For starters, we have the game's hacking mechanic. You can pretty much hack your way through this game: hack vending machines and you can access cheap items and ammo; hack turrets and security and you can add some extra fire power to your side; hack safes and combination locks and you can find all kinds of goodies to make your game easier. Hacking something begins the mini-game mentioned in IGN's recap above. If it looks familiar it's because this is puzzle that's been around in gaming for over two decades. It was 1989, and the game was Pipe Mania for the Amiga personal computer. And while I never played it's original version, incarnations of it have been appearing in games for almost a decade to my knowledge: I remember playing through the same thing as far back as Batman: Vengeance for the GameCube. Now, why on earth would you choose to build a game changing mechanic into your video game based on an older video game my 8-year old brother could figure out?
And as if that didn't make things easy enough, there are an entire set of plasmids for making hacking easier! In fact, there are an entire set of plasmids for making everything easier! Which brings me to my next critique: Bioshock's moral choice system. This was all the rage when this game came out, and we're seeing it's continued evolution in games like inFamous and the Mass Effect series. When you find a Little Sister toting her ADAM (your source of superpower), you can either kill her for tons of the stuff or take just enough to rescue her from the ADAM's influence will keeping her alive. But your choice makes little to no difference in the game. There's little reason to kill them for their ADAM, as just rescuing them allows you more than enough ADAM over the course of the game to max out your best plasmids. And aside from a change in the game's ending, little else changes based on your choice except that for rescuing Little Sisters, their caregiver provides you with powerful presents as a reward, which essentially balances things out. The real choice with Little Sisters then is whether or not to deal with their bodyguards, the Big Daddies.
However, as the game progresses, you have less and less reason (if any at all) to fear these encounters. While powerful, these foes are not particularly difficult to defeat. There are several ways of dealing with them in relatively safe means: whether it's laying traps for them or taking advantage of their weakness to electricity. And should you happen to die, you're immediately brought back to life via the city's Vita-Chambers. And when I say immediately, I mean immediately. The Big Daddy in question sticks to where you were last fighting him and even stays at whatever health level you took him down to before dying, making death essentially a minor inconvenience (in fact, with a little patience, there isn't even a reason to buy or seek out health sources at any point in the game save the final boss fight). And while the rest of the game's enemies continually get better armed, armoured, agile, and by extension, difficult to kill, Big Daddies seem to stay about the same for the entire game.
This is one of the more disappointing parts of the game, as the Big Daddy has become revered as one of the more ominous and infamous gaming baddies in the last few years. And the only reason I got excited about being one at the end of the game was getting to make their tell-tale stomping sound when I walked.
Now, of course, as some will no doubt point out, I could have just raised the game's difficulty (which can be done at any point, little on screen messages kept telling me). But I simply wasn't that interested to do so. I was mainly playing the game for its story anyway, and the game's mechanics didn't jazz me enough to voluntarily prolong the experience.
In the end, I appreciate that Bioshock is a very important game. It pushed the medium forward and gave us one of the most engaging and atmospheric first person shooters ever. But for me, it was marred by several poor choices in execution that kept me from really appreciating it--in fact, as much as I like the "Would You Kindly" twist, had a more standout phrase been used, I could see how this game might have lived on in "The Cake is a Lie"-esque infamy. As it is, though, this was merely a game just a little above average for me, when what I was expecting/promised was a completely mind-blowing experience.
Questions? Quibbles? Controversies?
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