BioShock (PS3)

A game that receives as much hype as this one did can never live up to it can it? Bioshock really blew us out of the water (bad pun) when it hit the scene way back in 2004, highly involved twisty turny storyline, great action and some seriously stunning, stunning, stunning visuals, there's just not enough art deco in computer games, that is to say there's not enough good art deco themes, and for fans of the style like myself, we can really fill our boots here.

Set in 1960 the opening story is brief, I can't really go any further than the opening because the plot seems very delicately balanced and nothing short of brilliant and anything more will just open a big juicy can of Spoiler for ya' so here goes.
You play a nameless faceless character whose plane has just crashed into the ocean (FPS+Aircraft=crash), you see a tower reaching into the sky out of the ocean and you swim towards it. Inside, lights start to flicker on and a voice reveals itself as Andrew Ryan he welcomes you to what you now know is Rapture, you climb into an underwater elevator and with the voice still ringing in your ear one of the most stunning moments in gaming happens, the cityscape of Rapture is revealed to you, bright Vegas like lights and billboards, all with fishes and sharks and beautiful corals surrounding everything. You plunge into Rapture, and find that everything is dark and there's voices... Suddenly a radio whirs into life, a man with an Irish accent starts talking to you, and there's something outside....

Such a great opening to a video game, your plunged straight into the atmosphere and you can plainly see that Rapture is a wreck of what was once a beautiful city, the entire game is worth checking out just on the basis of story to, as soon as you land in rapture the story starts to twist and turn and the mystery of the whole affair really is never truly reveled to you.

On the game play side of things, it's a first person shooter, you also have your trusty wrench for those sticky moments on top of all the pistols and shotguns you'll be using, there's also the fabulous gangster "Tommy gun" to get your hands on. The innovation in Bioshock comes in the form of plasmids, one of the first thing the mysterious Irish man asks you to do is inject a strange red substance known as "Adam" into yourself, it grants you special abilities like firing lightning bolts out of your hand or telekinesis and mind control among'st other things. You soon find out that the citizens of Rapture have been over using Adam and plasmids for years, thinking that they where only making themselves stronger and fitter, where in fact they've all been driven completely insane and there physical bodies have become deformed because of there need for this precious substance. These unfortunate souls are known now as "Splicers" and they are the main enemy in the game, it's your job to take them out using a combination of standard weapons and plasmid abilities. To power your new found abilities you'll have to locate yet another substance, a mysterious blue liquid known as "Eve", it's found in the vending machines dotted around rapture and also scattered about the game world.

In true FPS form the security systems in Rapture have gone haywire, luckily you can hack the systems, making various articles like gun turrets and security cameras work for you, you could even hack the vending machines for a discount, neat!
This is done by playing the hacking mini game, you need to use a system of pipes to navigate a blue liquid to a goal, moving and rotating various shapes of pip like deranged Tetris. The minigame becomes somewhat annoying and by the end of the game you'll be an expert at it, it's probably the only thing I found remotely annoying about the game.

Now, you'd think with a drug like substance pumping through the veins of Raptures citizens granting them immense power that there'd be some sort of policing for it? well fear not the "Big Daddies" are out there for the good of the people, until now of course. Big Daddies are great lumbering beasts in diving suits, usually equipped with a huge drill or a nice big gun, each Big Daddy looks after a creepy little girl known as a "Little Sister". It transpires that when a citizen of Rapture dies, the precious Adam needs to be extracted from there veins, the Little Sisters carry an evil looking syringe for that purpose exactly, they call the dead bodies "Angels".... *shudder*
These days the Splicers mercilessly hunt down the little sisters to procure the Adam in there possession, but they have to get passed their Big Daddy first, there are some great moments watching Splicers take on the Big Daddies in Rapture, usually resulting in them dying a swift miserable death. Now should you be lucky enough to capture a Little Sister you can procure some precious Adam for yourself... but will you be so merciless? you can outright kill the poor creature and harvest all the Adam for yourself, or you can rescue the Little Girl and send her off to the "Orphanage" and take only a small amount of Adam.... The choice is yours....

As you journey through Rapture, you'll really get the feel of a living city, even in it's darkest days there's still advertisement posters littered around the city and evidence of splicers having a boozeup in the bar and little splicer camps with a nice warm fire and spent syringes littered around. The city even has it's own market, Public Gardens and my personal favourite was the theatre area where a deranged Splicer is still putting on shows and "creating" artworks.

Something I always end up mentioning is the voice acting, I do feel strongly about the role of voice acting in games and so many games get it so horribly wrong that I feel it's worth mentioning every time.
Bioshock is a shiner when it comes to the voicing, you'll fall in love with the Mysterious Irish accent from Atlus, and you'll dig the southern flavour of Sinclairs dulcid tones. There are also the voice diary tapes to collect around Rapture and anyone who wants to get really involved with the story of Rapture can fill their boots with some brilliantly acted monologues from Raptures lost souls and deranged denziens. You'll also enjoy as I did, listening to the Splicers chatting among'st themselves, again adding to the citys truly living feel and also the sense that these poor folks had a life before becoming the twisted drug addled forms they are today.

I only really had one gripe with the game apart from the hacking minigame and that was with the fact you have to swap between standard weapons and plasmid abilities, it's a bit of a learning curve and more often than not you can mess it up in the middle of a tense fight. This problem was actually fixed in the second installment of the game so at least it was acknowledged.

Overall Bioshock is an absolutely stunning game, masterfully crafted with some real original ideas. And I feel even now in 2011 it offers some gameplay experiences that will last through the ages and should not be missed. It's also available at a pretty reasonable price now so if you don't have Bioshock in your library I seriously recommend it.

©peckinpigeon