BioShock (Xbox 360)

Despite its lack of commercial success, the team behind "System Shock 2" ventured yet another attempt to add personality to First Person Shooters. The result is "BioShock" and it interestingly manages to simultaneously be both innovative and widely appealing. Besides allowing you to shoot fireballs and hack flying death-bots, "Bioshock"'s greatest draw is the game subtly played inside the player's mind.

***The Story***
In response to World World II and America's great depression, visionary Andrew Ryan, created Rapture, an underwater city designed to be an utopia. Unhindered by bureaucracy, free of morals, a man was only limited by his dreams. Science flourished, most remarkably genetic engineering, with "plasmids" allowing ordinary men to be extra-ordinary. Super-human agility and empathic links to machinery are just a plasmid away! Power, however, corrupts.

Indeed, when your avatar finds an unlikely refuge in Rapture after his plane crashes, the city couldn't be farther from a paradise. Tarnished by riots, most of its citizens irreparably twisted to thinking little else but gathering more and more ADAM, the basis of the plasmids. In order to survive, you'll need to walk the line of becoming one of them and you soon inject yourself with the Electro Shock plasmid, allowing you to unleash thunderbolts from your fingertips. But that is not nearly enough to level the playing field and thus you'll need to collect ADAM yourself: from the sweet-looking, yet creepy-sounding Little Sisters.

Little Sisters were 6-year old toddlers, now transformed to the ultimate ADAM collecting tool, at an apparently hefty toll on their souls. They are virtually invulnerable and can only be dealt with either by being "harvested", passing on all of their ADAM before being destroyed, or "rescued" which yields only half the ADAM but also leaves a rather happy little girl behind... or at least something that looks remarkably like that.

"Don't be a fool! Harvest them, kill them, that's their only purpose! Would you feel bad plucking apples from a tree?", says one voice. "But they are only children... Even if they look like something out of the Exorcist they are actually little girls! Save them!", says another. Which one of these two shoulder-devils your avatar actually heeds, is completely up to you.

Besides the moral one, there is an actual physical conflict that comes with the Little Sisters, as they sport their very own oversized body-guards, the Big Daddies. The toughest enemies in the game, these simple-minded, drill-wielding monstrosities must be killed in order to get the little ones.

All this collection of ADAM is necessary as you'll be going toe to toe with demented scientists, misguided idealists and self-proclaimed liberators, all of which also come with their own private army of common grunts.

Motive is often-times overlooked in First Person Shooters, but it takes center stage in "Bioshock". Why you'll be confronting all these characters is the essence of the game and it would be irresponsible of me to dilute the experience by revealing anything more here. It's probably worth noting, however, that I went into the game fully braced for a twist at any moment and, even so, I couldn't help thinking "Bravo!" when it actually happened. "Bioshock" is worthy of high expectations and, at least as far as story is concerned, it completely delivers.

***The Gameplay***
There is an awesome cinematic that plays when you stay in the title scene for a while, containing an excellent showdown between the player and a Big Daddy. It's frenetic, it's thrilling, it's exhilarating, it's everything that such a battle should be. Sadly, it couldn't be farther from the actual thing.

Every time your health runs out in "Bioshock" you are "respawned" in the nearest Vita-Chamber, which rarely is more than three rooms away. Your inventory is intact, you have plenty of health and Eve, while your enemies remain as damaged as you left them . As such, any sense of danger is practically eliminated. You could skilfully take down a Big Daddy, luring him into a series of electric traps that only lead him to a couple of inflammable nitrogen tanks, but you could also blindly clonk him with the wrench, respawning as needed every five seconds until you finally fell him.

This, much like the ever-helpful "quest arrow" that magically points you to the right direction , is a way to make sure that no-one gets stuck and can easily enjoy the ride that is "Bioshock"'s story. Thankfully, respawning (and even saving!), is disabled during the final battle, adding to the satisfaction when you finally come out on top. Not that it's a terribly difficult fight, but with respawning allowed it would have simply been insanely cheap and a candidate for anti-climax of the decade.

According to form for X360 shooters, controls are very solid with the left shoulder buttons switching and firing your plasmids, while the right shoulder buttons mirror those functions for your conventional weapons.

The plasmids are easily the most fun to use; as iconic as a Tommy-gun is, it can't really compete with covering your enemy with a swarm of bees. Also, the weapons all seem to be slightly "off", when compared to other First Person Shooters.

The shotgun for example, a weapon I like in every game I come across it, seems terribly underpowered in "Bioshock" with point-black blasts sometimes hardly damaging your opponents. Thankfully, the game tries to makes up for that by including lightning shells, that also stun the enemy. The Wrench and Crossbow are the other end of the spectrum, the two weapons that can feel unevenly powerful. I am pretty certain that a bullet to the head was at least as lethal as a crossbow bolt, even in the sixties. Still, these were for me mild distractions, at most, during the game, but they might phase the more hardcore of FPS-fans.

Speaking of that crowd, "Bioshock" is an excellent chance to broaden their horizons, as it offers a level of character customization rarely encountered in a FPS. There is a plethora of "passive", always-active plasmids that you are able to integrate to your person, that enhance your running ability, damage with the wrench or ballistic weapons, resistance to damage, hacking aptitude and even one that turns you invisible whenever you stay still for a few seconds.

Given that the amount of available plasmids surpasses the number you can have equipped at a given time, you must customize your avatar to your playing style and as such two characters can play very differently.

RPG-elements such as this are actually better delivered than most of "Bioshock"'s FPS parts and an integral part of its enjoyable, yet not quite great, gameplay.

***The Other Version***
"Bioshock" is also available for the PC. Both versions are nearly identical, with the X360's controls feeling about as good as the FPS standard mouse-keyboard combination, thanks to the handy usage of the shoulder buttons for weapon/plasmid selection. If you don't have a powerful enough PC, are addicted to Xbox Achievements and/or own a large HDTV, the X360 version is an extremely viable choice.

The Limited Edition comes in a tin case and offers no special features whatsoever. So unless you find it for the same price as the "normal" version (like me) or have a strong affinity for shiny metallic things (also like me) it's not worth picking up.

***OVERALL***
"Bioshock" often feels like a film directed by David Fincher and if it was just that, I'd certainly recommend lining up the nearest theatre to see it. But it is a First Person Shooter and as such it has its shortcomings: For the FPS-fan, it's the lack of a real challenge, the flimsiness of most of the conventional weapons and the lack of multiplayer. For the casual gamer, it's the intimidation of running around overly dark corridors. Still, the story it tells is interesting and its presentation phenomenal. If you can play First Person Shooters, I say give it a try; if not, find a friend who can and get through it together.