Bioshock
I finished Bioshock Halloween evening (only after carving my first Jack-O-Lantern and dodging neighbourhood sweet-guzzlers, satisfied that my cliche conformance for the year was on schedule), having played it on-and-off for a couple of months. Obviously its been a much-discussed title, but why not chuck in a few pence worth of comments?
First up, the story. This is fresh - great setting (50’s nostalgia, under the sea, filled with umm… mutants?), great premise, excellent twists, well-fleshed out characters. In some sections the sense of wonder and suspense and really well-built up, avoiding the “who cares” attitude provoked in the majority of in-game chest-puffing storylines (looking at you Halo). It is also genuinely scary in sections - visually theres some genius set-pieces and the audio is particularly disturbing. Late night play did develop bizarre dreams and restless sleep. Thankfully, for such a story-led game theres little in terms of cut-scenes, most of the story is disseminated by audio commentary that you pick up around the environment. Good, but valves story exposition works better in my opinion. I found listening to the audio a bit of a chore by the end and there was very little indication as to whether the audio would contain a bit of fluff (someone talking about going to the shops perhaps) or a genuine bit of story-critical exposition.
Art direction is beautiful. The world is exquisitely rendered and its taken a source of reference that has been utterly neglected, plus invented some iconic characters and locations. Top marks.
But, strip away the story and the visuals and you are left with a fairly standard game design. To be honest its dated. Given how many years its been in development, its understandable why the standards of the time have been used as the water-mark onto the project. It consists of fairly mundane FPS fare - move into a room, shoot all the creatures, move into the next room, shoot all the creatures. Some creatures suprise you. You kill them, you move through to the next level, a new creature is introduced, etc. The celebrated difference in this case - Plasmids (the ability to manipulate your DNA to grant new skills) - is certainly interesting, but in most cases is used as a lock/key condition to progress through the game, or to simply incapacitate some of the bad guys. Some of the more interesting elements are the ability to turn creatures on each other, or to get security cameras to get bots to attack them, but its really not enough to make a difference.
Other design decisions are a bit bizarre. “Hacking” involves replaying the 80s game “Pipemania” as a minigame. Rather than have a series of minigames, you are forced to play the same minigame. Hundreds of times. WHY?! Secondly, they have added quicksave AND penalty-free respawning making the game insanely easy and removing any tension as you can just be killed and walk back into the same room and repeat where you left off. Run out of ammo? Just wander round with the wrench and respawn several hundred times. Quick save on its own would have been fine.
So, is it worth playing? Definitely. Its set new standards visually and with its narrative. Its just a shame that those efforts were not matched by the design team, which could have raised this to being a defining game of this generation.
