Game Reviews Volume 2

BioShock (PS3, PC, Xbox 360)

When BioShock launched in 2007 it left the world in complete andutter awe at it's truly next generation visuals, near perfectlyexecuted FPS gameplay sprinkled with a light upgrades system, thetotally immersive atmosphere of Rapture, and of course it's famousplot twists that have gone down as some of the greatest in gaminghistory.

But with a PlayStation 4 & Xbox One remake on the horizon and 9years since its release, I think it's time we took a look back at thegame that defined a generation and see how well it holds up intoday's very different gaming landscape, or whether it was truly aproduct of it's time.

In the time since BioShock's original release on the Xbox 360 andGames for Windows the gaming industry has seen a massive change inwhat games consumers bought into, as well as what we as gamers grewto expect from games. At the time BioShock was very far ahead of thecurve presenting a story driven first person shooter with deep,complex characters inhabiting a living, breathing game world with animpeccable attention to detail. This was an era not long beforemilitary shooters dominated the gaming landscape, before multiplayerwas the most important feature in a game and just before the big pushfor more cinematic experiences came through.

What BioShock presents is a game that used incredibly intelligentpractices in non-cinematic plot delivery that provided the depth ofworld and character that we have only come to expect in gaming sincejust after the turn of the decade.

BioShock achieved this by acting as a spiritual successor toIrrational Games' previous series, System Shock. Practices such asdelivering it's complex, unpredictable story entirely through audiologs and through environmental cues. By utilising these techniques,as well as enchancing them by taking many of it's story deliverytechniques and pacing beats from the revolutionary Half-Life 2 thatreleased three years before; BioShock presented the gaming industrywith something that, though had been seen before, was something sorare and perfectly executed that it set standards for the future ofall of video gaming.

The story follows protagonist Jack in the year of 1960. As Jack isflying over the Atlantic Ocean his plane encounters turbulenceproblems and crashes just a short swim from a lighthouse situated inthe middle of nowhere. Venturing inside for shelter from thewreckage, Jack find himself journeying to the ocean floor and findingan underwater metropolis by the name of Rapture. Built by billionaireAndrew Ryan in the 1940's, Rapture was designed to be a city thatoperated outside of any government organisations, where any man whoworked hard could flourish. As such Rapture became a powerhouse forthe artistic and the scientific alike, including the discovery of agenetic material called ADAM. ADAM allowed users to alter theirgenetic code and granting them super-human powers such astelekinesis, teleportation and the ability to produce fire or icefrom the palms of their hands.

Although the utopia was short lived as since new years eve of 1958Rapture has been in a state of disrepair with the remainder of it'scitizens mutated by the effects of ADAM and reliant on theirconsumption of it for their survival.

Jack is welcomed by Atlas, a man who asks for his help in freeing hisfamily from Ryan's clutches and in return he promises to help himreturn to the surface.

I wont ruin the many surprises that BioShock has in store for thosewho have yet to experience the warm embrace of Rapture, though besure that some of it's reveals could even come close to "I am yourfather" levels of unpredictability. The results of which have beenburned into people's minds ever since and have since been known assome of gaming's best plot twists of all time.

The story of BioShock is not exactly original, as it is almost beatfor a beat a retelling of System Shock 2's story. System Shock 2 mayhave a better villain, but Rapture is a much more immersive, detailedand fleshed out environment compared to the Von Braun. Part of thismay have to do with the greater depth of characters in BioShockcompared to System Shock. Brigid Tennenbaum, Sander Cohen, Atlas,Andrew Ryan and all the rest are much more fleshed out charactersthan anybody in System Shock excluding Shodan are are incrediblymemorable too. Each with their own views on the situation of Rapture,of the major player in it's downfall and their motives behind whothey side with.