“BioShock is a shooter unlike any other, loaded with unique weapons and tactics. Complete with an arsenal of revolvers, shotguns, and grenade launchers, players will be forced to genetically modify their DNA to become an even deadlier weapon.” – Steam Synopsis
Without a doubt, Bioshock is a classic. Despite my issues with this game, I cannot deny that I fully understand why people have been raving about this game for over a decade now. I would almost argue that this game is timeless in a lot of aspects. Maybe aside from visual fidelity, but from a story writing, character, atmosphere, and gameplay perspective, this game is timeless. I do still have my own personal issues with it, but I can’t deny everything it does so well.
The biggest praise Bioshock has always gotten is for its story. I’ve heard for almost 15 years now how amazing it is, and I hold that same opinion, with some caveats. You play as this character who survives a plane crash at sea and finds himself in the (not so) wonderful underwater city of Rapture. Immediately, we’re contacted by a mysterious man by the name of Atlas, who kindly asks us to assist him in helping his family escape Rapture and the clutches of the city’s founder himself, Andrew Ryan.
As I think back on this story holistically, it’s great. This short tackles three big things in very interesting ways. Those being capitalism, freedom, and choice. It was super fascinating to see how it tackled those things, both within the actual main story and from things we learn from the audio tapes, and just from the level design. This game’s level design atmosphere tells a story. And that environmental storytelling does a lot of the heavy lifting in the early hours. While there were interesting story moments in the first few hours, ultimately, the story was just kind of there. It was the game’s atmosphere and auxiliary story elements that engrossed me in this game and in Rapture. Which, Rapture as a city and a society, is so fascinating. Its history, how it worked, and how it’s fallen to the state that we find it in. This is probably the greatest video game setting I’ve played. And eventually the main story hooked me, and with everything working in tandem, it would’ve had me excited to play constantly if it wasn’t for my major issue with the game, its combat.
Okay, let me say that I love a good FPS game. I even really like immersive sims. And this is a good blend of both of those things. This doesn’t hit the same immersiveness in terms of freedom of gameplay as Prey, Deus Ex, or Dishonored. The bones are still there, and the choice that you do have is fun to mess around with (which also adds to the bigger theme of choice in this game). I never felt completely stuck in a combat encounter because there was always something I could do or try. Now I played the game on hard the entire way, and I think the damage tuning is fine. My biggest issue is that I just personally found a lot of the encounters frustrating and samey. Outside of the big daddies, the enemy variety really lacks, and I just found myself frustrated by the encounter design more often than not. I overall found every big daddy encounter fun, and figuring out how I would use the resources I had to defeat them was a blast. But the normal enemies just devolved into the same thing over and over. Frustating and boring encounters are easily the biggest negative I have for this game, also the hacking mini game is fun at first and quickly becomes annoying.
Visually, this game still looks amazing, and the way Rapture is designed and laid out is wonderful. This felt like a real underwater city, and not a video game. It never got old, traversing the connecting tunnels and looking out at the water that’s completely surrounding us. The different areas are so unique and clearly served a purpose before Rapture’s fall. This environment is only enhanced by the recordings left over and information gleaned from them. Also this is some of the best voice acting I’ve ever heard. Atlas and Ryan mainly, but the whole cast and really the entire soundscape is amazing.
So yeah, I was excited to finally play this game for myself and see what all of he hype was about and, yeah, I get it. The story took a bit to get me invested, but when it really starts to get going and joins in a beautiful marriage with the tape recordings and the atmosphere, this game becomes unmatched on those fronts. If only it weren’t so frustrating to play at times that I would have to just turn it off for a few hours or days before playing again. That’s really the main thing keeping this game’s score lower, but I could easily see myself revisiting this down the line and enjoying it more.
BioShock Remastered – 8/10
Notes: To add to the atmosphere part, this game is actually pretty scary at times, which was a pleasant surprise. But it does pull the same tricks a few too many times.
1 Response
[…] #10 – BioShock Remastered […]