Bioshock - Game Preview

[Alatar]

Sounds very interesting.

A blockbuster game in the dead of summer? Shocking!

Arguably the biggest release on any format this August and the finest summer gaming sizzler in recent memory, Bioshock is packed with promise and prestige. Indeed, developer Irrational Games brings to Bioshock the renown of acclaimed PC shooters System Shock and System Shock 2, making Bioshock a long-awaited spiritual sequel to what old-skool PC players consider two of the most immersive, scary and downright shocking titles ever made.

Bioshock is billed as the ‘shooter 2.0’, and with good reason. Its gameworld, Rapture, is an undersea utopia-gone-wrong, once the home of humanity’s brightest and best, now a shocking 1950’s dystopian hell lined with biogenetically mutated monstrosities stalking its submerged hallways. Pushing visual and aural boundaries within this chilling setting, ‘evocative’ would be a mild word to describe Bioshock’s phenomenally atmospheric fiction.

Lumped into the first-person shooter genre because A) It’s viewed in first-person and B) firearms are largely the weapon of choice, Bioshock actually promises so much more than your archetypal run-and-gun game.

At its outset, Bioshock sees the player scrambling from the wreckage of their crashed, sinking plane, swimming to an eerie lighthouse and discovering the path to Rapture within. Swiftly following this, a series jump-inducing set pieces set the pace in its opening sections, coupled with a distinct lack of ammunition and the introduction of terrible bio-altered people-turned-monsters known as Splicers – all combining to imbue the claustrophobic, constant foreboding feeling you’d expect from being trapped in a crumbling undersea city.

Bioshock’s world of Rapture is a city built on bio-engineering, and Bioshock itself is a game built on the moral choices arising from this real-world political hot potato. A thinking man’s shooter in every sense, Bioshock presents its own genetic gameworld ecology, and offers players the choice of becoming a genetic monstrosity themselves, or ploughing a more crafty route through Rapture’s perilous innards.
"Pushing visual and aural boundaries within this chilling setting, ‘evocative’ would be a mild word to describe Bioshock’s phenomenally atmospheric fiction."

The cause of Bioshock’s genetic mutations, which include abilities like shooting lightning, freezing enemies and telekinesis, is a bio-altering serum called Adam, housed within hypo needles called Eve – but it’s getting these which will form Bioshock’s most compelling remit.

Harvesting Adam will mean taking it directly from Little Sisters, freakish young girls whose role in Rapture seems to be to horde the dangerous genetic material – and getting to them will mean going through their bio-engineered guardians, the Big Daddies. Hulking, diving-suit-wearing protectors, Bioshock’s Big Daddies will destroy anything coming within a few feet of their allotted Little Sister – including you.

You’ll need to use your wits, whatever ammo you can scrounge, and your already-existing bio-engineered powers to defeat both Bioshock’s Big Daddies and deadly Splicers – and often, a combination of all three. Indeed, as more skills open up throughout Bioshock, you’ll be able to hack computers, upgrade your weapons, even direct Big Daddies and Splicers to fight each other with some extraordinarily open-ended gameplay possibilities, in a quest to get to the creepy Little Sisters.

Doing so, however, presents Bioshock’s big dilemma, thanks to two mysterious, conflicting influences. Contacted by an enigmatic Irish man named Atlus, and by Rapture’s own architect, Andrew Ryan, players will be given an ultimatum; save the Little Sister, as Ryan requests, for very little Adam, or very graphically strip away her entire Adam supply, sending shrieks of genuine terror around Rapture as the defenceless, dread-filled infant screams her last. She’s barely human anyway, reasons Atlus – and you need the Adam for yourself.

But what if he’s wrong? What if, deep down, the bio-altered Little Sisters are still human? And wouldn’t Adam make you less human too? Moreover, who is Atlus? What’s his agenda? And why does Ryan think saving the Little Sisters could benefit you? The answers to these questions and more await in Bioshock’s epic, immaculate, mesmerising underwater August adventure.

[yovargas]

Critics have been going ape-sh*t over this game since last year's E3. Apparently, everyone who sees it immediately thinks it will be the Best Thing Ever. I did watch a long-ish gameplay preview and it does look pretty damn nutty (in a good way).


*****


Odd how I can't really game anymore and yet I'm still fascinated by the industry.

[Crucifer]

I picked this up today.

Looked at it briefly.

And turned to Civilization 4.

[yovargas]

A few early reviews are out and the hyperbole is getting even more out of control:

http://www.metacritic.com/games/platfor ... 0/bioshock

Sounds like people are calling for not just Game of the Year but Game of All-Time.


Those poor, poor PS3 owners.
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[yovargas]

I just played through the PC demo. Pretty sweet. Emphasis on the pretty.