It's not perfect, but BioShock is still undeniably a beautiful piece of gaming art.
BioShock begins with a plane crash in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Coincidentally, you happen to crash directly over the underwater city of Rapture. Rapture is a technological marvel built by socialite Andrew Ryan in the mid-1940s. Ryan built Rapture in order to escape from government, religion, and morality, things that he believed only serve to hold humanity back. When Ryan descended into his city, he brought with him the world's greatest inventors, doctors, artists, and thinkers. For years, Rapture flourished, but, as you will see minutes into the game, something went horribly, horribly wrong.
The Rapture you stumble upon in 1960 is torn apart by civil war and genetically modified lunatics known as Splicers. To make matters worse, the ocean is beginning to reclaim the territory Ryan tried to steal. Basically, Rapture is slowly but steadily disintegrating and everyone who is still alive is going along with it.
As soon as you enter the city, you are greeted (via radio) by an Irishman named Atlas. in all his benevolence, Atlas gives you advice and direction during your stay in order to keep you alive. However, his main motivation for keeping you alive, it seems, is the fact that you might possibly return his wife and child, who have gotten lost deep in the city, to him safely.
However, between you and Atlas' family are many different types of enemies. The standard enemy in BioShock is the splicer. Although splicers come in different varieties, they were all once human. As science advanced in Rapture, people stumbled upon a kind of sea slug which, when harnessed correctly, could produce a genetic material known as ADAM. With ADAM, people were able to turn cells back to stem cells and basically recreate themselves using things called Tonics and Plasmids. At first, these things were used to improve the quality of life, but, eventually, a civil war broke out in Rapture and Plasmids, genetic weaponry, began to be produced. Splicers are the product of these plasmids and you are going to fight several different kinds of splicers during your stay in Rapture. You are going to use conventional weaponry and plasmids and tonics to take your foes down.
You're also going to run across Big Daddies and Little Sisters. Little Sisters are little girls who wander about Rapture, harvesting ADAM from dead bodies and making it usable by cycling it through their own bodies. Now that ADAM is no longer readily available, the only way to get it is through these Little Sisters. But, they are always accompanied by Big Daddies, huge monsters wearing old-fashioned scuba suits, armed to the teeth and determined to keep you away from the Little Sisters.
Indeed, BioShock is a bit of a convoluted game with plenty of different gameplay elements. The gameplay is BioShock is quite good. You can completely customize everything from your weapons and ammo to yourself, using plasmids and tonics. Plasmids are very cool because with them, you can freeze enemies, light them on fire, trick them into fighting each other, trick Big Daddies into protecting you, and do all sorts of other cool stuff. With Tonics, you improve yourself by making yourself stronger, faster, more resilient to attacks, and more. All these neat things make gameplay very enjoyable and the psychotic nature of the splicers makes combat very intense. One complaint I have though is that BioShock is more linear than I would have expected due to Ken Levine. Levine had me thinking that BioShock would be almost completely open-world, like Oblivion or something, but, in fact, it has a pretty linear design. Although the combat does get a little repetitive towards the end of the game and it's not quite as open-world as I would have hoped, this is forgivable due to the other amazing aspects of the game.
One of the many cool aspects of this game is the A.I. Although some enemies will just charge at you, they always seem to recognize their surroundings. Enemies lit on fire will frantically search for a body of water to jump into to keep from dying, others will run to med stations to heal themselves, and others will use turrets and cameras against you.
In the graphics department, BioShock is a marvel. Character models are spectacular and the environments look lush and vibrant, while still instilling a feeling of fear and claustrophobia. But the most impressive aspect of the graphics is the amazing water. Water has never looked better in a game. BioShock has set a new standard in water effects. Water looks beautiful, flows realistically, puts out fire, and basically just acts the way water should act.
One of the most impressive parts of BioShock is the audio. All of the voice acting is absolutely superb. Everyone from Andrew Ryan to the lowly Thuggish Splicer delivers lines wonderfully. Most impressive is a psychotic artist you meet about mid-way through the game. Sound effects are also very good, everything from the moan of a Big Daddy to the crack of fire sounds great. My only complaint is that some of the weapons sound underpowered, making them not as satisfying to shoot, but this is a minor complaint.
The very best thing about BioShock is the storyline. I don't know where to start because I don't want to give anything away and there are almost as many plot twists here as in the Maltese Falcon. I will just explain the history of Rapture. As I mentioned before, Ryan built the place and invited all the smart people to come with him. Unfortunately, with the discovery of ADAM came chaos. ADAM did not just improve the quality of life, it bent the minds of users. Everyone who used ADAM slowly became dependent on it and went crazy. When a smuggler named Fontaine came along with the promise of plenty of ADAM, all Hell broke lose. A civil war between Andrew Ryan and Fontaine erupted and Rapture was torn apart. People either died in combat or went completely insane. When you enter Rapture, it slowly becomes clear that you're going to have to do something about this.
Beyond that, I will say little more. This is one of the best plots ever seen in a video game. Seeing such a good plot in a game makes you wonder why more developers don't take the time to think up interesting stories like this one. To make things even better, the story changes completely depending on how you play the game, so you're going to immediately want to start a new game after finishing the first time through.
BioShock raises the bar for video gaming, not just because of killer graphics and gameplay, but also because it has such a wonderful plot that is so wonderfully unraveled. If nothing else, BioShock's plot will stay in your mind for a while and for all the time that it's there in your brain, you'll realize more and more how absolutely amazing this game is.