Bioshock borrows a bit from the original Half-Life, but that's ok when it turns out a masterpiece!
The mastermind behind this city is Andrew Ryan. He wanted a city where the people would have total freedom. The government wouldn't interfere with capitalism. Scientists could research and experiment without being bound by morals. The perfect society. But as you enter Rapture after the bathysphere ride, you will immediately see that something's gone horribly wrong.
The atmosphere of the game is unlike anything I've seen before. Dark and creepy with genetic freaks called splicers lurking around everywhere. The year is 1960, and you're in an underwater city, so how should the city look? Retro, or futuristic? Or why not both? The city of Rapture is designed by geniuses. It manages to look both retro and futuristic at the same time. Simply beautiful.
A wrench, a revolver and a tommy gun are the first three weapons you get a hold of. Not really high-tech. At least not until you upgrade them. The weapon upgrade stations you can find scattered around Rapture offers some weapon upgrades that doesn't really seem like 60's technology to me. Another example of how the game manages to be both retro and futuristic.
The gunplay in this game isn't as well designed as it would in an action-oriented FPS game. However, Bioshock makes up for it by presenting an awesome story. The reason people turned to monsters and went berserk is because of a genetic substance called ADAM. You can use this ADAM to buy plasmids, (spells you can learn that are not unlike magic, only these are gained by genetic modification) tonics (upgrades that give you passive abilities) and other things. You get these from girls called Little Sisters. How you choose to go about in gaining ADAM will have an effect on the ending, and how the story itself plays out. The story also includes a major plot twist which will teach you more about the character you are playing. Before that, you know next to nothing about who he is.
You're running down a hallway and suddenly, you see a mahcine gun turret that starts firing at you. No panic though, you can zap it with your lightning plasmid to stun it, and then run over to hack it. The hacking minigame involves some kind of liquid running through some pipes towards an exit. I suspect it's the machine's fuel, of some sort. What you need to do is create a new pipe system that leads the fuel towards another exit before the fuel meets a dead end. If it does, the machine short circuits and you will take damage. Later on, the hacking is made harder by placing alarm tiles and overload curcuits in the minigame so you will have less space to build your pipe system in. If a turret or security bot is successfully hacked, it will attack your enemies instead. Security cameras can also be hacked. If they spot an enemy, they will send security bots after it. If an unhacked camera spots you, the bots will attack you. This adds a bit more fun to the game.
While playing the game, I couldn't help drawing a few parallels towards the original Half-Life game. You're trapped inside a city (in Half-Life's case, a research facility) with monsters lurking around, and you're trying to get out while also finding out what caused all the mess. Still, Bioshock is an awesome game in it's own respect and is one that I will most certainly play again. There are areas within Rapture that you don't have to go to progress in the game, but could be well worth it in terms of what you could find there. Exploration makes you spend a little more time in the game without it getting boring. And with such a beautifully designed city, those areas piqued my interest only for the sake of exploring all of it.
The conclusion is that Bioshock is a game that certainly should not be missed. If you enjoyed it the first time, you will most certainly enjoy it for another 2-3 playthroughs. A true classic, and the Game of the Year award was well deserved.