Ayn Rand is a Man here, and Atlas doesn't Shrug. That's why Rapture was doomed.
Bioshock was one of the games I knew I was going to buy after building the new rig, and for 30 bucks it seemed like a very good deal. And it was, I guess, although it wasn't entirely what I expected.
According to most reviews I had read and paid attention to (meaning those not proclaiming it to be either the second coming or the worst game ever) Bioshock was supposed to be a very good, atmospheric game focused on telling the story with a somewhat mediocre FPS side. The main problems, aside from the technical glitches, were reportedly related to how weak the weapons were and how easy the game was overall due to the vita-chambers and lack of death penalty. Well, I love a good story, so I was sold. And here's what I think.
Yes, the game truly is gorgeous. The idea of a huge underwater city as a set for a game is a brilliant one, and with Unreal Engine 3 in hand beautifully realized. Rapture is probably the most aesthetically pleasing indoor environment I've ever had to defile with gore. Yes, the water is crazy good and it's everywhere. If Bubba from Forest Gump had visited Rapture, he would tell you that there's standing water, flowing water, dripping water, frozen water, boiling water, water in sinks and toilets and bathtubs, water in streams, water in torrents, water in waterfalls… The only thing that seems to be missing is bottled water, but there's plenty of kinds of bottled "fire-water," which will replenish a little of your health and sometimes make you drunk.
The sounds - of water and otherwise - are also awesome. Even if the first glimpse at Rapture through the batisphere's window does not make it clear enough for you that your adventure is not going to involve a lot of personages from The Little Mermaid, the sounds you'll hear soon after the blood-spattered door opens to let you out will quickly do the job. Rapture is not a cheerful place, unless you find insane asylums cheerful.
And it's as much an "insane asylum" as an "asylum for the insane," and this is where the story comes in, and this is also where my opinion of the story - the supposed main strength of the game - begins to differ from that of most critics.
The main problem I have with Bioshock's story: there basically isn't one for the first three quarters of the game. Not the one in the normal sense, anyway. Yes, you find a bunch of conveniently placed tape recorders and you travel through the city, but all of them tell the story of Rapture before you got there. In books it's called "the background." It's what the main story is supposed to be set against, not be replaced by. And this, I feel, is what's wrong with Bioshock. All of it already happened. The story you participate in consists of following voice communications to go from one point on the map to the other, because supposedly that will help you… uh… get out of Rapture? But you just got there. It's true that the much-talked-about "twist" will reveal and explain a lot of it, but it comes rather late, and I, personally, wasn't terribly excited by it at that point. Especially since the story, once it truly takes shape, reveals plenty of cracks and incoherencies. Throw in the fact that there are basically no non-hostile NPCs in the entire city (or they cheesily die immediately prior to meeting you in person) and I was left with a feeling of loneliness and "work" I thought was gone for good from (high-concept) FPS gaming when Valve released original Half-Life. In short, the storytelling technique here did not work for me at all.
Now the combat wasn't bad. Some weapons are noticeably weak, but AI is decent, and plasmids - genetic mods you augment your body with - are fun and inventive. Photo-research is also an interesting feature, as are hacking and looting. However, the lack of enemy variety is visible, especially when the same enemies become, inexplicably, harder to kill in later levels, despite your photo-research, which should have "increased" your damage against them. The big daddies, contrastingly, are pretty brutal in early levels but become easier to kill as you progress through the game. In case you still don't know, the Big Daddies are Mutated Cows dressed in retro diver suits. They are heavily armed and guard the little girls gathering something called "Adam" from corpses lying around the city. They won't attack you first, but you can't very well get too far without "Adam" yourself, so you'll have to take them on. That's where the vita-chambers come in.
Basically, when you die, you immediately get resurrected with no penalty in the nearest vita-chamber. Vita chambers are big humming glass cylinder thingies, placed throughout Rapture, for the sole purpose, apparently, of resurrecting you, since they don't work on splicers or any other dead Rapturians littering the streets. Aside from being uh, a little out of character, shall we say, vita chambers did not bother me as much as some other critics, since their function is only marginally different from QuickSave-QuickLoad routine we would be employing otherwise. There's a version (post-patch, I think), in which you can disable the vita chambers for added difficulty, but with combat balanced as it is, I would not advise it.
When you kill your first big Daddy you will have a choice of either harvesting or rescuing the Little Sister, and I can tell you that rescuing one is truly one of brighter spots in the game, with all the immersion and zeal you might have been losing up until then coming back for about five glorious seconds, during which you really feel a part of something and that you have done something really good. Harvesting them instead gives you more Adam, but I'm not sure if the trade-off is worth it, as I haven't tried it.
To wrap up: Bioshock is a tremendous artistic achievement, but as a game it's not my bottle of Chechnya Vodka. It's already uninstalled from my machine. Still, you probably can't go wrong with it for 30 bucks.