The story-driven gamer also has a lot to look forward to in BIOSHOCK. The game delivers its storyline through audio recordings left behind by Rapture's citizens and through characters who will contact the player from time to time. The voice acting for these recordings is very well done; they do a great job in giving each of the different characters a unique personality. Another element of BIOSHOCK which I found interesting is the way it occasionally tells a story without saying anything explicitly to the player. Sometimes you'll encounter a particular room or setting where, upon investigation, you can figure out what happened on your own with occasionally surprising or terrifying results). For example, there's one area in the game where you'll find a dead body hanging with the words 'SMUGGLER' written above. Approach and investigate the scene, and you'll find out what exactly this person was smuggling...which then will give you some insight on the world of Rapture and some of the reasons why the city is in ruins. This isn't the only scene in the game where it tells a story without explicitly telling the player; there are many, many moments in the game where this type of narrative is executed flawlessly. The developers of this game are very skilled at telling the story of their world interactively. This results in a very rewarding experience for players who enjoy thorough exploration. In that sense, the game provides a sense of adventure that you'll rarely find in most first-person shooters. Lastly, the story-driven gamer will enjoy the element of choice that the game presents. To survive in Rapture, your character needs to acquire an element called 'ADAM' from little girls wandering the halls, called Little Sisters. However, you cannot take this element without killing them in the process. At the same time, you need the element to survive the later areas of the game. What do you do? The choices that you make in dealing with these Little Sisters will affect the way you play the various levels of the game, and they also have an effect on the way the story ends. Does BIOSHOCK deliver gaming perfection? If I'm going to answer this question I think I need to talk about an element of the game's design which will be controversial for most: the Vita-Chambers. These are devices located in each level of the game which resurrect your character upon death. In a nutshell, if your character dies, you get resurrected immediately in the nearest Vita-chamber, with most of your equipment intact. So, it's entirely possible to 'cheese-out' the game. Case in point, if you're trying to take down a Big Daddy one of the stronger creatures in the game), you could attack one recklessly until you die, then resurrect in a Vita-Chamber, then look for the Big Daddy where you left it, and kill it while its health is still low. The truth is, different players will handle the situation of dying in different ways. For me, I didn't really bother with 'using' the Vita-Chambers; every time my character died, I usually just end up reloading my saved game, because I thought that the reason I died was because I didn't handle the situation efficiently you have very limited resources when it comes to ammunition and healing kits). Other players may handle this differently, and they can opt to use the 'cheese out' method I've specified above. Does this break the game? After completing it, I realized that the developers must have wanted most players to finish the whole story. The decision to include the Vita-Chambers must have been made so that the game would be more inclusive to gamers of different skill levels, so that, with patience, everyone who plays the game will see the entire thing from start to finish. I'm sure that this will be a sore point with the more hardcore gaming crowd, but lets face it....there aren't really that many hardcore gamers out there, and the hobby does need to become more accessible to more people. ...Which brings me back to my original question: Does BIOSHOCK deliver gaming perfection? For this generation of games, I haven't quite seen a game that can match BIOSHOCK in terms of delivering the most complete single player gaming experience. Perhaps the only unfortunate thing about this game is that it's a mature title; literally, buckets of blood flow aplenty, and that does reduce its appeal a whole lot more than the 'problem' with the Vita-Chambers). Also, the terror factor that the game has will discourage some people from even getting beyond level 2. Let me just assure players who get too freaked out: just keep at it, you'll get used to the freakish denizens of Rapture soon enough, and at that point, the game's action pacing feels more like Halo than Doom. Gaming perfection? Damn close.
Have you ever dreamed of a place where morality and religion don’t exist? A place where the sole limit of science and industry is man’s imagination? Dream no more, friend; welcome to Rapture. BioShock is the much-hype... Read Full Review
In a time where there are literally thousands of first person shooters out there, BioShock proves that there still is something for the genre that has not yet been done. It combines atmosphere, story, and gameplay like n... Read Full Review
