The Paris Hilton of video games - easy on the eye, but not as smart as it thinks it is
OK, so I'm coming to this game a few years after its release, but then I've never been one to spunk all my money on top of the range computers just so I can play games on them. But Bioshock, to my mind at least, still looks amazing. The Art Deco city of Rapture is jaw-dropping in its attention to detail, set-pieces consistently theatrical. It has fantastic sound design, and the voice acting is still great (with the predictable exception of the one Australian character). And the story... SEEMS great, right up to the end. Surely the story should be enough to save any game, regardless of technical prowess, right?
Well, yes, but in the case of Bioshock it is also its major failing. I think of Bioshock as being like a supermodel – it looks amazing from a distance, when you get closer it looks even better, and if you should be so lucky as to get a go on it then its pure aesthetic perfection is enough to convince you that this is THE ONE, the best you could ever possibly ask for...
However, start a relationship with it and things begin to change a touch. You realise that its puzzle (a Flash-game-standard puzzle, involving directing a flow of liquid through a series of pipes to 'hack' electrical systems) is extremely simplistic and jars with the rest of the game,and you have to do it a lot. You realise that the tasks you are given are dressed-up "kill the baddies, find the key" quests, and all entirely linear. You begin to notice how repetitive the action is. There are only a handful of types of enemy character, and the actual difficulty of killing any one is totally unpredictable, which can be extremely annoying.
There are 4 types of human enemy, all of whom wander around spouting convincingly creepy dialogue, and the Big Daddies – enemies modelled on early 20th-century diving suits fitted with either a drill attachment or a grenade launcher and gun (guess which one's tougher), whose sole purpose is to protect the little girls who have been genetically engineered to harvest a mysterious substance from corpses, which is itself used as currency in the game to buy power-ups, which allow you to shoot fire and ice and stuff out of your fingers. Got all that?
When you kill a Big Daddy, you can choose to either free the little girl of the slug that's been implanted in her - don't ask - or you can kill her and the slug. Killing the girls gets you more of this substance (called Adam) but loses you brownie points with the woman behind the little girls' predicament, who now wants to save them.
Essentially, the problem with the game is its much-vaunted 'moral decision' angle. Save the girls and you're a good guy, kill 'em and you're a baddie. Except, not quite. I started out being a bit of both, then when I realised I didn't really need Adam because there were only a couple of special powers I actually used, I started being nice and saving all of them. The woman who judges your moral prowess started praising me for my good nature, saying I was a shining example, beacon of hope and blah blah blah, and then...
After the final, ridiculously easy boss fight, I get the 'you selfish bastard' ending! After all that guff about your moral choices affecting the outcome, at the end of the game you are shown a brief FMV harshly criticising you for some choices you DIDN'T EVEN MAKE! I took over the city by force did I? I got a nuke did I? There is only one decision that makes a difference, and that's the first time you decide not to save a Little Sister. The story is indeed compelling, right up until the end when it turns out that it should really have been a novel, not a computer game. Which isn't surprising at all, since it's based on the work of American philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand.
Don't get me wrong, the story is nothing short of epic by video game standards. It's just a shame the game couldn't quite decide whether it wants to be a FPS or an RPG, and as result it ends up being a rather easy, linear FPS, but one where you can pick up items that make it even easier. If you're going to play it, play it on hard and for goodness' sake disable the vita-chambers - where you respawn if you die, ffs.
A great video review of Bioshock is here: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/4-BioShock