RETROSPECTIVE: 'BioShock'

Bioshock is a game about a faceless, nameless, voiceless protagonist who journeys somewhere beyond the sea. Specifically: Rapture, a city underwater. It quickly turns out that things have gone horribly wrong here, as the city has been ruined by people injecting themselves with magical powers - causing them to go insane (you, however, remain fine)

I'm going to get my conclusion out of the way first: if you've played Bioshock already then play System Shock 2 - because it's the same game but better. If you've played System Shock 2 but not Bioshock then don't rush. If you haven't played either then play Bioshock first because it's still a really good game and still completely worth your time in terms of storytelling and production design.

I would like to apologize in advance, because this review will talk a LOT about System Shock 2. I know that I should try to look at both games as separate entities...but I can't because Bioshock borrows so many elements from System Shock 2 that to separate the two would be like separating A New Hope from The Empire Strikes back. Yes, they ultimately aim for two different goals and differ somewhat in execution, but one would not exist without the other.

You know what Rapture can't offer? SUNLIGHT! 

It's a shame that Bioshock must be compared to one of my favorite games because if System Shock 2 was erased from history and Bioshock managed to withstand the paradox created, it would be a triumph. A slightly messy triumph, but a triumph nonetheless. The opening is one of the greatest in gaming history. Download the demo if you don't believe me. The brief voice-over is pointless, but then you're plunged into a plane-crash and the controller is chucked into your trembling hands. You head to this abandoned lighthouse hoping for safety, only to find your way into a city under the water. It's atmospheric, it draws you right into the world, and you actually get to play it. The game could have just shown a cut-scene, but letting you walk around allows you to absorb everything yourself. Again: it's one of the greatest openings ever.

The steampunk aesthetic still looks great to this day, and the juxtaposition of bouncy 40's music with horrific scenes of destruction is gleefully dark. OK, so Fallout did it first, but if you must steal then steal from the best.The slightly cartoonish style has aged well, and all the Bioshock games have surprisingly great character models. Also, I don't think I've seen a game that's handled water this well. Sure, it would have been nice to actually swim (you could swim in System Shock 2) but water drips and shimmers gloriously. Water seeps everywhere, dripping and leaking from walls, floors and ceilings. The way that water is destroying the underwater city is a perfect metaphor of Rapture as a whole.

But Bioshock is still perhaps the worst example of 'console-ised' gaming - where a game clearly intended for a more refined audience has been stripped down to cater to a 'mainstream' market. So every five seconds a hint pops up saying: "You're low on health" or "this turret is hacked." Also, whenever you get a new objective it flashes up onscreen, so if some rocks fall in front of the door a helpful note will be shoved in your face saying "Find another way round." This basically means you don't have to pay attention to the people on your radio or the audio-logs you find lying around because the game holds your hand throughout. Oh, and whilst Bioshock Infinite actually gives you the option to turn off hints - you can't here, so enjoy the game constantly reminding you that you're low on health.

There's also a much greater focus on scripted events. Whilst this helps tighten the narrative somewhat, I despise any game that whips the controller away from you. Why are we suddenly controlled by someone else when we confront Andrew Ryan? Why do we quantum-leap away from the protagonist when we first encounter Tennenbaum? Why couldn't we remain in control, frantically looking back and forth as we work out what to do? The whole twist of the game, which attempts to dissect the linear nature of gaming itself, is lost because we ultimately have no control.

It's not like The Stanley Parable where the point is that you'll always be confined within the realms of the game, or Spec Ops: The Line where the point is that the player will always pick the worst option. Here the point is that gamer's will follow orders no matter who makes them - except we're not following orders, we're being forced down a tube. We're not being told "do this and you'll get a cookie" like most games in the past did, we're being told "GO THIS WAY! NOW! MOVE IT MOVE IT MOVE IT!" In System Shock 2 we didn't trust the voice in our head either, but we went with it because the voice kept giving us cyber modules the same way a dancing monkey gets its banana. There are several times where you attempt to meet up with other survivors only to find that your objectives force to you leave them. You just have to keep following the voice even though you're certain it'll ultimately betray you.

The two biggest changes are the combat and moral choice. System Shock 2 is notorious for being an exceptionally hard game. It took me a whole year (on and off) to reach deck 3, by which time I'd managed to break through the wall and was able to handle the clunky interface. So I at first welcomed a more simplified experience. But actually, System Shock 2 would be ruined if it was made easier. It's like if Dark Souls had regenerating health and auto-saves. Sure, more people would actually be able to get past the first hour, but the entire point would be lost.

  

System Shock 2 was hard because you had limited resources. Every bullet felt like a needless expense because so few laid about. Your weapons degraded, so you wanted to avoid using them at all cost. The PSI powers are somewhat overpowered towards the end of the game (you can turn invisible, hypnotize enemies, and even teleport) but they're near-useless at the start. You only get enough upgrade points to specialize in one path, and you have a woefully small inventory. Not only that, but everything from healing yourself, resurrecting yourself, repairing weapons, and hacking costed money.

Compare this to Bioshock, where you get the best plasmids right away (I've only ever needed the lightning and fire powers to win the game - both of which you get in the first level) weapon upgrades are free and plentiful enough to fully pimp out over three weapons. Money flows like the water, hacking and resurrecting are free, and I never ran out of health or Eve. Because there's no role-playing elements, and no inventory - there's no challenge. There are even little panels that turn off alarms instantly should you accidentally set them off. We can't have actual tension here!

Oddly, Bioshock's combat is the opposite to System Shock 2. Whilst your wrench and pistol are the best weapons to start with, eventually the enemies get so tough that even an assault rifle won't help you much. The starter PSI powers are useless, but if you fully upgrade them then the game actually becomes really fun rather than really scary. In Bioshock, your plasmids are ridiculously overpowered to start with. Again: I've only ended up using fire and lighting since fire is good to wear down tougher enemies and stop them retreating, whilst lightning leaves foes open to a melee strike and disables turrets and cameras so you can hack them. The enemies don't get tougher, they just get more hitpoints - and by the end of the game you have a needlessly large arsenal of weapons. My plasmids lay forgotten and I just hit people with a wrench and pummeled them with gunfire. My Adam just went into health upgrades, and once I'd loaded up on RPG's then the Big Daddies and final boss all went down easily.

This all leads to the worst part of Bioshock: it's not scary.

From the very start I was more annoyed by the Splicers than scared. The Spider Splicers at first present a challenge, but once you pick up the research camera then they're complete pushovers. Right to the last level you still get Splicers running at you with lead pipes, and I just became fed up with seeing them. The Hybrids in System Shock 2 were shambling monstrosities with deep, terrifying voices - and by the time you got to deck 5, they were mostly replaced by even tougher, scarier enemies.

Whilst System Shock 2 had a research skill that meant you could equip certain items as well as find out what each enemy was weak to and get a damage bonus against them - the damage bonus was tiny and often not worth it. Meanwhile, Bioshock gives you a camera and makes you take photos of enemies, presumably so you can go and Instagram your journey into hell. Take enough photos and you'll get a damage boost and the most useful tonics in the game. Take the time to photograph enough people and eventually you'll get double-damage and a power that lets you turn invisible. Congratulations: you've just completely broken the combat!

A deadly combination of the research camera, the vita-chambers, and the right combination of tonics and plasmids utterly ruins the game. Sure, you can turn the vita-chambers off but then it's impossible to take down the Big Daddies because they're complete bullet sponges who even on the easiest setting completely drain all your resources.

Not that you really need to take the Big Daddies down anyway. The game touts a moral choice system, whereby you're given the option to free little children and get a few upgrade points, or slaughter the children to get a lot of upgrade points. The idea is that you'll be able to survive easier if you harvest the points, but you won't save the children.

"Press 'F' to moral choice"

Unfortunately, this is complete horseshit. There's no need to kill the children because rescuing them gives you all the upgrade points you need. You're already overpowered enough if you keep to the 'good' path, and it requires just as much effort to harvest as it does to rescue. So what's the point in giving you an option to kill them in the press of a button when with another press of a button you can save them and still get a good enough reward?

The part where Bioshock takes after System Shock 2 the most is it's crappy ending. Once again, Ken Levine and his team ran out of time and were forced to rush the last few parts. But at least System Shock 2 still had some good concepts like reversing the gravity in that one deck so everything's upside-down, going into the gloriously disgusting Body of the Many, and finally going into cyberspace. It's just that these good concepts couldn't be explored to their full potential because publishers were breathing down their necks. It's in many ways a miracle that both games are still regarded as classics considering how traumatic the production of each one was.


Here: it's clear that the developers ran out of ideas after the big twist. It's like they planned the big twist but then didn't actually consider what would happen afterwards. The game reaches a climax, we get the big twist...and then the game keeps going for another hour. You have to piddle around for a bit collecting stuff, then you have to do an escort mission of all things, and then you get a truly dreadful boss-fight that's like something out of a Spyro game. And whilst the twist is excellent, a cynical part of me only thinks they did this because System Shock 2 has a similar twist also.

"Hold up, there was a great ending around here somewhere..."

And the final cutscene is just awful. Either you get an ending where everything is wonderful, or one where you're complete evil. This is particularly odd considering that the rationale behind killing the Little Sisters is that you need all the power you can get to survive. A better ending would be one where Rapture falls but you're so jacked up on plasmids that there's no way you could return to society. You have no choice but to stay in this crumbling hellhole below the sea.

Or, maybe if you keep choosing to harvest Little Sisters, events begin to happen which make you question your own perspective. As you inject yourself with chemicals, you slowly begin losing your mind to the point where you yourself become a Splicer. Play either Hotline Miami or Spec Ops: The Line to see examples of this done right.

You know: Ken Levine should really work for Valve, who haven't released a game in over three sodding years despite possessing all the money, time and resources in the world. It's clear that Valve's creative department is full of coma-patients, and the company has given up trying to be a symbol of gaming excellence in favor of earning all the money that ever existed. Meanwhile, Ken Levine is a guy filled with all sorts of wonderful ideas whose creativity is repeatedly undermined by really horrid big budget publishers. He's the Terry Gilliam of gaming. Or maybe the Orson Welles.

"Tired of being scared by horror games? Try plasmids."