BioShock

BioShock is a first-person shooter with RPG customization elements to the game, similar to that found in the spiritual predecessor, System Shock 2. A 14 minute video showing gameplay and some of the game's AI was released on September 20, 2006.[9]

The player collects weapons, health packs, and Plasmids that give him special powers such as telekinesis or electro-shock, while fighting off the deranged population of the underwater city of Rapture. The player at times will need to use stealth to slip by security cameras and foes, and can also hack into security stations to turn automated drones to his side.

The main resources in the game are ADAM, EVE, and Money. ADAM is used for character growth, EVE (which is similar to "mana" in fantasy RPGs) allows the use of Active Plasmids, and Money allows the purchase of special items and ammunition as well as bribing, or effectively 'buying off' security bots and turrets.

To adapt and advance his character, the player can spend ADAM to gain Plasmids to modify himself and give himself new or enhanced abilities and weapons. These are grouped under the Combat, Engineering, Active, and Physical trees. The "Active" Plasmids are essentially alternate weapons, activated by the player in order to be used. The other classes of Plasmids (referred to as Tonics) are passive ability-boosters. One Tonic (Camouflage) causes the character to become invisible when he is not moving.

The developers encourage the player to use their super-powered plasmids imaginatively[citation needed]. Plasmids are versatile, and the player can use them in concert with each other and the environment to great effect. For example, one of the first bosses the player will face is a crazed surgeon. The player can use Incinerate to set him on fire, then as he tries to put himself out in a pool of water the player can use ElectroBolt to electrocute the water. While he is stunned and convulsing, the player can hack a nearby medical station so that it will poison the surgeon when he tries to heal himself. Telekinesis can be used on anything not nailed down; not only can the player catch grenades or rockets and throw them back at an enemy, he can also pick up a burning object and throw it to set an enemy on fire, or even defuse and re-set traps. The player has a limited number of slots to use on different types of Plasmids, so they have to decide which ones to arm themselves with and which to put into storage.

It is hinted that some (if not all) Plasmids alter the character's appearance (some screenshots show the character's hands with a texture similar to some of the splicers' skin), keeping up with the theme of "sacrificing your humanity" referenced by Ryan in one of the game's trailers.[10] The 'improved' versions of Plasmids have a more drastic effect on the player's appearance (for example, the initial Electro Bolt Plasmid has little effect on the player's appearance, however when upgraded to Electro Bolt 2, warts and skin disfigurations can be clearly seen on the player's hand). In all, there are over 70 plasmids and tonics.

There is also weapon customization. The player can alter weapons to hold bigger magazines, to augment firepower, etc.. The player can also equip each weapon with three different kinds of ammo (for example, the revolver can shoot normal, anti-personnel and armor piercing bullets). There is also a camera in the game that can be used to learn an enemy's weakness.

The player also has access to a type of vending machine called U-Invent[citation needed], where the player can combine bits of scrap found around Rapture to create ammo, traps, hacking devices, and so on. Instead of reloading a saved game state if death occurs, the player will simply respawn at the nearest Vita Chamber.

Story

Setting
The underwater city of Rapture


The game takes place in 1960 in a fictional large underwater metropolis called Rapture, built on the seabed in the mid-Atlantic Ocean. Built in 1946 by the industrialist Andrew Ryan, Rapture was designed to be entirely self-supporting, with all of its electricity, food production, water purification and defense systems powered by undersea volcanic openings. During the early 1950s, Rapture's population peaked at several thousand, and was composed of people Ryan viewed as the best examples of mankind. A large and tiered economy grew among the people, catering different quality products to different levels of the society.

A scientific discovery upset the balance of the society. A young German scientist named Bridgette Tenenbaum discovered a species of sea slug that could secrete pure stem cells, later called ADAM. This substance could be used to enhance one's body; improving physical or mental capabilities, curing diseases, and healing injuries. ADAM was used to develop a series of genetic modifications called plasmids, that could give humans special powers (which used a serum called EVE) and additional innate abilities. Dr. Tenenbaum created the Little Sisters as a way to recover ADAM from Rapture's dead. The Little Sisters were young girls implanted with the sea slug within the lining of their stomachs, and mentally conditioned to recognize the dead as "angels" upon seeing an angel, they were further conditioned to use a hypodermic syringe to extract the used ADAM, take it in to themselves, and convert the material within their body back into a usable form. To protect the Sisters from others, each was assigned a Big Daddy, genetically modified humans who were placed into large and powerful diving suits that followed the Sisters around and attacked anyone that attempted to harm the Sisters or themselves.

However, the discoveries came at a cost. The society of Rapture was faced with internal power struggles as many began to politically and financially challenge Andrew Ryan's rule of the city. The widespread use of ADAM caused many people to go mad. The entire society collapsed during the celebration of the 1959's New Year as those injected with ADAM broke out into riots and razed the rest of the population. A handful of sane individuals, including Ryan and Dr. Tenenbaum, survived but locked themselves away to prevent being attacked, while other, less sane beings found other forms of "entertainment" to keep themselves occupied. Since that point to the present of the game, the remaining crazed living citizens, called "Splicers," scavenge for ADAM from the corpses strewn about the city. The Little Sisters, no longer kept in check by the scientists, continued their job of securing ADAM from the dead, roaming the halls with their Big Daddies protecting them from the Splicers. The city fell into disrepair, with many areas flooding with ocean water from breaches.

Plot

The player takes the role of Jack (taken from the name on the package he holds), a passenger on a plane that crashes over the Atlantic Ocean near Rapture in 1960. Descending into Rapture via a bathysphere terminus, he discovers the city has fallen into chaos. As Jack's bathysphere completes its journey to the city, a man called Atlas, communicating through a short-wave radio, directs Jack to safety from nearby Splicers. Ryan watches Jack's every move through the security cameras and thinks him to be a CIA or KGB agent; as a result, Ryan repeatedly uses Rapture's automated systems and his Splicer armies, controlled by pheromones pumped into Rapture's air supply, to slow down and kill Jack. Atlas tells Jack that the only way he can survive is to inject himself with plasmids and to use the abilities they give him. Atlas also tells Jack to kill the Little Sisters, in order to harvest the ADAM they carry to become more powerful. Dr. Tenenbaum, who is also watching Jack's progress, insists that Jack only kill the sea slug, so as to rescue the human girl within each Little Sister; while Jack would gain some ADAM but not as much as by killing the Sister, Dr. Tenenbaum promises that she will reward him greatly for saving the girls.

As Jack works his way through the city, he learns through audio journals and diaries of the deceased left about Rapture. Prior to the collapse of society, Ryan's power was challenged by other groups. Frank Fontaine, a mobster that smuggled goods into the city, had sufficient power, money, and supporters to fight against Ryan. Atlas himself was a leading political figure in an uprising group; as a result, Atlas's wife and child were kidnapped from him and locked away in a bathysphere, which is why Atlas assists Jack, in hopes he will help save them. Unfortunately, as soon as the two arrive, Ryan sadistically causes the bathysphere to explode; an enraged Atlas tells Jack he must find and kill Ryan. Jack moves through the wreckage to Ryan's Splicer-patrolled residence.

Eventually Jack makes his way to Ryan, who has stopped putting up any resistance to Jack's efforts. Instead, he reveals to Jack why he is here: Jack was actually born in Rapture; Ryan's illegitimate son as a result of an affair with Jasmine Jolene, a prostitute. Ryan further informs Jack that he was trained by Fontaine to be an assassin. Fontaine sent him topside when he was two years old, then just prior to the present of the game, sent him instructions that trigger his conditioning to hijack a plane, crash it near Rapture's surface entrance, seek out Ryan, and assassinate him. Ryan calmly demonstrates Jack's lack of free will by ordering Jack to kill him, using the trigger phrase "Would you kindly...". Jack realizes that Atlas has been using the same phrase since he arrived in Rapture. After Ryan is dead, Atlas reveals himself to be Fontaine. With Ryan dead, Fontaine no longer needs Jack, and leaves him to the fatally dangerous security systems of Ryan's residence. However, Dr. Tenenbaum and her Little Sisters save Jack before security kills him.

After Jack recovers, Dr. Tenenbaum assists him in getting to Fontaine by working out how to break Jack's conditioned responses to Fontaine's orders, including those that temporarily stop his heart[citation needed]. Dr. Tenenbaum predicts that the only way to approach Fontaine would be to assemble a Big Daddy suit and follow the rescued Little Sisters through passageways only they can access. As Jack approaches, Fontaine, fearing for his life, injects himself with all the ADAM he had stored up, becoming an inhuman monster. Jack and the Little Sisters are eventually able to subdue Fontaine.

Depending on player actions before this point, one of two things will happen. If during the game the player rescued the Little Sisters , as requested by Dr. Tenenbaum, the Little Sisters swarm Atlas/Fontaine and stab him to death with their ADAM needles. The Little Sisters are then shown leaving Rapture. Tenenbaum goes on to explain that thanks to Jack, they can live normal lives in the outside world. The last scene is of an elderly Jack on his death bed, comforted by the now-adult Little Sisters. Dr. Tenenbaum notes that, "Jack received a family."

If the player has harvested the Little Sisters as urged on by Atlas/Fontaine, Jack is overcome with his lust for ADAM and snatches the nearest Little Sister when Fontaine is dead. The first person view ends and Tenenbaum begins a monologue in which she discusses how disgusted she is with Jack for his cruelty and lack of control, implying that he killed the Little Sisters. At the same time, a silent cut scene takes place in which a naval submarine surveying the downed plane's crash site is surrounded with bathysphere pods from below. The sailors on the submarine's deck gawk as the dozens of bathyspheres emerge from the ocean, carrying several Splicers each. The Splicers slaughter the submarine crew, and the camera halts on one of the sub's onboard ICBMs before fading to black.

Enemies

Four main categories of enemies are encountered:

* Aggressors (Splicers): Deformed, genetically modified Rapture citizens who are now remnants of Ryan's army, the Aggressors cannot survive without ADAM due to their extensive biological modifications. Early Splicers seem to be referred to according to their weapon preference, such as "Leadhead" for those who prefer guns. There are five types of Splicers:

1. Houdini: These Splicers can vanish and reappear, and throw fire or ice balls. They seem to be the only Splicers capable of using offensive plasmids.
2. Thuggish They wield pipes, wrenches and other melee weapons.
3. Nitro: Nitros use grenades and petrol bombs.
4. Spider: They have the ability to crawl on walls and throw hooks at the player.
5. Leadhead: Leadheads are named for the bullets that they fire at the player.

Splicers wear little or no armor, and normally roam the levels of Rapture, searching for other inhabitants to kill and steal ADAM from. As their name would suggest, they are aggressive and quick to attack, and will use their enhanced physical strength, group tactics and, sometimes, semi-biological weapons to kill all in their path. In order to hide their now-deformed facial features, many of the Splicers wear masquerade ball masks from the 1959 New Year's Eve party, the year during which Rapture fell into disrepair.[12] Splicers will sometimes play dead; surprising the player as they approach them.

* Gatherers (Little Sisters): The Little Sisters are genetically and surgically modified prepubescent girls.[13] The Gatherers, whom Dr. Tenenbaum created as a solution to the ADAM shortage, extract the inert ADAM from the dead (which they call "angels") using retractable needle syringes and then consume it, the sea slug implanted in their bodies reprocessing it into a usable form. Their duties were subconsciously implanted in their minds, as even those girls freed of ADAM will still approach corpses and attempt to extract more. The BioShock team designed these characters in order to draw out an emotional response from players, who face an ethical choice between saving the gatherers or removing the implanted sea slug (thus killing them) in order to obtain a much-needed resource (ADAM). Nevertheless, doing so is severely difficult due to their symbiotic relationship with the Protectors. According to lead designer Ken Levine, the Gatherers have a direct link with the main character. In a recently released audio file, Levine clarifies that the player cannot physically harm a Little Sister directly until her Protector is dead; once this has occurred, the player can either take two actions. Once action allows the player to "harvest" the ADAM from the Sister (a process which they will not survive), by forcibly extracting the sea slug from within their bodies; the act is presented using audio only over a blank screen.[14] The other action is to "rescue" the Gatherers, which nets only half the ADAM of a harvest, but makes an ally of Dr. Tenenbaum, who presents herself early in the game to provide the tools needed to rescue these creatures, along with promises of future compensation. This compensation is given after every three rescues, and includes large supplies of ADAM, rare types of ammunition and unique plasmid upgrades. In short, though harvesting Little Sisters grants a larger immediate reward, rescue is also a desirable strategy in the long run. Ultimately, the player's decision vis-à-vis the Little Sisters influences the game's ending.
* Protectors (Big Daddies, or Mr. Bubbles and Mr. B as the Gatherers call them; also called Metal Daddies by Splicers): Mute, lumbering bio-mechanical monstrosities, created to protect the Gatherers. They are heavily armored and wield either a large drill ("Bouncers") or rivet gun ("Rosies"). Their armor somewhat resembles a large diving suit. These diving suits are in fact functional; as a Big Daddy can sometimes be seen outside Rapture walking along the ocean floor. Most of the inhabitants stay out of the way of the Gatherers and Protectors. They will not attack the player unless provoked. According to lead designer Paul Hellquist: "Once you mess with them, you find out why no one messes with them." In a recent trailer/commentary for BioShock, it was revealed that, despite their size and typically slow movements, they become incredibly fast once engaged, in some cases quicker than Jack. However, the player can defeat them easily enough if the correct plasmids are used, such as shooting bolts of lightning at a Big Daddy standing in a pool of water. Later in the game, the Big Daddies become Elite Bouncers and Elite Rosie's. The Elite Bouncers charge at the player quickly, and the Elite Rosies have powerful rivet guns. A Big Daddy that has no associated Little Sister to defend will plod about and look in decorative Art Deco vent holes in the wall where Little Sisters are known to hide. If the player gets in the way while they search, then the Big Daddy will casually swat the player aside without a second glance and continue investigating. If the player kills a Protector that is associated with a Gatherer, the Little Sister will run to the corpse, crying and pleading for it to get up. The plasmid "Hypnotize Big Daddy" allows the player to temporarily gain the protection of a Big Daddy, fooling it into believing the player is a Gatherer. This plasmid only becomes available should the player decide to rescue Gatherers.
* Security Bots: Seen throughout the city of Rapture, they are called via alarm by various security cameras. Security bots hover and fly using rotors and are armed with machine guns. When disturbed, the security camera's siren will sound and security bots will stream out for a limited time. There are three ways of taking down security bots: the player can either attempt to destroy them, shut off the security system by paying the money demanded to access a Bot Shutdown switch, or manually hack into their systems. Alternatively, the player can also hide and avoid them altogether using Natural Camouflage until the alarm stage ends. Hacking bots and other mechanical devices prompts a mini-game resembling Pipe Dream. A successful hack results in the bot following and protecting the player. The security system can also be suborned using the Security Bullseye plasmid on an enemy, prompting security bots to attack the designated target.

Development

Influences

Levine has stated in an interview with gaming website IGN that the project has drawn on many influences, mostly from utopian and dystopian literature; "I have my useless liberal arts degree, so I've read stuff from Ayn Rand and George Orwell, and all the sort of utopian and dystopian writings of the 20th century, which I've found really fascinating." He also states that he wanted to confront challenges that face the modern world such as "stem cell research and the moral issues that go around".[15]

In an interview appearing in gaming magazine EGM, Levine states:
“ As a kid, I was obsessed with 1984 and Logan's Run. I love exploring what happens when good ideas fall apart. ”

One reviewer compared BioShock to Orson Welles' 1941 film, Citizen Kane, both of which are set in post-war America.[16] The character Andrew Ryan is noted for having a physical appearance very similar to that of the film's title character, Charles Foster Kane.[citation needed] Even the character name 'Andrew Ryan' is a pseudo-anagram of the name 'Ayn Rand' (with 3 extra letters). [original research?] The characters Atlas and Fontaine are both allusions to Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, respectively.[citation needed]

Similarities to System Shock series

According to the developers, Bioshock is a spiritual successor to the System Shock games, and was developed by former developers of that series. Levine pointed out many similarities during his narration of a video initially screened for the press at E3 2006:[17] There are several comparable game play elements: Plasmids serve the same function as Psionic Abilities from System Shock 2; the player needs to deal with security cameras, turrets, and drones with the abilities to hack these; ammo conservation is stressed as "a key gameplay feature", and audio recordings serve as the same storytelling device that email logs did.[17] The "ghosts" from System Shock 2, phantom images who replay tragic incidents in the places they occurred, also exist in BioShock, as do modifiable weapons with multiple ammunition types.

Engine

BioShock was initially developed using an enhanced version of the Vengeance engine, the highly modified version of Unreal Engine 2.5 technology used by previous Irrational titles Tribes: Vengeance, SWAT 4, and SWAT 4: The Stetchkov Syndicate. In an interview at E3 in May 2006, Levine announced a switch to a modified Unreal Engine 3.0. Levine emphasized the enhanced water effects, which he claimed would be very impressive: "We've hired a water programmer and water artist, just for this game, and they're kicking ass and you've never seen water like this."[19]

BioShock utilizes the DirectX 10 feature set when available, but it will also run on older DirectX 9 hardware.[20]

While industry rumors suggested that there might be a PlayStation 3 version of BioShock, based on the presence of text referencing the PlayStation 3 in the PC demo's configuration files, Ken Levine has denied that there is any PS3 version in development. The demo is reportedly from an older build of the game, and an exclusive deal has been signed with Microsoft since then, limiting the title to Windows and Xbox 360.[21]

Demo

A free demo was released on Xbox Live Marketplace on August 12, 2007.[22] The PC demo was officially released on August 20, 2007. The official version of the PC demo is available for download from FileFront, FilePlanet, and GameSpot, and is also made available through the digital distribution program Steam (activation required).

Larry Hryb (also known as Major Nelson) chatted with Ken Levine on his podcast about the BioShock demo.[23] The demo contains the first 45 minutes of the game and includes a beginning cinematic that established a setting and beginning plot lines. The demo also introduced a few weapons, such as the pistol and the machine gun, along with powers that can be used by the main character, such as ElectroBolt and Incinerate; some of these would normally be found later in the game, but were added in the demo in order to give players a taste of the full game.

Technical issues

Issues with the Field of View
Overlay of two screenshots, one taken using widescreen settings, and one taken using standard 4:3 settings, demonstrating the differences in the field of view. The red tinted areas are those present in the standard image only.
Overlay of two screenshots, one taken using widescreen settings, and one taken using standard 4:3 settings, demonstrating the differences in the field of view. The red tinted areas are those present in the standard image only.

With the release of the PC demo, several players noted that BioShock "seemed to use a cropping method for its widescreen display, cutting down on the vertical view rather than expanding the horizontal width."[43] This display method seemed to contradict a previous statement made by 2K Boston lead programmer Chris Kline in May 2007 that "the game will render in full 16:9 aspect ratio, with no letterboxing" and "you will see more in widescreen. We use a different projection matrix; there is no squashing or stretching of the image involved."[44] However, it was determined that it was not the case that the widescreen version was a letterbox version of the 4:3 display, but instead that the field of view (FOV) was set in such way that gave the 4:3 screen a larger vertical view. 2K Games stated that the FOV was designed this way intentionally.[45][46] On August 23, 2007, 2K Games announced that they will release a patch that will allow PC users to change the FOV value.[47]

Shader Model 2.0 problems

The game's graphics engine supports Shader Model 3.0 only. A work-around for cards supporting the older Shader Model 2.0 has been created by community members. It is still a work in progress.[48]

DirectX 9.0c Issues

Many users of Windows XP, which does not support DirectX 10, have experienced issues at loading screens. These were in large alleviated by running in a window and disabling High Detail Shaders.[49]

Issues with SecuROM activation and copy protection

When BioShock was released, the client only allowed for two installations and required an Internet connection in order to activate the product. Due to criticism, this limit has been increased to five activations. After the five activation limit is reached, the user must manually activate the product again via telephone support due to a new version of the content protection system known as SecuROM.

2K Games has responded to the criticism by stating that a special-purpose pre-uninstallation utility that will refund activation slots to a user will be developed and made available in the future.[50] If the yet-to-be-released application is not used before uninstalling the game, SecuROM considers the player to still be using the game, and the activation is unrecoverable without contacting SecuROM and sending them a picture of the DVD and the booklet with the CD key in order to get a new key or deactivate old installations.

The SecuROM system has also caused reported problems with running system utilities such as Microsoft Process Explorer and other games that use similar protection systems. Microsoft's RootkitRevealer software tool also identifies SecuROM as a possible rootkit due to the insertion of null keys into the registry that cannot be removed via normal means such as the Registry Editor.[51] These keys remain on the system even after BioShock and SecuROM are uninstalled,[52] with SecuROM currently providing no means to completely uninstall the application. However, it has been shown that what is installed on the user's system is not a rootkit.[53]

SecuROM has also been reported to be responsible for a cancellation of a midnight release in Australia due to downtime of the 2K Games servers on August 23, 2007, as the game would be unplayable until they were back up.[54]

The Bioshock demo also installs SecuROM.[55] The SecuROM software remains on the system with no option for uninstallation, even if the demo itself is removed.[56]

Ken Levine, lead designer for the game, stated that the game's copy protection will be removed at some undisclosed point in the future.[57]

Limited Collector’s edition

On March 29, 2007, Take-Two Interactive responded to a fan-created petition for a special edition. Take-Two stated that they would publish it if the petition received 5,000 signatures. The number was reached after five hours. Subsequently, a poll on the Cult of Rapture website was posted where visitors could vote on what they would most like to see in a special edition, and the developers would take this poll into serious consideration.

On April 23, 2007, the Cult of Rapture website confirmed that the Limited Collector’s Edition would be sold exclusively from EB Games and Game Stop stores. It would include a 6" tall Big Daddy figurine (many became damaged from improper packaging, although a replacement scheme for the USA and Canada is in place), a "Making Of" DVD and a soundtrack CD. The soundtrack CD was reduced to an EP titled The BioShock EP and contains three tracks from the game remixed by Moby and Oscar the Punk. The tracks are "Beyond the Sea", "God Bless the Child", and "Wild Little Sisters".[58] The box features an embossed graphic designed by a graphic competition winner Adam Meyer.[59]

Art book

On August 13, 2007, "BioShock: Breaking the Mold" was released for free by 2K Games on their official website. Containing artwork from the game, it is available in both low and high resolution PDF format.[60][61] 2K Games has stated that a printed version of the art book will be sent to owners of broken Big Daddy figurines as compensation for the time it will take to replace them.[62]

Soundtrack

On August 24, 2007 2K Games released an orchestral score soundtrack on their official homepage. Available in MP3 format, the score composed by Garry Schyman contains 12 tracks from the game.[63]

The Limited Edition version of the game came with the Rapture EP, a disc of remixes by Moby and Oscar The Punk.[64] The three remixed tracks on the CD include "Beyond the Sea", "God Bless the Child" and "Wild Little Sisters", variations of which appear in their original format in the game.

BioShock

author by :Wikipedia

BIOSHOCK

While on the surface it might look like little more than a very pretty first-person shooter, BioShock is much, much more than that. Sure, the action is fine, but its primary focus is its story, a sci-fi mystery that manages to feel retro and futuristic at the same time, and its characters, who convey most of the story via radio transmissions and audio logs that you're constantly stumbling upon as you wander around. All of it blends together to form a rich, interesting world that sucks you in right away and won't let go until you've figured out what, exactly, is going on in the undersea city of Rapture.

BioShock opens with a bang, but the overall plot focuses more on making an emotional impact than an explosive one. The year is 1960, and you're flying over the Atlantic Ocean. One mysterious plane crash later, you're floating in the water, apparently the lone survivor, surrounded by the flaming wreckage of the aircraft. But there's a lighthouse on a tiny island just at the edge of your view. Who in their right mind would put a lighthouse this far out? You swim closer and discover a small submersible called a bathysphere waiting to take you underwater. After catching a breathtaking view of what's below, you're sent into the secret underwater city of Rapture. Masterminded by a somewhat megalomaniacal businessman named Andrew Ryan, this city is driven by its own idea of total freedom, with capitalism completely unhindered by governmental meddling and science unhinged from the pesky morals of organized religion. Sounds like the perfect society, right? Well, even before you step out of your bathysphere and into the city, it becomes obvious that everything has gone horribly wrong down here. The city is trashed, and genetic freaks called splicers roam around, attacking anything that gets in front of them. At the heart of the matter is a powerful, corrupting substance called ADAM, which makes all this genetic tinkering possible and allows you to get your first plasmid power, the ability to shoot lightning out of your fingertips.

Character customization is a key trait in BioShock. You have a limited but increasable number of spaces in various customization categories, and you can totally reconfigure all of your different plasmids and tonics at will, at no charge, at specific locations in-game. Plasmids are the active, weaponlike genetic enhancement. Many of these are very straightforward. Incinerate lets you burn things and melt ice. Telekinesis lets you use your left hand as if it were Half-Life 2's gravity gun. But others are a little more subversive. Security bullseye is a little ball you can toss at enemies, causing any nearby security cameras, turrets, or sentry bots to point in his direction. Enrage can cause enemies to fight one another. Insect swarm causes your arm to shoot bees at your enemies, which unfortunately is far less cool-looking than it sounds. You can also place decoys, plant swirling wind traps for enemies, and so on. While it's fun to mess around with a lot of the indirect attacks, facing your enemies head-on with the more direct plasmids feels a bit more effective.

Tonics are skills that are slotted just like plasmids, but they have passive effects, like sportboost, which increases your movement and melee attack speed, or natural camouflage, which makes you turn invisible if you stand still for a few seconds. So if you want to make your swinging wrench attacks more powerful, you can slot up things like wrench jockey and wrench lurker, which increase your wrench damage on all attacks and when catching opponents off-guard, respectively. Add bloodlust, which gives you some health back every time you club someone with your wrench, and you're a melee master with health and plasmid energy (called EVE) to spare. You can also slot some defensive stuff, like static field, which zaps anyone who touches you with a electric radius effect, and armored shell, which reduces the damage you take from physical attacks. There are more than 50 tonics to collect, giving you plenty of options to play around with.

Most of those plasmids and tonics will have to be purchased using the raw ADAM that you collect from harvesting vessels called little sisters. They're little girls with a big needle that they use to collect the sought-after stuff from dead bodies, and they're protected by the baddest enemies in the entire game, hulking armored monsters called big daddies. This is where the game makes you decide to be selfless or selfish. If you harvest the girls, they die, but you get 160 ADAM from them. If you free them and return them to normal, you get only 80 ADAM. There are a limited number of girls to deal with in the entire game, making it very possible that you won't be able to collect every single purchasable plasmid and tonic, so choose wisely. Either route has benefits and consequences, and there are story considerations as well.

Before you start thinking this is some kind of role-playing game or something, let's stop right here and say that in addition to all the toys that plasmids and tonics for you to play around with, you're also going to be carrying around some more conventional firepower. Your melee weapon is a wrench, and you quickly collect a pistol and machine gun. Being that this is 1960 filtered through the isolation of an undersea world that has the art deco style of the first half of the century, the weapons aren't nearly as high-tech as the genetic code in your body. The machine gun is your basic tommy gun, and the grenade launcher appears to have been cobbled together from coffee cans and other spare parts. You'll also get a shotgun, a crossbow, and so on. You can also collect different types of ammunition, such as exploding buckshot for your shotgun or missiles for your grenade launcher, and upgrades that increase damage, speed up reloads, and so on. The weapons are functional and the upgrades are pretty good, but the firing action isn't nearly as exciting as a combat-focused first-person shooter would be. The weapons are loud but don't feel especially right, and seeing shotgun blasts not even do 50 percent damage to an unarmored human target (on the default difficulty setting) just feels wrong. But that might also say something about the general lack of enemy variety.
There are five types of splicers to deal with, and these are your primary enemies. The splicers are humans who have messed around with ADAM too much and have essentially lost their minds. Now they wander around the city like junkies in need of a fix. The only real difference among them is what they're carrying. Leadheads have guns, thugs have blunt objects, nitros toss explosives, Houdini splicers can teleport and shoot fireballs, and spider splicers can crawl on ceilings and toss hooks at you. As you go through the game, they get tougher to kill, but there's no real visual indicator as to why that's so, leading to some of the weapons feeling a bit weak. Headshots simply shift from killing enemies immediately to not killing enemies immediately. This makes smart use of a combination of plasmids and conventional weapons the best tactic, though even those tactics don't involve much. The same one-two punch of shocking enemies to stun them and following up with a whack with the wrench is a perfectly viable tactic throughout the entire game, depending on how you've placed your tonics.

You'll find more important human characters at certain points in the story, and though these are set up like boss fights, these guys are just more powerful and resilient versions of existing splicers. You'll also have to deal with security robots, turrets, and cameras, though these can all be hacked via a neat little hacking minigame to bring them over to your side, allowing for more indirect combat options.

Then there's the big daddy, which comes in two configurations. The bouncer has a huge drill arm that is used to, you know, drill into people. The rosie likes to launch explosives in your general direction. Both of them are fairly nasty, because they move quickly and dish out a lot of damage while not taking very much from most of your attacks. They protect the little sisters, who are invulnerable to your attacks and can only be dealt with once their protecting big daddy is dead. The big daddy is hardly unbeatable, though you may die a few times while facing your first few. Death in BioShock is barely even a setback. When you die, you're reconstituted at the nearest vita-chamber and sent on your way with your inventory intact and most of your health.

This isn't a reload, so everything is as you left it, even the damage that you've already done to any surviving enemies. So you can wear down a big daddy by just running at it again and again with little or no care for your health. That can get tedious, of course, but having that possibility is a blessing--and a curse. On one hand, you're free to try out new things, like plasmid and tonic combinations, with no penalty if you equip some bum techniques. On the other, there aren't any real gameplay consequences, so playing with skill isn't rewarded. You could fumble your way through the 15 or 20 hours it'll probably take to properly explore Rapture and still see everything there is to see. This, along with three selectable difficulty settings, leaves you with the impression that the game was made to cater to a wide audience, but the hard difficulty setting doesn't actually impact things like artificial intelligence or force you to play any more skillfully to succeed. The enemies still mostly run at you mindlessly while attacking, occasionally getting into scraps with one another or breaking off to find a healing machine, but they take longer to kill and hurt you more when they hit.

While the world of Rapture is rich and filled with interesting little tidbits, the game does a tight job of keeping you on track. Aside from two cases where you must collect a certain amount of specific items in order to proceed, you always know exactly what to do and where to go to do it, thanks to a handy map screen and an onscreen arrow that points you directly at the next objective. These helping hands feel almost a little too helpful, but in the event that you get really stuck, you'll appreciate the additional hint system that very plainly explains what you need to do and where you need to go to move forward.

You won't miss a ton of locations by sticking to exactly where the arrow points you, but the story fills out a lot more when you find and listen to as many audio diaries as possible. Hearing various characters talk about the problems leading up to Rapture's current disheveled state really fills in the blanks nicely and should be considered mandatory if you intend to play the game. Hearing the voices of these wide-eyed idealists as their world falls apart makes the whole game feel more human. Playing through without listening to any of these optional audio clips would make the game quiet and, actually, fairly confusing, as you'd be proceeding with no sense of backstory about Andrew Ryan, fish magnate Frank Fontaine, and the bit characters who comment on their increasingly hostile struggle.

It certainly helps that the environments you find throughout the game look amazing and practically beg to be explored. For something as potentially dingy as an underwater city, you sure do get a lot of different looks as you move along, from the boiler rooms and workshops of the city's core to the forest that helps keep the entire thing oxygenated. You'll also get a lot of great views of the sea through windows. In addition to a terrific artistic design that ties the visuals together, the game has a very strong technical side, provided you have a machine that's built enough to handle it. Unreal Engine 3 is under the hood, and all the requisite bells and whistles are along for the ride. If there's one thing you need to know about BioShock's graphics, it's that the water looks perfect. As an underwater city that's slowly falling apart, it's no surprise that you'll find plenty of leaks. Whether it's standing water on the floor or sea water rushing in after an explosion, it'll blow you away every time you see it.

But BioShock isn't without flaw. The game has been released with a host of technical issues, ranging from a total lack of audio on some machines to issues with the SecuROM online activation, which under normal circumstances is designed to prevent you from activating a retail copy on more than two machines. The game is also available through Steam, though all of the same audio stuttering and other issues that some players are experiencing in the disc-based version carry over to the digital version as well. While it's a sad truth that no game is ever released in a completely bug-free state for 100 percent of its users, these issues appear to be pretty widespread, and if you're at all skittish about waiting for a patch after you've purchased something, you might want to wait until at least one patch is released before buying BioShock. In our experience, we got the game running with some minor audio stuttering on a Windows XP PC, and can't get any audio at all on our Vista test machine. All of this makes the Xbox 360 version's stuttering issues (which seem to only happen on some consoles) pale in comparison.

Aside from having different technical problems, the differences between the Xbox 360 and PC versions of BioShock are fairly minor. The mouse and keyboard support works exactly as you'd expect, and using a mouse makes the combat a touch easier, since aiming for the head is usually easier with a mouse than with a gamepad. But if you're after that console-style gamepad experience, BioShock has full support for the wired Xbox 360 controller. If you're at a loss for which version to purchase, it comes down to the quality of your PC. If you're running a high-end DirectX 10 machine, the game looks better on the PC. It also has DirectX 9 support, and even running this way, it's possible for some facets of BioShock, like texture quality, to look sharper than the 360 version if your machine can handle it. But when you factor in the current bug list for each version, or if your PC isn't especially recent, the Xbox 360 version is a safer bet.

In addition to some nice period music that plays from jukeboxes or record players, you'll get some terrific music that helps set the creepy, uncertain mood. The weapons sound good and loud, and everything else just sounds right. The voice acting, which you'll hear plenty of throughout the game from both living characters and their posthumous audio recordings, really brings the story together and helps give it all an emotional impact that most games lack. You'll also hear splicers mumbling, humming, and singing to themselves as they scavenge the environment, which helps give the game a creepy vibe. The quality and depth of things like this are what set BioShock apart from other games and make it something really special overall.

If you're the kind of player who just wants yet another action-packed shooter, BioShock probably isn't for you. Its weak link is its unsatisfying no-skill-required combat, which might aim this one just over the head of the average Halo fan. But if you want to get a little fancy, there's a lot of fun to be had with some of the game's more indirect fighting methods. It builds an amazing atmosphere by using terrific graphics and sound to set a creepy mood. But BioShock's real strengths are as a compelling work of interactive fiction, and as a unique ride through a warped world with some great payoff built into its mysterious plot. If that description has you even the least bit interested, you'll definitely find BioShock worth playing--but you still might want to hold off for a patch or two, just in case.

By Jeff Gerstmann, GameSpot

Posted Aug 22, 2007 4:23 pm PT