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BioShock Review
Posted by
Zonk
on Wed Sep 12, 2007 01:43 PM
from the somewhere-across-the-sea-somewhere-waiting-for-me dept.
from the somewhere-across-the-sea-somewhere-waiting-for-me dept.
BioShock, the moody drama-driven FPS for the Xbox 360 and PC, was released last month to rave reviews from the major gaming news sites. Since then the internet has been ablaze with outcry about the game's high rating scores. It's hard to understand why. The work of Ken Levine and Irrational Games on the spiritual successor to System Shock 2 is sublime. It's incredibly atmospheric, the game's story is well written and compellingly told, and the first-person shooter gameplay is a respectable, tightly crafted experience. It's a really, really good game. I'll tell you now: it's a 5/5. So why all the angst? Why the backlash? Read on for my review of BioShock, and a few comments on the dangers of 'merely' being a good game.
- Title: BioShock
- Developer/Publisher: Irrational Games (2K Boston/2K Australia) / 2K
- System:360 (PC)
- Genre: RPG/ FPS Hybrid
- Score: 5/5 - This game is a classic title. It transcends genre, is certain to be a part of many serious gamers' collections, and is definitely worth purchasing.
The setting is gripping, but it's also the least of the player's worries. It can frighten, but the remaining citizens of Rapture - they can kill. And they'll kill cheerfully, too, all the while singing songs and muttering enthusiastically to themselves. These people are lumped together under the generic term 'Splicer', implying their extreme genetic modification. From low-powered thugs in masks through to fire-tossing, teleporting madmen, their strength when wielding a pipe is far outweighed by the impact they can leave on your nerves. Far more threatening than this group of variously-powered miscreants are the iconic monsters of the title: the Big Daddies. Acting as patrons for their ADAM-hording Little Sister companions, these creatures are just as tough as you've been lead to believe. While much of a given level involves stalking from room to room dealing with the slicer infestation, the most memorable moments you'll have probably come from one-on-one combat with the diving-suit clad behemoths. And they are completely memorable. Even taken out of context the Big Daddy is one of the creepiest enemies ever to grace a videogame. Everything, from their low groans, to their thudding footsteps, to their cries of rage when they attack, gets across to you that when you face down a Daddy it's 'for real.' Game on. I particularly like how, as they become more and more damaged, steam escapes the Daddy's suit. The implication seems to be that there's something deeply wrong under that helmet.
That's extremely similar to System Shock 2, of course. In keeping with the spirit of that game, your ability to customize your avatar is expansive. There are actually four tracks of powerups to choose from: plasmids, physical tonics, engineering tonics, and combat tonics. While it might sound like you will be engineering a carefully constructed 'build', I found during the course of play that a particular style just emerged based on what I found most useful. Engineering tonics were the upgrades that most appealed to me, and so I made an effort to gain slots in that area. There are far more tonics than slots available, so even as you bump up your character's potential you'll never find yourself wanting for powers. Making use of these powers in the 'emergent gameplay' style is also equally effortless. While it sounds like work from the outside, when you're playing through the game encounters happen so quickly that you rarely have time to realize that you're doing cool stuff before it happens. That was another reason I particularly enjoyed engineering; emergent gameplay can even happen when you're not around. I regularly returned to an encampment I'd made out of hacked turrets to find that they'd been clearing the stage without me. All I had to do at that point was loot the corpses.
All of these elements probably seem very familiar to veteran gamers, and they very well should. You've probably played a handful of games that had many elements similar to BioShock before. What sets this game apart and above other offerings, though, is the way the title brings it all together. There's almost nothing out of place here. There's no "but the story could have been better" or "the weapons didn't feel right", or "the enemies got boring" to mar the experience of playing this through for the first time. Is it the best game that will be released this year? Possibly. It's certainly the best FPS to be released since Valve's Episode One hit last year.
So where has all the hate come from? Why are there so many posts and protestations on message boards, all claiming that BioShock 'isn't all it was promised to be'? Even Zero Punctuation's analysis of the game (which you should really seriously check out because it's hilarious) takes some cheap shots at the game's purported low difficulty level. It's all for laughs, of course, but it shows up in the review because it's a common complaint among players. The issue is that the restoration capsules scattered throughout the game, which allow you to respawn right after your death, apparently remove the 'challenge' from the game. Others have said in response, "just don't play it that way, that's why there is a quicksave option." That also seems like a strange argument, because it's essentially telling someone they're 'playing wrong'. I don't really think anyone can play a game incorrectly.
The real problem, I think, is that hype has made game players disappointed with games as they're actually delivered. When a game is unexpectedly good, we all marvel over the 'sleeper hit.' There comes a point in a game's marketing, though, when more hype is just too much. The result is that when the game is finally delivered, there's almost no way for the real product to match up with player expectations. After Halo 3 launches later this month, odds are there will be a lot of people in forums nitpicking the slightest flaw or perceived imperfection. The lesson, I think, is that as gamers we need to learn to manage our expectations. I'm really looking forward to Mass Effect, for example, but I don't think it's going to change my life. Really, what can we expect out of a game other than a few hours of enjoyment we might not otherwise have had? Just getting that much out of a game, I think, is a big win for the publisher, the developer, and (of course) the player.
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Why no mention? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why no mention? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
No bearing? (Score:5, Informative)
And of course general bugginess means the several crashes I've encountered lost an hour or two of play. That too has bearing.
Gaming on Windows? Never again. This was the first time I had tried to return to that realm in years, and found I was not welcome there by the very software I bought for my own use.
I loved the game, but it was only just marginally worthwhile to use it on Windows. I would not advise people to buy it unless it's on a console they already own.
Parent
Re:Why no mention? (Score:5, Insightful)
A review should cover the entire experience, and that includes the DRM. To make up a tortured example, if a movie's distributor is so terrified of people making copies that theaters have to agree to strip search everyone who sees the movie, yeah, that should be noted in any good review in addition to the quality of the film itself. Or to be less contrived, it's fair game for a theater review to note that, say, the theater is in a very dangerous neighborhood, or that you'll end up spending as much on parking or cab fare as on the tickets themselves. Similarly, if a game's installer fails on a large number of systems, rendering the game effectively unplayable, that should be mentioned in a review as well. The publishers included the DRM in the box and as part of the game, so it should get reviewed along with the game.
Parent
Re:Why no mention? (Score:5, Insightful)
A review is a subjective thing that covers the REVIEWER'S experience. In this case, he played it on the XBox 360, where there are no DRM issues. And if he had installed it on a PC, and did not have any installation or DRM issues, then how can that factor in his experience with the game, either?
Parent
Re:Why no mention? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why does a game need to limit the amount of installs I can do?
Parent
Re:Why no mention? (Score:5, Insightful)
Accepting this type of digital restrictions on anything is a bad idea.
In Bioshock's case I unfortunately did not learn of it until unlock day. It just didn't occur to me that a Steam title would have anything like that. Had I picked up on it earlier I would've voted with my cash and canceled my preorder. I don't buy protected titles as a rule. And vice versa, I buy some unprotected titles just to show support.
Thankfully, there's always a crack. But I'm really fed up with the pirates consistently getting the better product than the legit customers.
Parent
Re:Why no mention? (Score:5, Insightful)
Game publishers that are in touch with reality understand that every type of copy protection can (and will) be cracked. Some will crack for the fun of it, some because they hate DRM, and some for profit motives - to sell bootlegs.
There is always someone out there with the skill and determination to crack a game. The goal of a reasonable publisher is not to prevent but to DELAY the crack. The theory is that the longer it takes the first cracked copy to reach BT/Usenet/P2P, the fewer sales will be lost to casual downloaders. This is especially important during the first few post-release weeks, which is when many games have the bulk of their total sales.
If you've got time, ability and determination, you will crack the game. I hope you're cracking a copy that you've purchased.
If you're determined to get a free copy of the game, you will wait until a crack is available, and no amount of cajoling, marketing, or DRM will make you buy a copy.
However, what about Joe Gamer, the guy who really wants to play the game and doesn't have the ability or desire to crack it himself? The longer he has to wait for a crack, the more likely he is to just pony up the money and buy a legit copy. This describes the large majority of gamers, and this is the group that copy protection is ultimately aimed at.
I'm not a big fan of DRM - it's a pain to work with, both as a user and as a developer, and it almost always puts burdensome, often anti-fair-use restrictions on what I can do with media that I have purchased/licensed/whatever. But these guys seem to be taking a moderately enlightened approach; lock down copying and number of installs at first, then relax the restrictions when the peak sales period is over. If this approach improves the commercial success of good games and lets developers keep making more, then I can live with it.
(And since the parent put this on record, I am also a computer scientist and a former professional game developer.)
Parent
Re:Why no mention? (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
The issues with Bio-Shock (Score:4, Interesting)
environment at all. Rather, the SecuRom DRM, the online activation and restrictive number of times
it can be loaded on a PC.
The console variants do not suffer from any of this, thus those folks would not have been exposed to it.
I've long been of the mindset that if the console folks would wake up and give me a keyboard and / or a
mouse / trackball interface, I would switch to consoles for all my gaming needs tomorrow.
Just absolutely hate the controllers the consoles come with today
Re:Bull. Controllers are good enough. (Score:5, Interesting)
Because after having played a refined Wii/Nunchuck system, you'll NEVER want to go back. I was so incredibly skeptical of the control scheme before I played, that I actually started writing out my own control setup, in hopes to send it out to developers. After having played MP3, though, I've completely abandoned it. It's litterally better than a keyboard/mouse... I didn't think I'd ever say that. I'm really reluctant to buy any FPSs for systems other than the Wii, now.
Parent
It's OK (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It's OK (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:It's OK (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
fun yes; groundbreaking no (Score:4, Insightful)
Also a much hyped feature was the ability to create your own items like ammo. Well... not really. It was just a collect-the-crap thing that allowed you to sort of unlock extra ammo. It wasn't on the level of, say, the spellbuilder in the Elder Scrolls series.
Finally, there were a lot of plot discrepancies and things that pulled me out of the storyline. Like if I were a plane crash survivor, discovering this underwater city, why would I just inject myself with a syringe I found on a table? There are a lot of things like that which caused the game to simply fall back into the vanilla FPS genre. I find it comparable to Heretic / Hexen, with modern graphics.
The work they did was definitely polished but it's disappointing because there is SO MUCH MORE they could've done with the storyline and gameplay.
Re:fun yes; groundbreaking no (Score:5, Interesting)
If you mean stealth as in sneaking through levels without killing anything, then yes, that's not really an option. If however you meant being able to sneak around a take people out without being seen, then that is most definitely an option, and the way I've found myself playing. Ever since I got the camo tonic and a couple of the wrench power ups, I use stealth kills and the wrench almost exclusively. Nothing quite like sneaking up on a splicer and one shotting them with a wrench, or even better, sneaking up on a security camera and hacking it.
As for the ammo creation, yeah, that was kind of lame, but all in all, kind of understandable. If this had been an MMO, then conceivably they could have allowed you to randomly toss components together and see if it makes something useful (destroying the components in the process), but being a FPS with a somewhat limited playtime and therefore component count, it would have been just wasteful and frustrating to players to take that route. Players would just take the easy way ultimately and download a crafting guide telling them exactly what combinations made what which would potentially unbalance the game by allowing the crafting of very powerful items early in the game.
What I think they did a brilliant job of was setting up the atmosphere and providing enough interesting interactions between items to allow players different styles of play. I was quite surprised recently to discover for instance that the trap bolts can be used to take out security bots. A friend of mine also shared his approach to taking down big daddies (apparently tossing a barrel at them can take about half their health in one shot), which was something I hadn't even thought of.
There is a lot of depth to this game, but you need to know where to look. Enjoy it for what they did good on, and not necessarily what the hype lead you to believe it was going to deliver. Having not read any of the hype (well, I read some of what PA said about it) before I bought it, I'm thoroughly enjoying the game. I've also found the PC version to be fairly stable, even though I have had it lock up on me once (no blue screen, it just froze, think it may be a overall stability problem though as I had a problem in another game as well).
Parent
The real problem... (Score:4, Insightful)
Hence the outstanding success and praise of games like Gears of War. Granted, GoW had its own following of hype before the release, but nothing like how Mass Effect and Halo 3 are at the moment.
With GoW, gamers all around expected it to be a good game, but never quite had that "OMG! I'LL DIE IF I DON'T GET THIS!" feeling until after it was released and everyone realized how well made it was.
Yet, with Halo 3, we have the popularity of the series plus the teaser of a multiplayer beta pumping steroids into every fanboy's wet dreams. You made a great point in predicting how critical people will be with the game, but that's to be expected. We're human, we live in our minds and hope for the absolute best.
BioShock is an amazing game, even if it is considered easy to most gamers.
Making the low difficulty level is purposely done to help entice new FPS users. Also, so you don't end up with a controller lodged in your television.
Hyped too far? (Score:5, Informative)
In terms of answering your question of why some folks have complained about overly superlative reviews:
There are invisible walls everywhere, many of them extremely obvious.
There are a a multitude of doors that are locked but mysteriously unlock at precisely the moment that the current radio-message-from-an-NPC that you're listening to actually finishes.
Regards much vaunted "moral choice" aspect - do I harvest or rescue the little sisters? I have to say that after being locked into a windowed box and forced to watch an exposition of exactly how extremely tough the "big daddies" are, right at the start of the game, then being told by some random radio voice whom I have no reason to trust that "you need to kill big daddy and this small child he's protecting in order to take her "Adam", (which appears to mean basically drinking her blood) my response was to just avoid them completely. This produces, just before you try to exit a level, a preposterous peice of fourth-wall-exploding nonsense - a dialog box pops up and tells you "you haven't either rescued or harvested any little sisters on this level - you should go back and do this otherwise the game will be very difficult later on". I mean - seriously - this is what counts for great writing these days? You give me a situation where I appear to have a free choice on how I react to the events you put infront of me and then when I come to what appears to me to be the completely reasonable conclusion that screwing with "big daddy" is a lot of trouble for no recognizable value you tell me "no, you're not playing it right!". Give me a break!
Now, I'm not saying there aren't some worthy things about BioShock. Graphics are obviously fairly awesome, there's a good variety of equipment and environmental toys to play with, but on the whole I don't think it lives up to the hype.
Re:Hyped too far? (Score:5, Interesting)
Come on -- while it's true that the "you haven't rescued/harvested all the Little Sisters" dialog box is fourth-wall shattering and could've been done better, the game is essentially trying to remind you "hey, there's more XP to be earned on this level that you might have missed" (since the Big Daddy/Little Sister encounters are more or less random save for those first few). Now perhaps they could've done it with a radio announcement from Atlas, and perhaps they could've given you an option to shut off reminders, but I saw the popup as a helpful reminder when I hadn't hit START to check if I'd rescued all the Little Sisters.
If things that niggling jar you out of suspension of disbelief, I'd imagine you'd rather keep track of your remaining health in your head, or have to physically open your weapon to examine how much ammo is remaining, because having meters up there on the screen "break the fourth wall" too much.
Parent
My small beefs 4/5 (Score:5, Insightful)
AI
Non existent the see you they chase you, you are behind them or over a certain distance they have no idea you are there.
Plasmids
At this time there is no reason to really ever use anything other then the electrical plasmid and sometimes the telekinesis plasmid. This system should have been genre changing see level and monster design for more info. The telekinesis plasmid should be as great and as effective as the physics gun in HL II but ends up being a poor imitation. If I pick up a table or a metal object why is it not an effective bullet shield?
Level Design
You would think that the level design would force and encourage the use of other plasmids some levels the ice or fire would be more effective, then just using the electrical one. This would have been a great way to encourage the use of other plasmids. Physics puzzles for bonuses anyone? HLII used physics puzzles effectively, and so far no one has done it. Bioshock has the mechanic to do it but strangely did not.
Monster Design
For the most part there are 5 monster types in the game that just gain more power or a few abilities to make them more difficult. This would have been the easiest way to make the plasmid system way more effective some monsters have different resists. Why are there only 2 variants of Big Daddies? There is no technique or skill needed to kill them they are just damage tanks, put enough damage into them and they die. Why do they not have different weaknesses on different levels? Why does level design not encourage anything more then a run and gun to kill them?
What was done right
Great looking game, with a great story arch. The game feels very non-linear (while it is.) Sound and VO is excellent. The over all art direction is unparalleled in FPS's. Oh and a blast to play! Which is the most important. Do not get me wrong Bioshock is a great game, but they set out to change the way FPS's are done with the plasmid system and just did not fully realize the implications of this feature set.
Re:I'd only recommend the 360 version (Score:5, Informative)
And to this point, I'd recommend that if you DO play the 360 version, DO NOT LOOK AT THE ACHIEVEMENT LIST. There are tons of plot spoilers, all the "secret" ones are like, "Shock a guy while he's in water".
Parent
Re:I'd only recommend the 360 version (Score:4, Interesting)
Parent
Re:I'd only recommend the 360 version (Score:5, Funny)
"Who is Bill Gates?"
- Microsoft Shrugged
Parent
Re:I really wanted to like bioshock... (Score:5, Funny)
I mentioned all of these serious flaws to some game designers I know, and they informed me there's this "real life" thing that implements all these features, but I can't figure out where to download it.
Parent
Re:my wife plays it (Score:5, Funny)
Parent