BioShock Review 439
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.
I'd only recommend the 360 version (Score:1, Informative)
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".
Re:Great content, poor delivery (Score:2, Informative)
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:Editing for the win... (Score:2, Informative)
I think he means to say "It's hard to understand why there has been controversy (outcry) on the internet over this game receiving high rating scores."
I will agree thought that it could have been written slightly better, but it does make sense.
Re:Great content, poor delivery (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The issues with Bio-Shock (Score:3, Informative)
SPOILER ALERT (Score:1, Informative)
Didn't finish the game, did you? If you did, you'd know why.
Hint: the plane crash was not an accident.
Re:Why no mention? (Score:4, Informative)
However I don't know about the 5 installs per 5 machines part, last I heard it was 5 flat installs active at any time. He may be wrong on that, I do not know if it has changed.
Re:I'd only recommend the 360 version (Score:1, Informative)
The interesting thing is you can download it from here
http://www.direct2drive.com/ [direct2drive.com]
Re:Why no mention? (Score:4, Informative)
UT3 on PS3, will have mouse/kb support (Score:3, Informative)
Unreal Tournament 3 on PS3, will have mouse/kb support in order to keep its old hardcore fanbase happy and hopefully the trend will continue. For what its worth though, they took the copy protection right out of the last PC UT game so I doubt that the PC port is going to exactly redefine evil.
My PS3 is the first console I've had since my childhood SNES, and being a PC gamer I've also had a little bit of trouble getting used to the Playstation's FPS controls. With Sony's dual analogue control schema (left thumb moves/strafes, right thumb aims. essentially congruent to mouse in right palm, wsad under ring, middle and index fingers of left), things have improved much since the last console FPS I played which was Goldeneye in 1997 (left thumb moves/turns but aims when a button is held). It's still not quite as good as the PC controls, but once you get used to it and you realise that the controls are all part of the game, consoles FPSs become almost as fun.
Bioshock isn't exactly the twitchiest game out there anyway, we're not exactly talking about hitting an adversary midair with the railgun or anything in this game. Guns tend to be inaccurate like shotguns, chemical throwers, grenade launchers and sub machine guns. Plasmids (the kinda psychic powers in this game) tend to fudge the aim a little to hit the target. The only weapon that could benefit much from the mouse's precision is the crossbow, which never has enough steel bolts for a direct attack anyway. I've only played this on PC, but I'd wager if either one of us were to buy a 360 and learn its controls we'd be every bit as happy with this game on console and even more happy because one can lie on the lounge when one does not need a mousing surface.
Re:Why no mention? (Score:2, Informative)
Irrational has said that they will turn off the installation counter at some point in the future, allowing unlimited installs. This is just to get through the main popularity stage of the game's life, where they actually make their money.
By limiting the number of installs you can do, it limits the number of people to whom you can give the game. Rather than buying it once and installing it on your PC, your friend's PC, your brother's PC, and your co-worker's PC, each of them would have to buy their own copy of the game. That makes sense from Irrational's viewpoint.
A better question would be, why are you re-installing so often?
SPOILER on plot discrepancy !! (Score:3, Informative)
SPOILER DON'T READ IF NOT PLAYED TO THE END
YOU WERE WARNED !!!!!!
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.
This is well explained at the end or nearly. "Would you kindly..." (or some phrase like that), you are genetically programmed to do any command with this bidding. So this is why you were on the plane , and it was most probably intentionally crashed. But bottom line is that the alpha/fontaine guy just forced you to do everything with those keyword. Including injecting yourself with anything found on a table. This is also how he try to make you suicide yourself.
Re:I'd only recommend the 360 version (Score:2, Informative)
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.
Re:fun yes; groundbreaking no (Score:2, Informative)
Re:I'd only recommend the 360 version (Score:4, Informative)
I have finished the game on my PC without a single crash of any kind. The only bug I experienced is that the game dis not restore the color settings when it exits, so I had to go into the NVidia control panel and fix them (or reboot) I did get rid of SecuROM and the unskippable crap when the game starts, but that's it.
I liked the game, but I was definitely underwhelmed by the graphics (16x12, all settings on maximum) The models look a bit too simple, and while some twitching bodies add a lot to the mood, sometimes the physics engine makes a foot or hand wave for much too long after the enemy has died.
I consider the money well spent... I think System Shock I had a better atmosphere, Far Cry better graphics, and Deus Ex a better story, but I am sure that some people will disagree. It's very subjective. I truly enjoyed the ending movie. I felt quite sad for the Big Daddies, the little sisters' parents, and Rapture itself. Hell, the more I think about it, the more I realize that I really liked the game.
Was it easy? Yes. Too easy? Maybe, but I am about to replay it without using any Adam unless it is required for to progress (I do not think it is, but I may be wrong)
The only things I really hated about the game is SecuROM, and after AVG raised Hell about it, it took less that 15mn to get rid of the damn piece of shit.
Re:It's OK (Score:3, Informative)
I thought the theme, sound, story and art direction were fantastic. The only downside I noticed was how repetitive and how horribly easy it was. I still enjoyed the game and would give it atleast an 8.5/10. It was definitely worth the purchase, even aside from all the flaws.
If you found that review funny, check out his other reviews here [fullyramblomatic.com] and here [escapistmagazine.com].