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[Blood-Pigggy]

BIOSHOCK

Would you kindly lick my buttocks?

Welcome to Rapture douchebags!

Bioshock is Ken Levine's attempt to be a clever man. And unbeknownst to him and the gaming community, he has failed miserably. Why is that? Is it because Bioshock is bad? No! It's because in its own attempt to provide commentary on the structure of FPS games, it falls into its own pit. Fraggist hypocritical software.

You star as Jack Whasisname (is there a last name, it is a mystery) taking a trip via plane of the air (AKA an airplane) when all of a sudden something goes awry and he finds himself in the middle of the ocean surrounded by the burning debris of the airplane and an ominous lighthouse looming oppressively a few yards in front of him.
A fancy turn soon takes place as you realize that this lighthouse is a vessel to an underwater world built on the promise of free will and liberal morality. In a quaint little intro segment, you view the underwater city of Rapture through your little "Bathysphere" as Andrew Ryan, the finder of this grand fantastic panstamastic little utopia informs of just how hella fine Rapture is.

Of course, we don't believe that and as soon as things get started everything has already gone to hell and blah, blah, you're stuck in a dark damp unfriendly city full of psychopaths, little girls with monstrous things in diving suits protecting them as they go about their ghastly work, mad geniuses and deception. All of this is thanks to a cool little genetic mutating thing named Adam, which is essentially a sort of biological sandbox juice that allows people to mess with their DNA in order to get funky powers like setting things on fire or electrocuting anything they feel like via abilities known as "plasmids". Naturally, this has the side effect of making everyone crazy nut jobs and to make it all worse there's a political war going on even in the midst of this madness.

It's the kind of plot that's been considered unique for the past five billion years but has been done constantly, y'know? Fortunately, Bioshock spices things up with a nice Art Deco environment and some campy and intentionally cheesy flavor. You'll hear corny ads that sound like they're from early 1900s America, and be subjected to a plethora of fake English accents and overdone Brooklyn voice boxes, just as it should be.
Bizarrely enough, Bioshock actually takes place in the 60s. I rather expected there to be more hippies and fat racists, but instead you're encountering well, no one at all really.
Aside from the general populace of insane plasmid flinging (we'll get to that later) weirdos, you never really meet anyone in Bioshock. Much like its title, this is paying homage to the System Shock series which never really had you meeting anyone face to face.
In fact, it goes beyond paying homage to clearly just grabbing elements from the System Shock series.

I'm all for this, I mean, System Shock is great when you're ignoring the garbled crowd of hardcore-gamer wannabes who label the series as great when in actuality they never even played it, but quite frankly, it's the same thing as John Woo's Strangehold. It's clear that Strangehold was paying homage to Max Payne, since Max Payne was paying homage to John Woo, but it's extremely poor to just rip things off.
Likewise, it's extremely poor to just take things directly from System Shock even if you admit clearly that your game is a spiritual successor to the mentioned series. To add more comparisons, it's like Supreme Commander and Total Annihilation, you're marketing games that seem the same but are in actuality completely different to the same core audience.

Which is a massive mistake, and almost ruined Bioshock for me. You're not going to get anything as deep as Mr. System I Crapped My Pants In Fear And I Only Have Five Ice Picks Left And My Pistol Skill Is Terrible So I Can't Kill These Psychic Monkeys Very Well Shock 2, so don't look for it.

The first thing you'll notice, System Shock fan or not, is that Bioshock is just a shooter with some interesting and prominent additional elements thrown into the mix. Elements that are implemented extremely well to be honest. You've got the regular stuff you'd expect from this sort of homage. You got your hacking, psy abilities (plasmids), weapon upgrading, passive implants (genes/tonics) and so on. There's a good level of customization in Bioshock, even if it's only coming from your play style in general. If you're the kind of guy who likes to hack all the security cameras and gun turrets around because you're afraid that you can't shoot a gun properly, then the placement of security in the game is liberal and sensible enough for you to adapt the hacker gameplay style viably.

You can hack this turret, or you can smack this turret. Aside from making rap lyrics, I am good at telling you at what you can do in this game that I am talking about.

If you're the man who enjoys using your powers to turn enemies against each other or use your abilities to draw enemies into danger, then there are enough interesting plasmids to make this possible. You can attach security "bulls eyes" to enemy which will attract nearby security to them, or you can convince the diving suit monstrosities known as "Big Daddies" with the Hypnotize Big Daddy plasmid into duking it out for you.

Of course, there's the blow everything up route too, which works well as long as you aren't playing on Hard difficulty.

All this works fine and dandy. You've got a good selection of weaponry, which while not the largest variety around, is unique, useful, and each piece serves its own purpose. Your weaponry can be upgraded at upgrade stations spread across the maps, and you have a good amount of choices when it comes to which abilities you want to use.

In fact, there's a nice line drawn between how you want to play and being spread too thin. Aside from smacking the occasional Splicers (the crazies warped from the plasmids and Adam) you'll fight the imposing looking Big Daddies for the most important resource in Bioshock, which is Adam.
The hyped "moral choices" of Bioshock becomes evident in these pursuits of Adam, as you have to choose to either harvest or rescue the little sisters that are protected by the Big Daddies.
This decision is rather pointless though, it's more profitable just to save the damn girls, and the ending isn't as horribly cliched as well. Yep, you may get more Adam from harvesting the girls, but you also get gifts from saving the girls that include plasmids, big chunks of Adam, ammunition and other goodies that serve you much better in the long run.
It's also terribly pointless to amass the Adam from harvesting the girls as any gamer who's conservative with the stuff won't spend it on the variety of plasmids and tonics that are totally useless, and there's quite a few of them. If you haven't noticed by now, you use Adam to buy plasmids and tonics, plasmids being abilities like Telekineses, Incinerate, Electrocute and etc. tonics are passive bonuses and so on that effect certain aspects of the game. Engineering tonics help you towards hacking, whether it be slowing the flow of the Pipe Dream mini game that hacking consists of, or removing alarms that could trigger while you hack. There are Combat tonics which help with combat obviously, better damage resistance or wrench damage and so forth. Then you have your Physical Tonics which have effects like better healing from med-kits or benefits from drinking alcohol or some other nonsense.

It works well, and there are plenty of these plasmids and tonics, but a large variety of them are useless and just seem to be there to fill the game out.
You'll either spend your Adam on maxing out your heath and Eve (the resource required to use plasmids) buying the occasional useful plasmid or tonic, or getting more slots so you can carry more tonics and plasmids with you at once. There was hardly a point where I was actually so bobbed on Adam that I couldn't decide on whether to get a plasmid or more health, as usually getting pummeled by a Big Daddy in two or three hits is enough to convince one to just go for the extra health.

Is it just me, or do these screenshots always look better than the actual game, even when you have an HD TV along with the necessary cables? Yet another reason previews and pre-release screenshots are WORTHLESS!

What this means is that Bioshock is too indecisive on how much freedom the player should have, something that is coming extremely evident in modern gaming. It feels as though the developers didn't want you to suffer too much if you decided not to take a certain branch. You'll ALWAYS have the right plasmids for the right occasion, you'll ALWAYS have enough health and Physical tonics to beat most tough enemies via normal combat. And the auto-hack tools and the simplistic nature of the hacking mini game means that you'll ALWAYS be able to get back-up from the machines you need.
But then you're limited on which of these abilities to get when it doesn't really matter in the end.