Xbox Hardware & Games

You're in for some sleepless nights.

I envision a few years ago the people at Irrational Games, creators of System Shock 2, had a meeting where someone said, “Let’s make a game around the scariest things we can imagine.” Creepy, dilapidated art deco design in a claustrophobic, inescapable underwater city? Check. Knife-wielding psychos leaping out of the dark? Check. Eerie little girls that extract fluids out of dead bodies strewn about the aforementioned city? Check. Ladies and gentlemen, prepare to be scared out of your wits. Prepare for BioShock.

Admittedly, I’m not the biggest fan of the visual horror genre. I prefer to know what’s going to jump out at me and when, which negates the whole idea. There are some exceptions, such as Halloween (the original), The Exorcist, and Dead Alive, but for the most part I’ll stick with something on the Food Network (Alton Brown FTW). So why would I even venture into the world of BioShock? Because of System Shock 2. The storytelling and overall game design were fantastic and kept me staring at my computer screen for hours back at the turn of the century, but only during the day. I tried playing it at night once, but I had trouble sleeping for a week. Learning from past experience, I decided to only play BioShock during the day. Even though the curtains are drawn and the lights are all turned off to engulf me in darkness, sunlight is easily accessible.

When on a flight over the Atlantic circa 1960, your plane crashes and you are the only survivor left floating in the ocean with only a lighthouse visible. Swimming over to the lighthouse, you find a submersible that brings you down to an underwater city. Through a prerecorded welcome message you find that the city, named Rapture, is the brainchild of Andrew Ryan to be an idealistic society built 14 years previous. As you enter the city, you find it is no longer an idealistic place, but a city ravaged by an internal struggle. The first image you see as your submersible docks is someone known as a Splicer disemboweling a man pleading for his life on the other side of the airlock hatch.

It turns out there was a civil war, of sorts, within the year over a monumental scientific breakthrough that allows people to genetically modify themselves with a substance called ADAM. The population’s dependence on ADAM has caused them to become murderous and has torn the civilization apart. You are befriended by a man named Atlas who communicates with you through a radio, hoping you can help reunite him with his family. You find a wrench in the debris and head off through the city of Rapture, now in shambles, trying to stay alive.

The Splicers aren’t the only whacked-out inhabitants of this city, either. With you down there are Little Sisters, prepubescent little girls that act as a recycling center, removing and drinking blood from the dead bodies lying around and processing that into ADAM. Near their side are Big Daddies. These protectors wear what look to be enormous modified diving suits that have different attachments in place of their arms. The attachment could be a large drill or a rivet gun. Either way, they’re something to steer clear of if you can. Of course, if you’re in need of some ADAM, you can be sure a Little Sister will have a plentiful supply. Just be prepared for a tough fight.

Why would you need ADAM, you ask? The more ADAM you obtain, the more genetic modifications can be spliced into your genetic makeup. On your journey to safety, you find plasmids that modify your body and grant you amazing powers, such as shooting lightning or fire from your fingertips. ADAM allows for these powers, which is why everyone wants it. In order to power these abilities you need EVE, which you can find in hypos lying around the debris or purchase from vending machines around Rapture. For those familiar with System Shock 2, the genetic augmentations work like the psionic powers in that game.

The storytelling device used in BioShock also is inspired by System Shock 2. In the latter, the story was propelled forward by e-mails and message logs that were read as opposed to direct interaction with NPCs. Since BioShock takes place in 1960, albeit a fictional 1960 with an underwater city, e-mail has yet to be invented, so instead there are short-wave radios and audio diaries. There are very few cut scenes, which keeps the action moving and forces you to pay attention to your surroundings even while listening to a diary or incoming broadcast. This keeps you on edge and causes scardy-cats like myself to become overloaded with fear and take a sudden break from the game until I can calm myself down. All this in the middle of the day, mind you.

To give mini-breaks from continual action, you can walk up to a variety of machines around Rapture. These offer a virtual cornucopia of items available for purchase with money scavenged from corpses. You can buy ammo, health, weapon upgrades, even U-Invent machines that allow you to create new ammo, tools, and Gene Tonics—which give you different modifications such as damage resistance or increased dexterity for hacking. Ah yes, hacking. These machines—not to mention security bots and turrets—can be hacked. By hacking machines, you can decrease the price of the items contained within. Hacking security bots turns them into your own protector that fires on anything around that attacks you. Very handy.

A story is nothing unless it’s visually and aurally driven as well, and this game is both. The visuals are phenomenal. Considering that the game takes place in an underwater city, the water has to look good, and it’s obvious that the design team took an incredible amount of time to make sure the water was done right. But it doesn’t end at the water. The city used to be beautiful, that is certain, but whatever happened was bad and is disconcerting. The whole design of Rapture sucks you into the environment and makes you want to get somewhere safe, and fast.

To accentuate what the city used to be, occasionally you can hear 1950s jazz being played through the halls of Rapture. The juxtaposition sends shivers up the spine. The crazy ramblings of some Splicers can also be heard echoing through the halls. The sound design helps you hear from which direction the danger might be approaching and is an integral part of staying alive.

BioShock does a wonderful job easing you into the control of the game. While you feel thrown into the situation as a character, the learning curve for the controls is very well timed to keep the game challenging but not impossible. If you have questions as the game goes on, there’s a help menu that can clarify the situation. There’s also the option of getting hints, which change depending on how far you’ve made it to the next objective.

Every once in a while, a game will come along that grabs you and doesn’t let go. BioShock isn’t bound to a specific genre, borrowing from a variety. The story is intriguing and well implemented. It’s pretty to look at and sounds amazing. BioShock is one of those games destined to be an instant classic.

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