Fri Sep 26, 2008 3:21 pm
Game Review: Bioshock
Being a huge fan of System Shock 2, Bioshock was intriguing to me since its premature announcement in late 2004. I was sketchy on the initial premise, at the time it was set in some nazi research lab or something, but despite my concerns, the hype began to grow within me. Pitched as "the spiritual successor" to my favorite game of all time, how could it go wrong?
The "hook" of the game is cinematic and exciting. Bioshock does a fantastic job of swallowing you up in its world. Not only Rapture, but the characters, the mechanics; Bioshock sits you down and says "Hey you, this is your life now." As a result, Bioshock is one of the most immersive games I've ever played, and it's surely by no accident. Irrational has taken every step to make sure every prop, every sound, every weapon just "fits" into the world they've created.
It doesn't stop at the introduction, however. The experience continues to be immersive and intriguing up until the very end. As you progress through the game's different areas, new characters and dramatic plot turns are introduced to you, each with poignant emotional impact. All the while, the visuals will stun you and the audio will haunt you. With fantastic production values and a dedication to art direction, Irrational really makes Rapture come alive.
This serves as the "glorifying introduction" for this review. The sum of Bioshock's parts are truly a fun and rewarding experience, but (and you knew it was coming) there's a bunch of stuff about this game that keeps it from being one of my favorite games of all time.
This leads me to my first gripe. For all the time that Irrational spent keeping the story and levels interesting, it's a shame that they didn't spend more time making interesting enemy characters to encounter. By the time you're 1/3rd through the game, you've essentially seen every kind of enemy that you're going to encounter. In a fashion reminiscent of 90s era game design, Bioshock then begins to throw the same enemies at you, only this time they're harder (inexplicably), and a few of them have a red stripe on them to indicate the new, harder difficulty.
On my gauges, this smacks both Gameplay and Production down a notch. The repetition of content feels uncharacteristically low-budget and meanwhile, enemy behaviors don't change. Besides a fatter health bar, nothing has changed about the gameplay to make these enemies more interesting in combat. As a result, even while the story continues to push you forward, I often found myself bored of enemy encounters.
Even before the issue with recycled enemies, each enemy essentially falls into one of two visual appearances. Crazy guy/girl, or Big Daddy. With just a couple of behavioral difference beyond that, I can't even think of the last shooter I played with more limited enemy archetypes than Bioshock.
Bioshock's gunplay and gun progression is quite a hoot, though, and will hopefully be enough to carry you over those tedious enemies. I've always loved games that allow you to swap ammo types, depending on the sort of enemy you're facing. Adding a strategic element to the run-n-gun blitz. Bioshock goes a step further than the typical "Hurts Organics More" vs "Hurts Inorganics More" vs "General Ammo", giving some ammo completely unique effects. For instance, the grenade launcher always shoots explosive ammo, but how the ammo deploys is what's important. Do you want a homing missile, or a proximity mine? How about the Crossbow that you can use to set tripwires? The last time I saw that was in Duke3D!
For some guns, the ability to use ammo to make'm drop faster is great. But having other options apart from enemy weaknesses is refreshing and fun.
The gun swapping, reloading and ammo switching is a little slow and doesn't feel as snappy as, say, Half-Life. This can lead to more frustrating battles. But all told, shooting is a positive experience in Bioshock.
If the shooting isn't enough for you, enemy AI in Bioshock is fun to play with. It's a blast to lead enemies into areas where you can exploit their goals to make them die. For instance, having an enemy chase you into water so you can shock the hell out of them is a good time. But as I faced enemy after identical enemy, I found myself simply wanting to find the fastest way to kill them, not the most interesting.
I will always applaud this kind of emergent gameplay, and while Bioshock's AI and gameplay systems support it, the majority of levels don't let you take advantage of it. It seems almost as if there are specific rooms that are telling you "Hey! Hey, you can shock guys in the water here! You should use the Electricity to shock them! Do it!" and the majority of other rooms are plain-Jane style combat. While emergent gameplay can lead to very fun situations, Bioshock's core combat system has a tendency to get a little boring.
The key to emergent gameplay is providing your players with the tools to make several solutions from a single scenario, and while occasionally that is the case for Bioshock, there's often as little emergent gameplay in Bioshock as there is in Doom.
I'm not only disappointed by the emergent gameplay choices offered in Bioshock, I'm also a bit disappointed in the character progression choices. I'm speaking of course about Tonics and Plasmids. This system seems to be a call-back to System Shock 2's RPG-style skills, as you're limited to just a few at a time. Tonics give you passive boosts (could be compared to Stats like Strength or Cyber Affinity from SS2) and Plasmids give you spells (which are comparable to the Psi powers). However, at any time you can go to a gene-bank and swap out any/all of your Tonics or Plasmids. While this complete character freedom may sound liberating, the result is that each Plasmid and Tonic feels (and is) disposable. As a player, chances are you'll find whichever Plasmid gives you the most bang for your buck, and the rest will go ignored.
These two problems are one in the same, in a way. Many of the Plasmids allow you to take advantage of opportunities for creative kills, but few of them allow you to create opportunities for creative kills.
Ken Levine has stated that the game is designed to be a shooter, and nothing more. Not an RPG / Shooter hybrid, a shooter. It's no surprise, then, that the core game mechanic will always be guns, with Tonics and Plasmids playing a backup "flavor" role. Not only is it not encouraged to dedicate yourself to a set of Plasmids / Tonics (as they can always be swapped), it is simply not possible to play through the game as a dedicated Plasmid user, shunning guns. You run out of "Eve" (mana) too fast, and the damage just isn't comparable to guns. With the "flavor" taking a back seat, the resulting game is devoid of any real character progression / choices, and once you get all the guns, the combat mechanics really start to get stale.
Hacking doesn't do anything to improve upon this problem. It's simply another feature tacked on that's not nearly as effective as just shooting your guns at guys. You certainly can't play through the game as a dedicated hacker, taking advantage of all the robots to solve your combat problems. The game just doesn't give you the opportunities to dedicate yourself in this way.
Ultimately, knowing that my next game experience will probably be identical to my first one, I have very little incentive to go and play the game again.
While Bioshock did a lot of things right, for fans like me, the hype may've skewed my expectations a bit. I may've been more willing to appreciate Bioshock for its innovations if it wasn't being sold to me as the next-gen version of my favorite game. I enjoyed Bioshock, but it still doesn't succeed System Shock 2 in any way, but rather matches it in some ways, and deviates from it in the rest.
In Bioshock 2, if they decide to add meaningful character progression and Co-Op, maybe then we'll have a true spiritual successor.
Gameplay: 6 / 10
Shooting is fun, but is bogged down by repetitive combat and uninteresting enemies and fringe features. Cap this off with a no-consequences death system and gameplay choices that don't matter, and the Gameplay quickly takes a back seat.
Fluff: 10 / 10
Everything about the fiction and storyline is brimming with intrigue and emotional impact. Great immersion into a fantastic new and original fictional plot.
Innovation: 7 / 10
Bioshock innovates with certain Plasmid / Ammo effects and the Big Daddy / Little Sister relationship, however these features feel left alone in otherwise typical shooter staples and level designs, save for a few exceptions.
Production: 8 / 10
The voiceovers, the models, most of the animations and effects are all stellar for characters and environments alike. Lack of variety is the only thing holding the production back.
Longevity: 6 / 10
Without any features to encourage replay or continued play, I can only judge Bioshock by its campaign length. While it's a little longer than some other shooters, it's not enormous. The only replay I could see would be to go back and play on different difficulties or make a different choice regarding the Little Sisters, but with the repetitiveness of the combat, I don't think most players will want to do that.
Overall: 7.4 / 10
A game that's usually fun and easy on the eyes, but you probably won't find yourself going back to it.
The "hook" of the game is cinematic and exciting. Bioshock does a fantastic job of swallowing you up in its world. Not only Rapture, but the characters, the mechanics; Bioshock sits you down and says "Hey you, this is your life now." As a result, Bioshock is one of the most immersive games I've ever played, and it's surely by no accident. Irrational has taken every step to make sure every prop, every sound, every weapon just "fits" into the world they've created.
It doesn't stop at the introduction, however. The experience continues to be immersive and intriguing up until the very end. As you progress through the game's different areas, new characters and dramatic plot turns are introduced to you, each with poignant emotional impact. All the while, the visuals will stun you and the audio will haunt you. With fantastic production values and a dedication to art direction, Irrational really makes Rapture come alive.
This serves as the "glorifying introduction" for this review. The sum of Bioshock's parts are truly a fun and rewarding experience, but (and you knew it was coming) there's a bunch of stuff about this game that keeps it from being one of my favorite games of all time.
This leads me to my first gripe. For all the time that Irrational spent keeping the story and levels interesting, it's a shame that they didn't spend more time making interesting enemy characters to encounter. By the time you're 1/3rd through the game, you've essentially seen every kind of enemy that you're going to encounter. In a fashion reminiscent of 90s era game design, Bioshock then begins to throw the same enemies at you, only this time they're harder (inexplicably), and a few of them have a red stripe on them to indicate the new, harder difficulty.
On my gauges, this smacks both Gameplay and Production down a notch. The repetition of content feels uncharacteristically low-budget and meanwhile, enemy behaviors don't change. Besides a fatter health bar, nothing has changed about the gameplay to make these enemies more interesting in combat. As a result, even while the story continues to push you forward, I often found myself bored of enemy encounters.
Even before the issue with recycled enemies, each enemy essentially falls into one of two visual appearances. Crazy guy/girl, or Big Daddy. With just a couple of behavioral difference beyond that, I can't even think of the last shooter I played with more limited enemy archetypes than Bioshock.
Bioshock's gunplay and gun progression is quite a hoot, though, and will hopefully be enough to carry you over those tedious enemies. I've always loved games that allow you to swap ammo types, depending on the sort of enemy you're facing. Adding a strategic element to the run-n-gun blitz. Bioshock goes a step further than the typical "Hurts Organics More" vs "Hurts Inorganics More" vs "General Ammo", giving some ammo completely unique effects. For instance, the grenade launcher always shoots explosive ammo, but how the ammo deploys is what's important. Do you want a homing missile, or a proximity mine? How about the Crossbow that you can use to set tripwires? The last time I saw that was in Duke3D!
For some guns, the ability to use ammo to make'm drop faster is great. But having other options apart from enemy weaknesses is refreshing and fun.
The gun swapping, reloading and ammo switching is a little slow and doesn't feel as snappy as, say, Half-Life. This can lead to more frustrating battles. But all told, shooting is a positive experience in Bioshock.
If the shooting isn't enough for you, enemy AI in Bioshock is fun to play with. It's a blast to lead enemies into areas where you can exploit their goals to make them die. For instance, having an enemy chase you into water so you can shock the hell out of them is a good time. But as I faced enemy after identical enemy, I found myself simply wanting to find the fastest way to kill them, not the most interesting.
I will always applaud this kind of emergent gameplay, and while Bioshock's AI and gameplay systems support it, the majority of levels don't let you take advantage of it. It seems almost as if there are specific rooms that are telling you "Hey! Hey, you can shock guys in the water here! You should use the Electricity to shock them! Do it!" and the majority of other rooms are plain-Jane style combat. While emergent gameplay can lead to very fun situations, Bioshock's core combat system has a tendency to get a little boring.
The key to emergent gameplay is providing your players with the tools to make several solutions from a single scenario, and while occasionally that is the case for Bioshock, there's often as little emergent gameplay in Bioshock as there is in Doom.
I'm not only disappointed by the emergent gameplay choices offered in Bioshock, I'm also a bit disappointed in the character progression choices. I'm speaking of course about Tonics and Plasmids. This system seems to be a call-back to System Shock 2's RPG-style skills, as you're limited to just a few at a time. Tonics give you passive boosts (could be compared to Stats like Strength or Cyber Affinity from SS2) and Plasmids give you spells (which are comparable to the Psi powers). However, at any time you can go to a gene-bank and swap out any/all of your Tonics or Plasmids. While this complete character freedom may sound liberating, the result is that each Plasmid and Tonic feels (and is) disposable. As a player, chances are you'll find whichever Plasmid gives you the most bang for your buck, and the rest will go ignored.
These two problems are one in the same, in a way. Many of the Plasmids allow you to take advantage of opportunities for creative kills, but few of them allow you to create opportunities for creative kills.
Ken Levine has stated that the game is designed to be a shooter, and nothing more. Not an RPG / Shooter hybrid, a shooter. It's no surprise, then, that the core game mechanic will always be guns, with Tonics and Plasmids playing a backup "flavor" role. Not only is it not encouraged to dedicate yourself to a set of Plasmids / Tonics (as they can always be swapped), it is simply not possible to play through the game as a dedicated Plasmid user, shunning guns. You run out of "Eve" (mana) too fast, and the damage just isn't comparable to guns. With the "flavor" taking a back seat, the resulting game is devoid of any real character progression / choices, and once you get all the guns, the combat mechanics really start to get stale.
Hacking doesn't do anything to improve upon this problem. It's simply another feature tacked on that's not nearly as effective as just shooting your guns at guys. You certainly can't play through the game as a dedicated hacker, taking advantage of all the robots to solve your combat problems. The game just doesn't give you the opportunities to dedicate yourself in this way.
Ultimately, knowing that my next game experience will probably be identical to my first one, I have very little incentive to go and play the game again.
While Bioshock did a lot of things right, for fans like me, the hype may've skewed my expectations a bit. I may've been more willing to appreciate Bioshock for its innovations if it wasn't being sold to me as the next-gen version of my favorite game. I enjoyed Bioshock, but it still doesn't succeed System Shock 2 in any way, but rather matches it in some ways, and deviates from it in the rest.
In Bioshock 2, if they decide to add meaningful character progression and Co-Op, maybe then we'll have a true spiritual successor.
Gameplay: 6 / 10
Shooting is fun, but is bogged down by repetitive combat and uninteresting enemies and fringe features. Cap this off with a no-consequences death system and gameplay choices that don't matter, and the Gameplay quickly takes a back seat.
Fluff: 10 / 10
Everything about the fiction and storyline is brimming with intrigue and emotional impact. Great immersion into a fantastic new and original fictional plot.
Innovation: 7 / 10
Bioshock innovates with certain Plasmid / Ammo effects and the Big Daddy / Little Sister relationship, however these features feel left alone in otherwise typical shooter staples and level designs, save for a few exceptions.
Production: 8 / 10
The voiceovers, the models, most of the animations and effects are all stellar for characters and environments alike. Lack of variety is the only thing holding the production back.
Longevity: 6 / 10
Without any features to encourage replay or continued play, I can only judge Bioshock by its campaign length. While it's a little longer than some other shooters, it's not enormous. The only replay I could see would be to go back and play on different difficulties or make a different choice regarding the Little Sisters, but with the repetitiveness of the combat, I don't think most players will want to do that.
Overall: 7.4 / 10
A game that's usually fun and easy on the eyes, but you probably won't find yourself going back to it.
Art Director - Novo Interactive