Review #268: Bioshock

 Would you kindly take a trip to Rapture?

 Bioshock is one of last gen's darlings, while hardly revolutionary, this first person shooter is a beloved piece of gaming history.

 You play as Jack, just Jack, after surviving a plane crash, destiny takes him down to Rapture, an underwater city envisioned by Andrew Ryan, a visionary of sorts that wanted to give free reign to artists. But things turned sour real fast, these people weren't held back by laws, so boundaries became non-existent and they let loose to their inner demons. Plus, the addition of internal strife and the discovery of a substance named Adam, which took humanity to the next level quickly turned this utopia into a dystopia. Yes, there's quite a bit of story, most of it told through audio logs found throughout Rapture, or via text logs. And while it's impossible to have avoided spoilers by now, the story is still pretty darn entertaining! And while secondary characters get a rather limited screen time each, most of them are very memorable.

 In order to survive, Jack is armed with a few fire arms as well as a metal wrench, but he can also make use of 'Plasmids', that run on Eve, which grant him a ton of abilities, like fire blasts, electric jolts or even turn enemies against each other, then there are equippable Tonics that grant a plethora of passive skills. While ammo can be pretty scarce, and money is hard to come by at the start of the game, the game is overall pretty easy, and you've infinite continues that respawn you close to where you died, and enemies don't even get their health back! Personally, I found that equipping Tonics that enhanced your melee damage and restoring health on-hit was the most effective way to get through the game.

 Bizarrely, there's a sort of 'photographing' 'mini-game'. Early in the game you get a camera, and by taking pictures of the various enemies you'll get passive bonuses to your damage output, or even some Tonicss. This felt like a chore, as most of the time I found myself defaulting to the camera, and taking as much pictures of each enemy I came across as I could before they would stop giving any points. It's not mandatory by any means, but the upgrades are worth it. It simply felt weird, it takes a ton of pictures to unlock every reward.

 Currency comes in two forms: Money and Adam. Money can be found from fallen enemies or throughout various containers, and it's spent on automated shops for ammo or health packs. Adam is harvested from Little Sisters, which are always accompanied by Big daddies, bosses in mook clothing. Don't be surprised to spend a whole lot of medikits and ammo on these bastards, but the Adam is worth it, as you can spend it on new plasmids or health and Eve upgrades.

 Bioshock is a game that hasn't lost is lost, even as hard as the Internet has tried to give all its surprises away. The only part of the game that feels dated, if any, is the visual presentation, but hey, it's not like you can play graphics!
 8.0 out of 10