Em takes a look @ Bioshock, XBOX 360 version
Genre: Steampunk to the extreme, and a first person shooter (FPS) to boot.
Premise: Set in the 1960s, you play as man who is involved in a plane crash in the middle of the Atlantic, and seeks shelter in near by structure jutting out of the waves. You find yourself soon stalking the halls of an attempt to realise a utopian dream: Rapture, an underwater city. I said it was an ‘attempt’, because you’re quickly facing down hordes of ‘spliced-up’ mutants, who were once residents of this failed utopia. You don’t know who or what to trust as you go deeper into the city.
Why I played it: Tim recommended it. Characters: I don’t want to give much away about the game’s story, so I just want to note that there is some superb voice acting and characterisation that beats, hands down, the usual humdrum that is the flea ridden dog of the FPS market. It is truly impressive what 2K have given us here.
Gameplay: This is an FPS, but with special powers available as well as the usual weapons and ammunitions. It’s nice to be presented with special abilities that don’t only improve your ability to handle weapons, but the chance to electrocute, incinerate and freeze your enemies, as well as pursue them with insect swarms, throw objects with your mind at them and use small tornadoes to usher them up into the air and then fall to their deaths.
Simply put, you are not short of ways to kill your enemies and improve your ability to deal out the pain. There is more than just killing though: the hacking mini-game is fun, as is collecting photographs of enemies before they take away your innards and serve them up as shish-kebab; and collecting the various voice tapes that lay about Rapture gives a deep level of immersive play.
The fact that your actions through the game will affect what ending you receive out of several is a nice touch and adds to replayability. I got the super good ending.
What could be improved: Some may complain about the lack of multi-player, but this game is more story than a lot of other FPS games, and I suggest people go and play the latest recreation-of-a-major-war game, or Halo-clone if they want multiplayer. I’d hate to imagine trash-talk for this game.
Overall: There is a slight Island of Dr Moreau feel to this game, and it plays in its favour, giving it an edginess that would lead me to add the notion that this game is a bit gothic and grotesque too. In a nice way.
Bioshock is the thinking person’s FPS, and is also a beautiful game. Admittedly it is being released on the PS3 in the near future, but it has already been confirmed that the graphics and pretty much everything else are not changing. Depends how long you can cope without playing this I should think.
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