Are they looking for a spine-tingling adventure? Enjoyable enough on its own, BioShock is a highly recommended game to play after finishing the original BioShock. Although it bears a somewhat familiar look compared to other first-person shooters, BioShock is one of the newest, most refined game titles ever created, expertly blending memorable gameplay with masterful storytelling. However, this isn’t any old game-it’s a real-life dark comedy, which makes its accomplishments more impressive. BioShock is a scintillating title, but is it scary?
BioShock is set in Rapture, a beautiful underwater city undersea. A mysterious thief named Jack lands on the streets and starts killing people. Soon, BioShock starts to take a dark twist when a girl named BioShock herself shows up, asking you to save her brother. Sounds familiar? Well, the reason why BioShock is so terrifying is the attention it pays to objective fear factors – unlike its comparably awful predecessors, BioShock offers a thrilling experience that doesn’t shy away from horrifying gamers.
BioShock starts as a businessman called Calvin Patten visits Rapture to deliver a shipment of mysterious ‘plasmid stocks’ to the city’s undersea level. Along the way, he’s forced to deal with a vast variety of ‘plasmids,’ each with their own little story to tell. The storyline is consistently gripping as BioShock’s anonymous little sisters fight against evil… The scenes are bleak and violent, with black lighting creating an eerie environment and eerie sounds adding to the dread.
BioShock starts with a prologue introducing the game’s antagonist, a man called el who’s responsible for the sinking of Rapture and has his motives for sinking the city. With help from brave little sisters, you have to discover what is beneath the water and stop the spreading madness. The storyline is relatively slow, BioShock dealing more with puzzles and environmental puzzles than fighting monsters or other enemies, but it is always captivating. BioShock is like a mix of Silent Hill and Tomb Raider in a way, and it’s one of those rare games where the fighting never gets old.
BioShock is not like the previous BioShock games, where shooting and fighting are pretty standard. BioShock is set in an underwater city, and you have to get through its underground levels, which are terrifying due to the creepy sea gypsies and Big Daddies that you’ll meet along the way. The storyline is told through audio logs that grow more frightening the further you progress, as if by whispering in your ear. BioShock refers to some of the worst scariest monsters in video gaming, and its monsters prove to be more terrifying than the storyline is.
BioShock is known to have the best story and the best shooting action in any game genre, but it also has some pretty impressive visuals. A lot of time was spent on improving the game’s visuals, which is evident when you look at the new edition of BioShock. Though there are still some minor graphical errors, such as an extra pixel in the eyes and the wrong color of lipstick on a character, it looks great. These things are nitpicky, but it’s enough to annoy you while playing the game.
BioShock is available for the Xbox and PC, so if you have an Xbox, you’re in luck. However, if you don’t have a Microsoft, well, I guess you can wait a little longer for them to get the game for you. Since its initial release, the game’s been out for a few years, so it’s outdated. On the other hand, it hasn’t been forgotten entirely and has been making a bit of a comeback. This is thanks to the developers putting out a new ‘epic adventure’ game called BioShock: Thearantine, which is essentially the prequel to the original BioShock.
BioShock is available for Nintendo Wii and Sony PlayStation 3. If you’re planning to buy one of these consoles, make sure you know what version of BioShock you’re getting. The problem with BioShock is that it doesn’t have a built-in save feature, so you’ll need to protect your game every time you want to play. If you’re getting a Wii, you won’t have any problems with this, but if you’re getting PS3, you’ll have to get an updated copy of BioShock, or you won’t be able to load your game. There is an option in the Wii and PS3 versions to copy your saves, but I wouldn’t recommend it.