Let's have a look at BioShock (2007),
but to make things real spicy-like I'm going to play the remastered version
that was released a decade later. And I'm going to play it on the PlayStation
4. And everybody who reads this article will lead a happy, fulfilling life. I guarantee it.
You remember BioShock. It was the art deco shoot-em-up with the diving
suits and the creepy little zombie girls. There was a second game,
BioShock 2 (2010), but you don't remember a thing about it. And
there was a third game called BioShock Infinite (2013) that
didn't have diving suits and it wasn't underwater and it was basically a
completely different game, except that the plot somehow joined up with the
first two but it didn't make sense.
And that is BioShock.
The first and last games attracted rave reviews, although nowadays I have a
sense that the critics regret going ga-ga over the third game. In 2013
BioShock Infinite was a Big Thing. It looked gorgeous and it had a charismatic co-star, but it
wasn't much fun to play and its attempts to tackle big issues was hamfisted. I
haven't played it. Maybe it was a masterpiece. Dunno. That stuff about leading a happy, fulfilling life? That was an April fools' joke. This article was originally posted on 01 April 2023. You won't lead a happy life after all. Sorry about that.
All three games are available as The BioShock Collection, which is out
on budget, so I decided to see what they were like. BioShock began
as an XBox 360 exclusive, but it was ported later on to the PlayStation 3 and
PC, and then ten years later it was polished up and re-released with some
console-exclusive addons and improved textures for the PlayStation 4 and XBox
One as well. The remaster includes a Director's Commentary, although it's actually a selection of interview snippets rather than a
Deus Ex: Human Revolution-style in-game commentary:
E.g. you literally watch footage of an interview. It's all available on
YouTube.
The original release had an uncomfortably narrow field of view, but the remastered
version has an option to expand the screen:
The remaster apparently removes a bunch of configuration options on the PC,
and it also gets rid of EAX audio effects, but I can't tell because I played
it on the PS4. It froze once and ran out of space for save files, but not
until right near the end of the game, so that wasn't a problem. Deleting some of the save files fixed that. Apparently the BioShock Collection's remasters of BioShock and BioShock 2 have a shared space for save data, and so it's a good idea to trim down your BioShock save files before you launch BioShock 2.
What is BioShock? It's a first-person action-adventure. A few months
ago I wrote about
System Shock, a classic old PC game from 1994 that combined elements of first-person
shooter, role-playing games, adventures, even puzzle games. It even had rudimentary physics-based gameplay, and it popularised a bunch of ideas that have been
mined by countless games since then.
In particular it popularised a gameplay model whereby the player is trapped in
a disaster area, with a storyline told in retrospect using audio logs and environmental cues. On a
pragmatic level it's an efficient way of conveying a complex plot without
having to model a bunch of NPCs - everybody is already dead, so the developers
just have to record a lot of voice logs - and when it works the results are
unusually creepy.
Most games of this ilk separate the player from NPCs behind safety glass etc,
but BioShock mixes things up a little by allowing the player
to interact with a few characters, albeit only a couple, such as this chap
here:
System Shock was developed by the late, lamented Looking Glass
Software, under the auspices of a chap called Warren Spector. Looking Glass
had a knack for releasing classic games that didn't sell well, and after
sinking a lot of money into an unprofitable golfing title the studio went
bust. But it was a hotbed of talent, and among its staff was
BioShock mastermind Ken Levine, who wrote some of the early drafts
of what became Thief: The Dark Project, another classic that wasn't
especially popular.
Warren Spector went on to make Deus Ex for Ion Storm, while Ken
Levine went on to develop System Shock 2 for his own startup,
Irrational Games. The two games are conceptually similar but at the same time very different.
Grim Fandango, System Shock 2, Deus Ex, and Kevin Rowland's "My
Beauty". I had good taste back then. If only I had kept the boxes. Where did the time go.
Deus Ex and System Shock 2 are action-adventures with
role-playing elements. They both have fundamentally linear plots, but
Deus Ex is more complicated, with branching plot strands and a large cast of characters. The game's maps are
designed in such a way that the player can achieve their goals through several
methods, usually a choice between sweet-talking or sneaking or high explosives.
Shock 2 on the other hand is much more straightforward. The
storyline is simpler and the player has much less freedom of action.
But the tight, focused storyline and oppressive atmosphere of Shock 2 give the game a
sense of creeping menace largely absent from Deus Ex. The constrained
environments and ever-present enemies complement the game's nightmarish
storyline, whereas for all its downbeat worldbuilding the player freedom
of Deus Ex often works against its attempts to build tension.
In particular the side-quests and exploration aspects of the game's famous Hong Kong section are at odds with the fact that the player character only has a
few hours left to live at that point in the storyline; the game doesn't take place in real time, so it's easy to forget that the hero is desperately racing
against the clock.
BioShock was developed as a spiritual successor to System Shock 2. But not an actual sequel, because in the mid-2000s the rights to the System Shock games were owned by the company that bought up what was left of Looking Glass. Nonetheless it shares a number of ideas with its inspiration. The player is trapped in a
multi-level complex that swarms with respawning enemies who chatter to
themselves as they run their errands; the player can buy supplies from
vending machines, or hack them and get a discount; mid-way through the game
there's a plot twist; there's a hydroponics deck; there are occasional ghost visions that tell a little
story:
Back in 2007 there was a certain amount of controversy as to whether
BioShock was a worthy successor to System Shock 2, or
just a standard shooting game with some complications. What do I think? In its
favour BioShock is a lot better looking than Shock 2, and
the shooty-shooty is more fun. But it doesn't really advance the genre at all;
it feels like an action-orientated remake with better graphics, which is fine,
but after the passage of seven years I expected more.
There are simple stealth elements, but it feels older than it is. It dates
from a time when first-person shooters were fascinated with working toilets
and sinks. Some of the background textures are downright ugly,
and the game very rarely exploits the vertical dimension, which I assume is a
result of its console genesis (aiming up and down at an angle with a console
controller is awkward).
Perhaps for the same reason the game doesn't appear to
have climbable ladders, or climbable anything, albeit that this was two years
before Mirror's Edge and a decade before
Doom 2016. There
are a few hidden areas, but for the most part the maps don't reward
exploration, or when they do, it's with the same generic junk that appears
everywhere else.
The art direction is fantastic, but I have the impression that if the kibble
was stripped away the maps would just be a series of square boxes. The
underlying architecture is very plain. But then again 2007 was a long time
ago. The inclusion of a telekenesis power-up dates the game to a period when
physics-based gameplay was so hot, and the
square-rooms-but-with-nice-art-direction reminds me a lot of
Half-Life 2. The use of bloom and colour grading and lens effects
(specifically water-on-the-camera) is very much of its time, but it's all done tastefully, so it's a rare example of a "shedloads of
bloom" game where the effect works.
As mentioned in the text BioShock generally looks great but has some
sloppy texture work.
Superficially Shock 2 feels more complex, but some of its
mechanics are just busywork. It has an inventory system, for example, whereas
the player in BioShock just picks things up automatically, but an
inventory system is not gameplay. The biggest difference is that character
building in Shock 2 is irreversible, whereas in
BioShock the player can mix and match power-ups as necessary,
which feels less authentic but is much less frustrating.
BioShock is full of junk that the player can use to craft ammunition and
tools, but it feels pointless. Your character just picks up junk automatically, so instead of carefully searching levels for
an elusive tub of glue you simply inspect every single crate and then rush off
to craft some ammo when you feel like it. It's not a million miles from the Borderlands series in that respect. BioShock also has the post-Half Life 2 craze for unusually limited ammo, particularly - and oddly - with the shotgun.
You'd think that a game set in a fragile pressure vessel would be awash with
shotgun ammunition, but I found myself barely using the shotgun, because our hero can only carry a few shells and ammo is very rare.
As with Shock the player can switch between different ammunition
types, and there are a whole raft of pseudo-psychic powers, although they're
presented as genetically-engineered plasmids. Most of them are
utilities that complement the weapons, but some of them are directly attack-y,
and some of them are designed to work in tandem with the guns; early on the
game encourages the player to freeze the enemies in place with an electrical
blast and then whack then with a wrench while they can't move.
On the PS4 the tonics are mapped to the left shoulder buttons and the weapons
to the right, which works surprisingly well. The console version has a
pause-time weapon/tonic wheel. I'm not sure if that's in the PC port. Later
games in the series allowed the player to fire off weapons and tonics
simultaneously, without switching, but the original system is fairly painless.
In theory you can travel between the game's levels at will, but with the
exception of one easily-missable easter egg there's no reason to do
so.
I have to admit I completely missed BioShock when it was new. Is
it any good? Yes, although I could sense myself losing interest as the game
went on. Storywise you are a chap called Jack, who is on a flight across the
Atlantic when his plane crashes in the ocean. He happens to land next to a
strange lighthouse, which houses a bathysphere that takes him to Rapture, a
city beneath the sea.
Rapture was built in the late 1940s by Andrew Ryan, a businessman who wanted
to create a society of elites free from the grasping hands of governments and
unions and religions. It's a lot like the floating tax havens
that were frequently featured in Wired magazine in the 1990s.
Presumably Ryan grew up liking Art Deco, which would explain why a city built
during the heyday of mid-century modern resembles the 1920s.
The storyline explains that the people of Rapture initially made great
advances in the arts and sciences, but a combination of isolation and
infighting eventually led to a breakdown in society. In particular the use of
splicing - genetic enhancements - resulted in a population of
inbred mutants driven mad by superpowers. Thus the player is thrust into a
warzone filled with paranoid, genetically-altered superhumans who can shoot
lightning from their fingers. As a neutral party Jack is quickly enlisted by
the few remaining sane survivors to help them fix Rapture, or at least ensure
that the whole city doesn't fall apart.
Which for the most part involves shooting things, pressing switches, and
playing a hacking mini-game that resembles PipeMania:
That particular hack was doomed from the start. BioShock has a number
of unusual mechanics. Each level features a number of Big Daddies, giant ambulatory diving suits that shamble around. The Daddies don't attack
unless you mess with them. Instead they guard Little Sisters - genetically-altered little girls who
use giant syringes to extract genetic power-ups from corpses. At one point you
find their nursery, where they are indoctrinated:
Optionally you can fight the Big Daddies and rescue the Little Sisters,
although the game gives you a choice between harvesting the girls for their
genetic power-ups or letting them go. The game was praised at the time for its
moral complexity, but sixteen years later that aspect feels overblown, as it
only influences a tiny amount of the gameplay and has a minimal impact on the
story, at least until the final cutscene.
As with System Shock 2 the game was also praised for its twist,
which is lessened somewhat if you've played the earlier game because it's
essentially the same twist. I don't want to spoil things, but it turns out the
the guiding voice on the radio is not being completely level with the player. This
leads to one of the game's most famous sequences, in which the player
confronts the chief baddie and is given a choice between sparing him, or
beating his brains out with a golf club:
It's very well done, although on the downside it does mean that the game peaks
at about the three-quarters mark. Whether you choose to spare Andrew Ryan or
not, the remainder of the game feels like an afterthought. Ultimately the game
ends with one of two cutscenes, a happy one and a sad one, but the actual
gameplay remains the same.
In defence of BioShock I can't think of another game since then
that genuinely solves the problem of how to account for moral choice in a game
without railroading the player, if only because the extra work involved in
writing numerous different storylines would be impractical.
Spec Ops: The Line suffered from that limitation, in the sense
that your only choice was between continuing to play the game or not.
In fact Shock 2 also had the same issue. Even if you knew that
the voice on the radio was not your friend there wasn't anything you could do
about it. Off the top of my head the player was allowed to rebel once, and
only once, but the outcome didn't affect the storyline.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution cleverly masked the effects of the
player's choices by making it seem as if the player had no choice, but
development of that game was rushed, so the moral aspect only informed a
handful of scenes. I haven't played the BioShock sequels so
perhaps they deal with it differently. Towards the end of the game
BioShock feels as if it's building up to a twist - one character
asks the player to disguise themselves as a Big Daddy, in a way that suggests the process is irreversible - but nothing comes of it. One thing that struck me as particularly odd is a sequence where the player becomes an assassin for one of the NPCs. He asks you to kill his rivals and photograph their bodies. The player seems perfectly happy to become a motiveless serial-killer-for-hire, and the game doesn't bring it up later, even though it feels like it should be a major plot point.
In any case BioShock is at heart an action shooting game with an
old-school, flat level layout. The interplay of different weapons and tonics
is fun, but as with the gravity gun of Half-Life 2 I found that
trying to be clever with traps was generally much less effective than just
shooting things, and the endlessly respawning baddies and linear gameplay put me on edge, because I had to keep rushing back and forth instead of exploring the maps. The hacking mini-game is monotonous and suffers from what
appears to be a limited set of starting states. If you have the right tools you can skip it, with no penalty (unlike Fallout you don't get experience points for hacking things).
On the positive side the art direction is top-notch. It has some of the
environmental storytelling of Fallout, with clever use of lighting and
map design to draw the player's attention to important details. Before going
into BioShock I assumed that the oppressive art deco style would
start to grate, but the game is good-looking throughout. And as with
Shock 2 the sound design is also unusually polished. The baddies talk to themselves as they hunt the player, with each enemy
type having a unique and surprisingly extensive set of stock phrases.
On the downside the
weapons are an anonymous bunch, and the game throws most of the enemy types at
the player in the first few levels, so by the end I felt as if I was just going through the motions. An awful lot of the gameplay boils down to fetch
quests, whereby the player has to collect a bunch of arbitrary things, and it ends with an
escort mission that is at least easy (at that point in the game the player is a
heavily-armed killing machine).
And for all the style there was something unaffecting about it.
Shock 2 looked ugly, but it had a nightmarish quality, because it
was tonally completely serious. In the second half of the game the player
was the doomed puppet of an evil supercomputer, trapped in a wrecked starship with no hope of rescue. BioShock on the other hand has an underlying
spoofy tone, not as unsubtle as Fallout, but spoofy enough that I
found it hard to lose myself in the story. And the double-crossing corporate warfare plot - as opposed to the thematic meditations on free will - is taken from something like Bonanza, but to be fair the game isn't about that.
There are a few clever surprise moments, generally towards the beginning of
the game, but none that really made me jump.
And that is BioShock. A decent shooter that outstays its welcome, with
excellent production values allied to a prosaic story, but with some clever
points about free will. It's memorable but I can't imagine playing it twice.
