Bioshock Video Game Review
Bioshock is one of the most unique first-person shooters ever created. It's not a game where you can blast your way through and expect to be satisfied. The joy of playing this game comes from the exploration and the story. Learning about the setting that your character has been forced to be in is a real thrill and not many games can top it. Bioshock is also unique in the fact that the guns aren't the main highlight of the gameplay; instead it's the plasmids that take center stage. What are plasmids? I'll explain more as we go along in the review. For now I want to comment on the scope of this massive experience that the developers took. The developers didn't want to create an ordinary FPS. They wanted to make something way more grand. They wanted a true immersive experience that would keep players coming back for more and more and more. They wanted to make a city that felt real and alive. They wanted to make a game where the player could find something new the 100th time they played through the game. Yes, this game is so big that you'll keep discovering new stuff that you hadn't found in previous playthroughs of the game. The men and women who worked on Bioshock wanted to make a world that you would keep coming back to again and again.
The gameplay itself is excellent, but right now I want to talk about the story... SPOILER ALERT! You're a man named Jack who is on a plane going to visit your family. The plane tragically ends up crashing in the ocean and you're the sole survivor. You swim your way to a lighthouse and you discover a tiny submarine that takes you thousands of miles below the sea. Before you reach the city that is about to bestow you, a man named Andrew Ryan appears on a screen in a pre-recorded message. He tells you all about his libertarian philosophy and how he believes that a man should be able to keep every penny he earns without having to give it to the government or a religious institution. Normally I would give my own political insight into the matter, but I'm going to refrain from doing so in this review. I just want to concentrate on the game itself. Andrew Ryan believes anybody who needs government assistance is just a parasite who deserves to suffer. He believes nobody should help the poor, because that just creates dependence. He believes it's not fair that a man who earns his money through hard-work and perseverance should have to give up his wealth. You'll learn throughout your time in his city - a grand metropolis called Rapture - that things seemed like paradise at first. The residence of the city were initially very happy. But soon things turned for the worse. When poverty and hunger arose, a group of people rebelled against Ryan and his strict philosophy. A man named Frank Fontaine became the leader of these people and he sought to take control from Ryan. This caused a civil war to brew in Rapture with many casualties taken along the way. You come into the story while the civil war is still going on and the city is in ruins. You're greeted over a short-wave radio by a man named Atlas. He tells you that the evil Andrew Ryan has locked his family in a submarine in another part of the city. He pleads with you to rescue his family, so he can get them out of this hell hole! You don't really have any other choice but to help him, as he seems to be your only ally. I won't spoiler any thing else, but I will say that there are many twists and turns along the way.
The gameplay is excellent in this game. As I said before the guns are actually not the main attraction of the game. The plasmids are! Plasmids were created by a female scientist named Tenenbaum. They were discovered after a man was bitten by a sea slug and saw that his previously limp arm was now fully functional again. Tenenbaum realized that she could use sea slugs to create stem versions of various bodily cells. This allows people to have super natural abilities such as shoot lightning from their hands or fire from their fists or a whole host of other abilities. There is even an ability where you can shoot a bunch of bees from your hands and have them attack your enemies. The people of Rapture quickly fell in love with the plasmids. In fact they loved them so bunch that they basically became drunk on plasmids and went crazy over them. The people who became the equivalent of alcoholics over plasmids are referred to as "splicers."
Frank Fontaine was the one who first marketed the plasmids and distributed them to the Rapture public with his company called Fontaine Futuristics. Even before the civil war started in Rapture, this is what created the initial hated between Ryan and Fontaine. Ryan was upset that Fontaine had cornered the market on the most sought out thing in Rapture before he did. Ryan feared that Fontaine was becoming too powerful and he did various things to try and stop Fontaine. But the overall point is, plasmids are one of the coolest things in the game. Being able to wield a gun and shoot lightning or fire or bees or ice or a variety of other things from your hand at the same time is just pure awesomeness. This is what makes the game stand out from all the other games out there.
All in all, Bioshock is one of the best games ever created. In future reviews I will talk about the other Bioshock games, but for now I want to give all the praise in the world to the original game that started the series!
The gameplay itself is excellent, but right now I want to talk about the story... SPOILER ALERT! You're a man named Jack who is on a plane going to visit your family. The plane tragically ends up crashing in the ocean and you're the sole survivor. You swim your way to a lighthouse and you discover a tiny submarine that takes you thousands of miles below the sea. Before you reach the city that is about to bestow you, a man named Andrew Ryan appears on a screen in a pre-recorded message. He tells you all about his libertarian philosophy and how he believes that a man should be able to keep every penny he earns without having to give it to the government or a religious institution. Normally I would give my own political insight into the matter, but I'm going to refrain from doing so in this review. I just want to concentrate on the game itself. Andrew Ryan believes anybody who needs government assistance is just a parasite who deserves to suffer. He believes nobody should help the poor, because that just creates dependence. He believes it's not fair that a man who earns his money through hard-work and perseverance should have to give up his wealth. You'll learn throughout your time in his city - a grand metropolis called Rapture - that things seemed like paradise at first. The residence of the city were initially very happy. But soon things turned for the worse. When poverty and hunger arose, a group of people rebelled against Ryan and his strict philosophy. A man named Frank Fontaine became the leader of these people and he sought to take control from Ryan. This caused a civil war to brew in Rapture with many casualties taken along the way. You come into the story while the civil war is still going on and the city is in ruins. You're greeted over a short-wave radio by a man named Atlas. He tells you that the evil Andrew Ryan has locked his family in a submarine in another part of the city. He pleads with you to rescue his family, so he can get them out of this hell hole! You don't really have any other choice but to help him, as he seems to be your only ally. I won't spoiler any thing else, but I will say that there are many twists and turns along the way.
The gameplay is excellent in this game. As I said before the guns are actually not the main attraction of the game. The plasmids are! Plasmids were created by a female scientist named Tenenbaum. They were discovered after a man was bitten by a sea slug and saw that his previously limp arm was now fully functional again. Tenenbaum realized that she could use sea slugs to create stem versions of various bodily cells. This allows people to have super natural abilities such as shoot lightning from their hands or fire from their fists or a whole host of other abilities. There is even an ability where you can shoot a bunch of bees from your hands and have them attack your enemies. The people of Rapture quickly fell in love with the plasmids. In fact they loved them so bunch that they basically became drunk on plasmids and went crazy over them. The people who became the equivalent of alcoholics over plasmids are referred to as "splicers."
Frank Fontaine was the one who first marketed the plasmids and distributed them to the Rapture public with his company called Fontaine Futuristics. Even before the civil war started in Rapture, this is what created the initial hated between Ryan and Fontaine. Ryan was upset that Fontaine had cornered the market on the most sought out thing in Rapture before he did. Ryan feared that Fontaine was becoming too powerful and he did various things to try and stop Fontaine. But the overall point is, plasmids are one of the coolest things in the game. Being able to wield a gun and shoot lightning or fire or bees or ice or a variety of other things from your hand at the same time is just pure awesomeness. This is what makes the game stand out from all the other games out there.
All in all, Bioshock is one of the best games ever created. In future reviews I will talk about the other Bioshock games, but for now I want to give all the praise in the world to the original game that started the series!
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