Musings of a technophile

So this last weekend I finally got around to beating BioShock for the first time. I started BioShock on November 20th of last year, and have played it VERY rarely since then, which is why it took me a whole year to beat it.

BioShock is a FPS where you play the role of Jack, a plane crash victim that survives the crash only to discover you are in the middle of the ocean. You see a lighthouse in the distance though so you swim to it, and take the bathysphere inside down to the underwater city of Rapture. The city was created by a man, Andrew Ryan, who didn’t care much for governments – instead insisting that a man needs to create his good fortune by himself, not through the work of others. Upon entering Rapture you find that Ryan has become a tyrant, and the city of Rapture is now defunct with people called “Splicers”, who are people who have gone insane with by “splicing in” (genetically modifying their DNA) things called “Plasmids” (a.k.a. – Magic).

You get some help over a radio from a person who is also stuck in Rapture, named Atlas, and with his guidance you move through the game taking down Splicers and progressing through the different area’s of Rapture (a.k.a. – levels). You also meet enemies called “Big Daddies”, who are basically mutated people inside giant 1950′s style diver suits who protect these girls known as “Little Sisters”. The Little Sisters carry “Adam”, which allows you to by more plasmids via vending machines, and therefore you have to beat the Big Daddies in order to capture the Little Sisters. You can either save or kill the Little Sisters (killing them give you 160 more Adam, saving them gives you only 80) but your decision will effect the ending of the game. If you kill more than 2 you apparently get the bad ending – so beware.

Anyways, the game is quite fun. The amount of customizations in the game in crazy ridiculous as you can customize anything from your weapons, to your plasmids, to your ability to do more damage to enemies by “researching” them (you take a picture of them with your camera and it gives you experience points similar to an RPG). It is important to note that the FPS aspect of the game actually seems to come AFTER the story aspect of the game. The story is deeply involving and even features a HUGE plot twist about 3/4 through the game. It is the story that makes this game great, not the FPS – although the FPS part is equally awesome.

The only complaint I have about the FPS side really is just how easy the game was. I played it on hard difficulty and still never found it to be that challenging of a game. I mean, I’m far beyond an amateur at these types of games, but still – there should have been some challenge. All hard mode seems to do is make the guys hard to kill, and maybe make them do more damage – but that just didn’t seem to be enough. Perhaps another reason I found the game to be so easy was the use of the Vita-Chambers. These are tubes that when you die, will bring you back to life somewhere else in the level. You don’t take any loss of ammo other than what you spent trying to kill the thing that eventually killed you *cough* Big Daddies *cough*, and you have full life and Eve (a.k.a. magic points) again. Also, let’s say you knocked a Big Daddy down to 50% life before he killed you – when you come back, he’ll STILL have 50% life. Given this, you could just hit a Big Daddy with the melee weapon (wrench), get killed, and then just do it over and over again until he’s dead – never losing anything in the process. This I think is what makes the game too easy. Instead they should have made it so that the thing you were trying to kill get’s all his life back, and you lose something – be it Adam, a couple first aid’s kits, ammo – SOMETHING, that would make the game much more difficult. I hear there is a new patch which puts the game into super hard mode, and basically takes away the Vita Chambers – this may make the game more aggravating to die, but doesn’t necessarily make the game harder I think.

Also, the last boss is EXTREMELY easy, they should have made him about 100 times more difficult – I defeated him without getting hit more than just a couple times, so that’s lame. Without giving away anything – I would have made the last boss just been like having to take down like 5 or more Big Daddies at one time – now THAT would be a friggin hard, if not impossible boss.

In any case though, BioShock is one of the best games of last year, so if you are a FPS gamer I still recommend it (just make sure you put it on hard mode to give yourself at least an average difficulty). The graphics are great, the story is incredible, the scenery is good, and the FPS part is pretty good, if not too easy. Apparently they are making a BioShock 2 which will come out next year (2009) so that should be fun too.