Bioshock

[Forever]

The game takes place during the year 1960 in a fictional underwater city called Rapture where only the elite of humanity were allowed to live. Rapture was secretly build in 1946 by Andrew Ryan. Rapture had its own power supplies so that it would be independent from the surface world. Ryan wanted Rapture to become the perfect city. To achieve this goal, ADAM and EVE were needed.
ADAM was obtained from extracting cells of sea slugs. ADAM was of great importance to genetic manipulation. This was the start of a new industry on Rapture called Plasmids. Plasmids are modification to the human DNA and allow you to use supernatural powers such as shooting fire. To keep your body from corrupting after taking ADAM, EVE was needed. To improve the rate at which ADAM was obtained, Little Sisters were created. These are little girls with a sea slug embedded in their body. Little Sisters can harvest ADAM from dead bodies.
Because ADAM was so important in society, the Little Sisters had to be protected, Big Daddies were made for this job. Big Daddies are DNA modified humans in an armored diving suit with powerful weapons.
Ryan, trying so desperately to keep Rapture from being revealed to the surface caused a civil war because of this. Both sides of the war wanted to prevail in the war and produced excessive amounts of ADAM. This made EVE very scarce and caused the inhabitants of Rapture to become corrupted and turn into “Splicers”. Some were not corrupted and barricaded themselves in very well protected areas which you will come across during the game.
You (Jack) are in a plane that crashes into the sea. When you see a lighthouse, you swim towards it and inside you find a bathysphere. This bathysphere takes you to Rapture. Upon arriving you come in contact with Atlas, one of the few non-corrupted humans in Rapture. Atlas asks you to help him with rescuing his family and you agree, this is where your story starts.
Enjoy your dive into Rapture



Game:Bioshock
Genre: First-person shooter
Developer: 2K Games



PC
Xbox 360
PS3


OS: Windows XP (SP2) or Windows Vista.

Minimum:
CPU: Pentium 4 2.4GHz Single Core processor
System RAM: 1GB
Video Card: Direct X 9.0c compliant video card with 128MB RAM (NVIDIA 6600 or better/ATI X1300 or better, excluding ATI X1550).
Sound Card: 100% direct X 9.0c compatible sound card
Hard disc space: 8GB free space

Recommended:
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo processor
System RAM: 2GB
Video card:
DX9: Direct X 9.0c compliant video card with 512MB RAM (NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT ++)
DX10: NVIDIA GeForce 8600 or better
Sound Card: Sound Blaster® X-Fi™ series (Optimized for use with Creative Labs EAX ADVANCED HD 4.0 or EAX ADVANCED HD 5.0 compatible sound cards)


Bioshock is a first person shooter with several role-playing elements.
During your adventures in Rapture you will come across various things I had never seen in a game before. You could hack turrets, making them kill your enemies instead of you, you could hack security cameras, safes(really hard later on) but also vending machines, which will allow you to purchase health kits and ammunition at a reduced cost and also allow you to purchase some “Hack-Only” items.
Hacking is a mini game in which you must assemble pipes on a small field so that a flow of water can complete the power circuit.
By clicking on unrevealed tiles you will reveal them and then you can switch the pipe in that tile with a pipe of another tile.

Another thing nice to the game is that in addition to the standard firing weapons, there are also plasmids. These plasmids can be found in hidden places in the game or purchased from a “Gatherer’s Garden” using ADAM. There are 2 types of plasmids: Active and Passive. Active plasmids are plasmids that you can control such as shooting fire. Passive plasmids work as long as you have them equipped. An example of a passive plasmid is reducing the amount of bomb tiles during a hacking mini game. Active plasmids will be used from your left hand and almost all plasmids change the appearance of your hand for as long as you have that plasmid out. Incineration plasmids will set your hand on fire and make it look charred. Higher levels of plasmids create a stronger appearance.
When you use an active plasmid it will draw some of your EVE. EVE will automatically be replenished by EVE injections found throughout the game when your EVE has reached 0 (If you have any EVE injections with you ofcourse) or you can manually replenish it by pressing the X button while having an active plasmid out.
Another nice feature I encountered is that once you have visited a room and return to it later there will be enemies in it again. I often entered a room with the impression that I had cleared everything so, I wasn't cautious and ran straight into a couple of splicers.




Electro Bolt:
This plasmid fires an electro bolt. This plasmid has multiple uses. It can stun enemies, bots, turrets and cameras. It can also short-circuit a few door-locks. This plasmid is very effective and should always be carried with you. A great tactic is to zap an enemy and then hit it in the head with a wrench. If used on turrets you can quickly run up to the turret and hack it.

Incinerate:
This one will set the enemy on fire, causing a little damage and then an additional damage over time. This plasmid is not really useful because the damage is very low. The only use this has is that it can melt ice which is required to pass certain places. You should not equip this plasmid, there are more important ones. If you need to melt ice you can always visit a G*****nk and switch plasmids just to melt the ice.


Telekinesis:
Very useful plasmid. This plasmid can pull up items and hurl them at the enemy. It can also be used to pull items (only advised to use if the item is worth the EVE) from behind a fence so you can pick it up. You should always carry it with you because sometimes you can find rare items and occasionally Audio Books.
You can also make up tactics with this such as placing a mine on an object and then throwing the object away, this tactic is useful for Big Daddies.

Winter Blast:
Freezes your enemy, making it unable to attack. Afterwards you can take out the enemy with a single blow, shattering it into a thousand pieces and leaving you with no loot. Because you get no loot it is better to use Electro Bolt.

Enrage:
When fired at the enemy it will make him attack everything that is near him. Useful for having a laugh with bigger groups of splicers but other than that it’s not very great.

Target Dummy:
It will put a dummy on the ground which will be attacked by splicers. I never had any use of this because they will attack the dummy at the same range as they attack you so you cannot use it to distract splicers and then quickly pass them the other way around. The only situation in which this would be useful is when you are on the run, dropping a dummy will give you some more time to get away.

Cyclone Trap:
Must be placed on the ground. If an enemy walks over it he/she will be launched in the air and take a bit of fall damage. It is better to use Electro Bolt instead because cyclone trap needs a lot of EVE.

Insect Swarm:
Send a swarm of insects to annoy and hurt the enemy. Enemies will stop fighting if you fire this on them. If used while not in combat it will distract the enemy so that you can pass them if you don’t feel like fighting.I usually fire this on a group of unsuspecting enemies and then sneak up to them with my shotgun, works really well

Security Bulls-eye:
If used on an enemy it will be considered the enemy of bots, turrets and cameras. Not really useful because it's pretty hard to find enemies standing near turrets. I find this only a drain of EVE so I only used it once to see what it did.

Hypnotize Big Daddy:
For a short time the targeted big daddy will fight by your side and attack enemies. It can come in pretty handy sometimes although I do not recommend you to use this if the Big Daddy protects a Little Sister. If you do that the Little Sister will flee and if you are not fast enough she will run away and hide from you. If this happens the only way to be able to retrieve the Little Sister is to wait for a Big Daddy to lure her out of her hiding place.
This plasmid will drain all your eve so in my opinion it’s not worth it.


The game looks really amazing, everything has a lot of detail. There are retro-style adverts everywhere on the walls and there are also a lot of rooms with a real theme in it such as a ballroom, a theatre and many more. This make the game feel like every room has something special about them. But don’t get distracted by the nice looks! While you’re looking at the adverts on the wall you might get ambushed by some Splicers!
A great thing is that, despite the wonderful graphics, you only encounter a loading screen of 20-30 seconds every 2-3 hours when you go to a new zone.
Unfortunately for you, if you play the game on your not-so-great PC you will not experience the same as if you would play on a console. I played the game on my Xbox 360 and it worked perfectly.
The plasmid effects are also very in detail, both on your hand as when used on an enemy. One particular plasmid that I liked very much was the Electro Bolt. If you equip it you will see sparkles around your hand which are really in detail, I actually sat there for a few minutes just looking at it.


The sound in this game is just very very special. The voice-actors have done an amazing job. Their voice acting gave this game something unique. The creepy characters really have creepy voices and a lot of NPC which are out of combat (I advice you spy on some) tell jokes to eachother which can be pretty fun.
The sound effects from regular characters such as splicers, big daddy’s and little sisters are nicely done as well. When they attack you, you can hear them scream and go insane.
I often found myself running back and hiding in a corner when I heard screams of an enemy!
Big daddy’s also roar to others (You and NPCs) when someone gets too close to a Little Sister.
Plasmid sounds are good too, nothing special though. Every sound has their unique sound effect of course, some have more sound than the other. Their sound is pretty straightforward, a fire’ish sound for Incinerate and an electrish sound for Electro Bolt. Weapon sounds are “OK”. They are not bad or something but it’s not very much better than other games.









Bioshock is a wonderful game, the feeling you get while being in a heavy fight can be quite a rush and there is a lot of humor in the game as well. Sometimes it’s just nice to go a little off track of the storyline and just look around in the game and find a lot of interesting places.
If you like single-player fps games this is a game that you must have. It is really unique and you miss out a lot if you have never played this one.
If you’re still unsure whether you like it or not you can visit the Xbox Marketplace and look for Bioshock to download a demo and for the PC you can visit Demo Versions: BioShock Demo - Demo Movie Patch Download Section - GamersHell.com and pick a mirror from the list.

[Deadly Tomato]

Great review! sums it up really well, I also love the game : D

[Apartment Wolf]

Love the review, currently this is my favorite game.

Story we keep you hooked and enthrall you with twists and environments =]

[runemasterx]

This Site Owns and So Does Bioshock

[Clucadol]

A good review, and a good game. Very well written to.

Clucadol

[cygnusX]

Good review Thanks. The game is really good but it's too easy.