BioShock

The Good
As the world crested over Y2K, nerds everywhere rejoiced in man’s greatest invention to date: the world wide web. This marked the turn of a new age, the Age of Information, where the basis of world currency turned from gold to ones and zeros. The nerd caste, once the universal butt-end of derision and wet towel snappings, found their way to the highest echelons of society and even have one of their own cast as the world’s richest man, Bill Gates. Role-playing, once a dark secret that could derail a presidential candidate, now has gone mainstream and online with a subscription rate that grows exponentially every year. That guy in high school who never spoke or left the computer room is now your boss. The nerd is triumphant.

The popular notion would be to consider the age we live in, what with its information superhighway and Ausperger’s syndrome, to be the most intelligent period of all time. People now have instant access to a wealth of information that would have taken weeks to compile. However, one instead should ask, “Does being truly smart mean you know a great deal of information?”

No. In this day and age people don’t need to know more information, instead they need to be able to process this information. Even though the mother-load of human history and knowledge is available to any and all, people choose to spend their time spouting South Park catch-phrases or quoting whatever the Insane Clown Posse has to say about their imagined enemies. The world wide web is cluttered with completely pointless web sites about ninjas and robots and ninja robots as well as the required slash fiction for said genre. Wikipedia, a brilliant idea in theory in which encyclopedia submissions are edited by its users, offers information that is on the whole unconfirmed and inaccurate. As SomethingAwful.com puts it, and puts it well, “The internet makes you stupid.”

In that case, what is so good about the internet? How can man’s greatest invention be worthy of such praise if all it can do is show you some fat kid pretending to swing a light saber around? Three things: e-mail, porn, and finding opinions that support whatever it is that you are thinking.

That’s right: the internet is not for learning. Or at any rate, nobody ever seems learns from it. If you are some dumb racist misogynist with a hate on, but can’t find anyone who sympathizes with you because they are all well-adjusted humans who don’t have an issue with their penis size, well, you’ll find all the small-penised friends you’ll ever need on the internet. If there is some opinion that proves you wrong, well, you don’t want to hear it.

And that brings us to video gamers, who are already an opinionated set of people without even mentioning “fan boys”. One common way of broadcasting one’s opinion is to write reviews; however, all these reviews posted on the internet serve to do is buttress the experience they had with the game and the justification of the game’s cost. These ordinary reviews will tell how someone feels (for example, “This game rocks!” translates better into “This great game gives me the rocking feeling!” rather than “This is a good game,”) but not any original thought beyond “Too bad you couldn’t carjack anything.” Folks, that isn’t a review: that’s an affirmation of your experience (or the opposite of affirmation if it happens to be Big Rig Racing). Video game reviews on the internet have as little to do with discussion and original thought as Britney Spears’ horrific snatch has to do with underwear when entering or leaving a motor vehicle.

The internet is littered with these testimonials that are all virtually the same: you get a synopsis of the game’s story, a run down on the graphics and sound and gameplay with scores out of ten, a consensus of “rocks” or “sucks”, a comparison to GTA San Andreas, and then the words of either “must-buy”, “rent” or “your time would be better spent masturbating”. This would be fine and all if it was a cuisinart or Astroglide or any other product you purchase, but some gamers go further and insultingly call video games “art”. Games are many things: a hobby, entertainment, a great way to tell a story and waste 100 hours of your life. But not art.

That isn’t to say there haven’t been games that have been so good that they have been “artful” or even “masterpieces”. However, gamers appear to have a limited vocabulary in reviewing games; if something is good but inexplicable falls out of the “rock” range, gamers can not comprehend and thus this becomes a critically acclaimed hit that doesn’t somehow sell many copies.

So, I was over at JazzOleg’s place, the one that has the stuffed grizzly bear that he killed himself with his own bare hands ; he had just bought his brand new computer, one that is made out of gold-pressed platinum and is faster than “Old World” immigrants at an open buffet. (it’s amazing: on top there’s an opening to which you can offer your living sacrifices to appease the angry video card god within) Like a proud poppa, he first popped in “The Witcher” and then “Bioshock”. I was so impressed with “Bioshock” that I had to get my own copy, to which I then found out doesn’t work on my YEAR-old computer. Seeing that I’m not going to get an Xbox 360 anytime soon and the ‘Corn is smart enough not to let me in his home without him, it seems I’ll never finish this game.

So this is not a review. Somebody else will gladly spout off about Ann Rand-whatsherface and quote something from wikipedia, cool. However, playing it through a short while made me think of the discussion above when I made a realization about this game.

Games are not art and gamers don’t have the ability to appreciate art in games. This is apparent in “Bioshock”, because this game succeeds in spite of itself. To be an artist in this modern age is to hide that fact that you are an artist at all.

Absolutely, “Bioshock” is a game that “rocks”, but the reason why it “rocks” is crammed far deep inside the game to save it from being a commercial failure. Daddy Systemshock whatshisface knows full well of this: you give the people only what they want; that which they need you must hide it from them or else they cannot accept. Therefore, “Bioshock” “rocks” because it has cool graphics, cool ragdoll physics, cool game play. People like the Big Daddy (well, like killing him, anyways) but may not know why. People know it’s a good story, but they don’t have to sit through verbose and pedantic exposition (the “talky” parts) before they can start killing.

The opposite of this are games that are genius, but are too good for their own good. Planescape: Torment looked like a novel because it was a novel, and disguised so poorly it flopped like a twenty-pancake belly flop. ICO is a transcendently original platform-puzzler that made a believer out of everyone who played it, but gamers instead held fast to Italian plumbers and their goombas. I’m sure the same could be said of Psychonauts, but I haven’t played it and never will because I’m waiting for the sequel, which is going to be an MMO or FPS. Whichever, it’s not that there’s any difference between the two because they both sh*t green money.

“Bioshock”, besides being a cool-ass linear FPS with a cool-ass story that you’d never ever heard of before, is masterful because it is a perfect blend of art, design and commerce. I haven’t finished it, but that much is clear from playing it for awhile and (hopefully) merits this discussion. It knows its place and being such a genius work, tricks us why we like it.

The Bad
Can't carjack any cars. Can't punch a dog into outer space. Crowds do not chant my name when I score a hat trick.

The Bottom Line
The real beauty of art is that a true masterpiece will garner our respect, especially if we don’t like it. Great art challenges us.

Meanwhile, videogames have adjustable difficulty levels.

The Good
Released in 2007, Bioshock, is the spiritual successor to the, System Shock, franchise. The series that helped re-define what a FPS could be. With such a storied past and all the critical accolades, can Bioshock live up to the hype?

I would like to note that, despite the fact that I finished Bioshock, about a year ago, I for some reason, had trouble articulating my thoughts on the game. Thus making a review an unlikely prospect. This being the first time that I have ever found myself in such a precarious position.

Anyhow, after a second play, taking the other path, I feel I am at last prepared for this review.

Bioshock begins when your plane crashes somewhere in the Atlantic ocean. Being the only survivor, you swim towards a beacon, before the suction pulls you under. Enter the bathysphere, and you are treated to a flyby of Rapture, or what is left of it anyway.(It reminds me of the flyby of Los Angeles in Bladerunner-MM-)

Built by megalomaniac Andrew Ryan, Rapture, is now decaying at the bottom of the sea after a genetic civil war. Ryan also is one of the few people still alive in Rapture, and interacts with you. One memorable scene involves meeting Ryan for the first time in person, and he is playing golf while his city burns.

You see first hand the brutality of the splicers, gain your first plasmid, and see a Big Daddy doing what they do best. At this point the game is very suspenseful, and invokes a sense of dread, much like it’s predecessors.

One of the first areas the medical pavilion, is very disturbing. Your encounter with Sander Cohen also stands out in my mind in overall creepy factor.

Bioshock even reuses the audio logs like in System Shock, and more recently in Doom 3. They are a nice touch and help flesh out the world of Bioshock, and it’s more that a little creepy to think that most of these people are dead, or in some cases will die by your hand. On one audio log in particular you actually hear the last moments of one the major characters.

Bioshock for all intents and purposes is a FPS. And while it has some RPG elements, it is by and large a FPS. Combat is simple and fairly effective. Using your plasmids in tandem with your firearms offers a sort of one-two punch. (Kinda like in Undying.-MM-) And there are a great deal of fire arms at your disposal. A pistol, shotgun, crossbow, and flamethrower among others.

There are also many plasmids. Some attack, like Electro Bolt, Some aid you such as Hypnotize Big Daddy. And there are also some that are passive, like cloak, and speedy hacker. All plasmids are purchased with Adam. And the only way to get Adam, is to get a Little Sister, which in turn are protected by Big Daddies.

A Little Sister is a genetic construct, little girls made to gather Adam, which they draw from dead splicers.(Some of Bioshocks’ creepiest moments are when watching a Little Sister draw Adam, and say, “I’m a good girl!”) To get the Adam they carry, you must take the Big Daddy. These hulking brutes were human…once. They have heavy fire power and resistance to damage, but can die. Once destroyed you can either Harvest the Little Sister, or Rescue her. Harvesting gains you more Adam, but rescuing them is the only way to accesses, some of the better plasmids, much as Hypnotize Big Daddy. Harvesting Vs. Rescuing also determines what alignment you have good or evil. And changes the ending.

The story moves along at a brisk pace, and there are few times where you stray from the main objective. There are however lots of secrets to uncover, and achievements to earn. Like collecting all the plasmids, or audiologs. Bioshock is also fairly lengthy for a FPS. Clocking in at about 25 hours, in your first play.

The graphics is Bioshock are amazing. One review on Moby claims, that you would have to be on drugs to appreciate the graphics. I don’t know what that means. Because the visuals are a sight to behold. Between the art deco design of Rapture, and the eerie look of the splicers, and the amazing lighting effects I don’t see how you could NOT like the graphics. You must play it on 1080p, if you have the means. The unreal engine never looked better.

The music is very good. From the original score to the real world songs form the 40’s and 50’s.

The sound effects are all good. From the gunshots to the plasmids, it all sounds great. But this pales in comparison to the voice work. The psychotic mumblings of the splicers is genius, and often disturbing. You see the splicers brains are so rattled that they say things from there past lives, such as, “Get the fuck out my office!” , “Jesus loves me.”( Christians are creepy.-MM-) and, “Go ahead leave me for that bitch!”

And all the main characters have good voices, and the dialog is well written which I feel is more important.

The Bad
Combat is way to frequent. There are only supposed to be a handful of people left in Rapture, yet by the games end you will have killed hundreds of them. The only positive side is that there is a good variety of splicers. Nitro, Leatherhead, etc.

Sometimes you will need to backtrack, say to use a vending machine, you go back to rooms that you just exited, and all the splicers are back.

This then leads to always needing ammo and health packs. And while it is rare that a splicer will be able to kill you, it is still very annoying. You are really better off avoiding any backtracking.

There are only two different paths, good or evil. And two endings, good or evil. There is not even a neutral path! Deus Ex had four different endings, yet Bioshock could only manage two, WTF?

Furthermore there are very few points in which you can change the outcome of an objective. There is really only one part in which you get to choose to kill a character or not kill them in the entire game.

The Bottom Line
At the end of the day Bioshock is worthy successor to the legendary System Shock series. In some ways it is actually surpasses those games. If you are a fan of FPS and have a PC or Xbox 360 you simply have to play this game. Seriously it’s required by law, or at least it should be. And well read gamers will certainly enjoy it even more.

The Good
+ great story - would you kindly get your foot outta my ass? + great visuals - water, that most intangible of elements, looks like water + atmosphere supports the story - immersive environment makes the 50's look hip again, no thanks to Marty McFly's dad + stuff blows up great - all underwater secret cities should have full tanks of flammable propane lying everywhere in case a video game gets made there

The Bad
- way too easy - Bioshock has an invincible "god" mode - it's called default - the movie will be better - could have had more varied enemy selection, like that gigantic walking spider-thing mech from DOOM, but that wouldn't have "served" the story - once again, the best weapon in the game - the crossbow - is also the most low-tech; development time spent on hells-yes plasmids may have been better spent on crowd favorite "2x4 with rusty nail hammered through it"

The Bottom Line
Analysis: Bioshock and Compromise

Sometimes, some things are just too good for their own good.

While that seems to be a contradictory statement simply on its own, it makes sense (but not too much sense) when you consider there are many things that haven't enjoyed any success when it is fully conceivable that they should. Critical success does not necessarily mean popular success; sometimes art is made that is so advanced that the current generation can not accept it (the term avant-garde comes to mind). The public can only handle so much.

This may seem to be critical of the average layman, who can't be faulted for being who he is, a man--a laying man, at that. In that case, to put it another way (other than saying the public can only accept so much), beauty is the beginning of fear. You know that new sports car? That fancy expensive one, the one you fantasize about? If you buy that, you're going to worry about it all the time; you're going to worry about it being stolen, scratched, towed, and even targeted by malicious flying birds and their gooey excrement. You know that hot, attractive girl? The one you fantasize about all the time? Once she becomes your girlfriend ("oh yes, she will be mine") you may find yourself constantly worried that someone may steal her from you. Again: beauty is the beginning of fear, and some things are just too good for their own good.

While these two points aren't necessarily the same, the same point can be made: the public can only handle so much. So, that's where Bioshock lands, firmly on its capable and talented feet and stooping low to bend to the lowest common denominator so that even the most lay of the layest of layman will "get" this game.

Bioshock is a beautiful game that takes place in the undersea city of Rapture. Based on the philosophies of Ayn Rand, Bioshock is an exploration of Objectivism gone catastrophically wrong. In the game, a charismatic leader named Andrew Ryan founds the city of Rapture as a capitalist haven safe against influence and pressure from outside political and religious powers. Literally shut off from the entire world at the bottom of the ocean, the Objectivist experiment of Rapture fails due to internal problems; this is suggested due in part to Objectivist dogma where the scientist, artist and capitalist aren't constrained by ethics or morality.

This is quite an interesting basis for a story; furthermore, Bioshock would continue down the "interesting path" some more and spin a tale of betrayal, deceit and domination. However, the fantastic research and writing that went into making this video game comes at a price: it's too good for its own good.

When applied to video games many gamers could only shake their heads in disbelief. "How can a game be too good?" they may say. I suppose this can be someone asking how vanilla ice cream can be too vanilla-y, or how someone can have sex too often and have too many orgasms. Well, I can't complain about vanilla ice cream nor about orgasms that are too good to have, but there is something to be said about Bioshock: its story and game play are terribly unbalanced with each other. Bioshock can't make up its mind whether it wants to tell a story or let you blow things up; stuck as a compromise, Bioshock delivers an interesting story in a way only video games can tell at the cost of overpowered game play that is too easy even for the average layman.

The story is too good for video games. I admit this sounds insulting to all video gamers and layman everywhere, lying down, but when the news broke that Bioshock is getting the Hollywood treatment with "name" director Gore Verbinski attached, who made alot of money and fame making movies about a ride at Disneyworld, I suspect the excitement was mostly over the fact that the great story in Bioshock would finally get told properly - in another medium that can tell stories well.

How can a story be too good for a game? Well, the high quality of a story in a video game can be detrimental when the developers emphasize the importance of the story over everything else; what this does effectively is subvert every other aspect including game play, difficulty, and enemy selection. You know (you laymen guys), everything that makes a video game a game.

First, the game is entirely too easy. Of the three difficulty levels, the hardest level is about the same level as most other games' mild medium difficulty level; compared to a hardcore game like Ninja Gaiden, Bioshock's hardest difficulty level is on par with the former game's easiest difficulty level. Other elements add to this ease: the game pauses when selecting weapons or plasmids, basic enemies (splicers) are all the same and so similar strategies can be used against them throughout the game, weapons are upgradeable to over-powered status, after halfway through the game money becomes so easy to make that a 500$ maximum capacity is forced on the player (unlike my wallet in real life), a map and a directional arrow points to the objective so that getting lost in a level is an impossibility, and furthermore no penalty is ever exacted on the player for dying - the player is instantly resurrected at a Vita-chamber to redo a level until ultimately he succeeds.

Secondly, the game play is so unbalanced that not long after beginning you become a unstoppable powered tank. The average enemy soon doesn't have a chance against the player, and in fact by the game's end you are pretty much just as powerful as the end boss. It appears the makers spent a lot of time designing cool ways to blow things up real good that they forgot to give you a suitable opponent; while it may be argued that Big Daddies are tough mini-bosses, the truth is they don't appear often enough and once you learn the technique how to take down a Big Daddy quickly it actually becomes routine quite quickly. In fact, one of the biggest challenges in Bioshock is cycling through your weapons and plasmids regularly to use them all equally, whereas in most cases you'll stick with one familiar weapon and upgrade it to make short work of all splicers and Big Daddies.

The fact of the matter is that the game has been designed to be overly simple and easy for the simplest of laymen to ensure that absolutely anyone and everyone can make it to the end - to ensure that this story gets told, from beginning to end. In four (and a compound) words: great story, bad game play. This is the antithesis of most games that have a bad story but great game play. Video games have traditionally not had great stories because usually they have been about game play, the meat, and back bone of video games.

Consider all the audio diaries scattered through each of the levels. When put together they weave together the complicated social tapestry of Rapture, a blend of unbridled ambition and treachery and despair. An interesting part of the story... that isn't an integral part of the game. In fact, listening to these audio diaries will commonly displace you from the immersion of the game, and in fact distract you from attacking enemies. These side-stories are entirely skippable for those who wish to simply blow things up.

And that's a problem too: as a straight-forward first-person shooter, Bioshock is strangely unsatisfying for not having unbalanced game play. Bioshock looks beautiful, sounds realistic for sound effects and dramatic for voice acting and has period songs of the era, and is a high class offering that should be a great video game - but it isn't as much fun as DOOM to shoot monsters and blow stuff up.

This is where Bioshock deviates from the norm (watch out, lying-down people everywhere!). As a game, it isn't much fun or challenging, but as a story and as a work of original art, it is fascinating and nuanced and fresh. As a top tier well-hyped video game with enormous production values, it's clear that sacrifices were made to this game to make it enjoyable and accessible to everyone; to anyone who has studied art knows, art is something that is for anyone, but not everyone. Bioshock could have been something really special and extraordinary, but instead we have something that allows the basest fan boy to blow stuff up.

This isn't to say Bioshock doesn't understand its medium and the limitations thereof; on the contrary, the single most genius fact of the design of Bioshock is the use of linearity. Long a bane of video game design, Bioshock whole-heartedly embraces linearity as the basis of the shocking twist at the game's mid-section. Without explaining it completely to encourage people to play it for themselves, the linearity of the game and lack of choice is used to turn the entire convention of video game stories on its head. This same type of head-turning convention was last used to great effect in "Shadows of the Colossus" (2005), in which, without the use of speaking script, the player realizes in horrifying dismay that the colossus you are slaying aren't evil - the sad, melancholic music that plays upon killing a colossus is in stark contrast to the happy, heroic music that plays when you finally mount them.

This perspective as a gamer progressing through levels to satisfy an objective only to realize, after the fact, the real ramification of what you have done can only lie within the realm of objective-reaching video games that feature a challenge/reward system that films, TV and books can't compete. However, films - the film adaptation of Bioshock, for example - aren't limited by the conventions and devices of video games and so aren't constrained in storytelling: films don't have power-ups, crates to smash and tutorials telling you how to cycle through your weapons. Unlike a video game, films have a set, finite duration of time and will finish whether or not you can kill the end boss who has cheap-ass attacks. Movies tell stories; video games are stories unto themselves that depend upon your mad video game skillz, layman or otherwise.

It is with this sad fact that the Bioshock movie, if it ever gets made, will be much better than the original video game and become the best video game adaptation ever made. This is not so surprising since Bioshock isn't as much a video game as it is a delightful story set awkwardly as a period piece masquerading as a first-person shooter. While it’s confusing that this story wound up being told first as a video game, it shouldn't be surprising that this video game was made as a first-person shooter - it's these fps games that get bought. Getting bought means money. And money is an end in itself that ensures compromise over integrity.

While we may never know to what end Bioshock was compromised, it's clear that the result is an unbalanced game that has a better story than its gameplay. For being innovative and challenging as a work of art in the field of video games is noteworthy, but laymen should now understand why I enjoy playing Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad more than this game. Chicks in bikinis using samurai swords to slice up zombies - now that makes a fun game; the movie... (Oneechanbara: The Movie (2008)) not so much.

There's hope for you yet, Bioshock.

(If you've made it this far, I'll divulge the fact that I already did a review for Bioshock for PC - after only having played it for a few hours. If you look it up here on Mobygames, you'll see - quite gratifying to me - that I wasn't that far off the mark from the mark. Once again, thank you Mobygames for making my reviews arguably the most read/voted unhelpful!)