What's more, Survivor mode cranks up the intelligence of the splicers to a completely new level. Instead of charging you mindlessly, we found that splicers made sure that they gave themselves every chance to survive incoming attacks. Splicers with guns dodged and leaned around cover, aiming and firing only when they were sure they had a shot. Those with melee weapons ran around, leaping back and forth at us when it seemed as though they could cause the most damage. While we managed to eventually smash, electrocute and shoot our way through the early Welcome to Rapture section into the Medical Pavilion, we did find ourselves constantly repeating the three words from the difficulty level found on the main menu screen: Every Bullet Counts. This was particularly true because well-aimed headshots would cause the most damage, while glancing blows seemed to infuriate the insane splicers even more.

Although we did find ourselves using the traditional Electro Bolt/wrench combo to stun and cause damage, this turned more into a last resort move than a customary attack. In fact, we found that we started to use the more expensive plasmids as an environmental tactic to eliminate multiple splicers. Losing the energy only felt justified if we could electrocute multiple splicers standing in a pool of water. However, as we started to move through the game and acquired newer plasmids like Telekinesis, we discovered that our resourcefulness related to environmental weapons increased. Part of this was due to the fact that this plasmid had a much lower Eve cost, allowing us to still have the access to abilities but not feel as though we were constrained by the drain on our resources. Lebreton also remarked on this, mentioning that other plasmids that we'd acquire farther down the line, such as Security Bullseye and Target Dummy, become extremely important for players interested in saving their limited store of items. "If you can avoid starting a fight and start getting splicers to fight someone else from the shadows while you let that fight play out, letting that happen while you're still safe -- that's a huge win in terms of resources," he mentioned.