BioShock Reviews

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Written by BuckGB on October 5th, 2007

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Finally killing the Big Daddy is where Bioshock really begins to play with the players' minds. In order to obtain Adam, the Little Sisters must be dealt with. There are two options: harvest the maximum possible amount of Adam and leave the Little Sisters for dead, or rescue the Little Sisters and obtain half the amount that harvesting would provide but with the promise of future benefits of sorts. It's a difficult decision, a battle between necessity and conscience, boldly underlining Bioshock's intentions of creating an emotionally involving game world that is every bit as intelligent and thought provoking as it is an example of finely executed gameplay and graphical prowess. It's a tale of humanity and the Little Sisters are a key example of how it provides players with moral decisions that can often be terribly guilt inducing.

Difficulty:
Bioshock has three difficulty settings: Easy, Medium and Hard. These different settings seem to be pretty dead on. I sampled each of the settings before using Medium to actually progress through the story, and it seemed like the enemies in the Easy Mode went down noticeably quicker than the Medium and Hard ones.

For the most part, Bioshock does a good job of pacing the player and introducing new mechanics throughout the game. Because of this, the game's difficulty (no matter the setting) successfully and gradually ramps up through the story. In short, no matter which difficulty setting the game was on, I found my heart pounding with anticipation and excitement every time I turned off the game.

The gameplay is something that is only limited by the creativity of the player. There is the standard fare of guns, melee weapons, chemical weapons, and the like. Then, using ADAM, which you can obtain from Little Sisters (a little about that later), players can then upgrade their weapons. Want a larger clip for the pistol, or less kickback for the machine gun? You got it! The upgrades add nice little graphical touches to the weapons, and they feel a bit more powerful. Combat doesn't end there, though. There are also plasmids, which are genetic modifications. There are many kinds of plasmids, such as being able to zap enemies, freeze them, or engulf them in flames. There are also ways to mess with enemies, such as the enrage plasmid and hypnotize Big Daddy plasmid. But, that's not all! There is also the ability to hack machines, such as cameras and turrets. This really helps out, because being able to have machine gun turrets, RPG turrets, and security cameras on your side helps out a bunch. The hacking sequence is even actually pretty interesting at times.

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