Bioshock actually shocks me

I'm going to be honest here; when the game first came out, I ignored it. To me it was just another FPS in an already crowded, bloated and generally boring market of games aimed at kids with twitch fingers and appetites for violence and mindless action. I've gone on record stating many times that just about the only FPS I play anymore is the Half Life series, to due it's excellent pacing, puzzles, story, characters and overall polish. When Halo 3 came out - one of the biggest FPS releases since, well, Halo 2 - I only played the last 2 levels because I happened to be at a friends' house when they were finishing it on 4 player. I didn't even play through the whole thing until after a friend in Austin purchased the game and wanted someone to play co-op split screen with. That's right, I don't even own it. And while I do own Team Fortress 2 - a game I actually rather enjoy - I'm just not good enough or interested enough to keep playing an FPS for more than a few days.

Of course, then Bioshock exploded. It was given all sorts of awards and lauded as an incredible, "not to be missed" game. I chalked this up to those who like to talk up games on their favorite system which are not on other, rival systems (even though it is now). I'd heard more hype about Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4 and was not rivited by either, what could this no-name offshoot offer me that these two behemoths did not?

When I received Bioshock for my birthday, then, I was somewhat surprised. I hadn't really mentioned it to anyone, but I suppose when you have a teenager in the family making suggestions on what he'd like to buy someone who plays games, he knows which ones are the big names. After a few months of sitting on the shelves, I took it down to give it a whirl (as a diversion for all the JRPGs I had just finished playing), and I must once again admit that I was terribly, horribly wrong. I seem to be doing this alot lately.

My 'problem' with most FPS's is that they are more well suited for quick-fingered, aggressive thrill seekers than strategic, tactical min/maxers like myself. There's no real numbers, reason, logic or strategy, just run here, shoot stuff, run there, shoot more stuff. Most games that I play (and most enjoy) are turn based and involves lots of numbers, elements, variables, options and calculating. I know that in many FPS's enemies have 'weaknesses' or whatever and that you can master weapons and enemies just as well with brain as with brawn, but overall the genre is composed more of brute force combined with trial and error than not. And while this may, in many respects, be true of the basic core of Bioshock, it is hidden and masked so well that it really did not bother or frustrate me as much as normal.

That may be, of course, because Bioshock is not 'just' and FPS. It is an experience, a world and narrative so rich and engrossing that you perhaps forget yourself in it. It starts off with an intriguing enough beginning, which is a breath of fresh air compared to most "lone man saving the world from destruction" story so typical to the genre (even my beloved Half Life series!). Your plane crash lands and you find yourself in an underwater city, surrounded by sociopaths and lunatics. At this point you are not trying to save anything but yourself, and not only is it a nice change of pace from the norm but also sets itself up well to feed into the rest of the story.

I'll do you a favor and not talk about the story in great detail from here on out, because to do so would ruin pretty much everything that makes the game what it is. Suffice it to say that while you may find the plot predictable you still will not expect it, while you may see characters as shallow you will discover them to be quite deep, and while the place may seem droll and lifeless you'll find plenty of times that you wish it were. The environments suffer from the usual 'too realistic ' nonsense found in most games these days, dark with slightly varying shades of brown and grey, but there is some variety and it all fits surprisingly well together with the theme and atmosphere of the game. Most of the time you will be too busy lost in the incredibly rich atmosphere or frantically running away from that pissed off big daddy to notice (or care) about nit picky things like that anyway. It looks nice and does the game service, in this case that's more than enough.

The number of different 'plasmids' (body altering chemicals) you can make and weapons you can weild keeps most of the combat interesting and gives you strategy and choice when moving forward in the world. Do you take the upgraded shotgun to help with the big daddies or upgrade your pistol to help against splicers? Do you take the hacker plasmids that help against turrets and cameras or do you need the extra health to survive all the enemies? It helps to customize the game in ways not normally seen in shooters and gives an otherwise linear experience a bit more freedom and choice. It also means that you can make the game more stealthy (camo and quiet footsteps combined with a few good wrench-based beatings) or more twitchy (big guns with huge clips and giant explosives) so it caters to your playstyle if you play your cards right. It won't be as tactiacl as Metal Gear nor as run and gun as Halo but it finds a happy medium and gives you the power to play it as you like.

Now a days, most shooters are very short single player experiences and rely on online play to keep you interested (and to keep you from turning around and selling it back to Gamestop). To compare, Halo 3 took me a paltry 6 hours to beat, Call of Duty 4 clocked in at a slightly more impressive 8. Multiplayer? Barely touched either, didn't care. Bioshock has NO multiplayer and doesn't even have co-op (on the 360 anyway) but the 'main' game took me nearly 20 hours to play through. This is not some halfway done attempt at single player to put a bullet point on the box of a mostly multiplayer focused game. It will take you a few days to beat (or, if you go at my pace, about a month) and won't leave you feeling like you were shortchanged. Aside from a *few* uses of the feindishly evil backtracking parts (i.e. make the game longer on the cheap), it's new and interesting at every turn and, assuming you can keep going without being creeped out by the characters and story, keeps you coming back for me. For those who have mastered the game I'm sure you can plow through it faster, but harder difficulty settings and special 'survivor' modes on the PS3 add even more to its length and replayability.

It's not all roses, of course, but it's hard to think of many things that are actually "bad" about this game. Hacking is cool at first but when every room has 2 cameras, 3 turrets, 4 vendors and a safe it gets old REALLY fast. On some of the easier difficulty levels you will probably end up just buying autohacks, buying them out, destroying them, or just plain ignoring them. It's not that the minigame itself is poorly designed (it's actually quite fun when it becomes semi-challenging), it's the fact that you are spending 30 minutes clearing a room of hackable things only to have to do it all over again 5 minutes later that it starts to get annoying. If you do enough research you can auto hack some of them by that point it's too little too late and a drop in the bucket compared to what you've done so far.... and what you have left that still has to be done. I can only imagine how much more annoying it must be on the harder difficulties, where you don't have the cash to burn or the ammo to waste on these foolish things.

Speaking of bots and cameras, some of them are in the weirdest or most annoying places - often to disasterous (or frustrating) consequences. I found myself the unwanted recepient of a bot swarm a few too many times playing through the game, usually because I stepped around some corner and directly into the line of sight of a camera that I had no idea was there, only to be completely out of luck. Add the fact that you must then run to some 'security bot deactivate' switch - which could be so far away from your current position that you might as well just fight them off and wait it out - equals to a minute of annoying, flying mechanical demons that like to come from nowhere and aren't very happy with you. Usually it's not a problem - cameras give off light that's pretty easy to see as it moves along the otherwise dark and uninteresting metallic grey interior - but when you think you are being careful or cautious and STILL get caught it's no longer a gameplay mechanic, it's now a frustration mechanic. Considering the list of good things about this title, though, these are really just some unfair nit-pickings and are no reason whatsoever to not give this game a fair shake.

Overall, the one thing you can say about the game is that it delivers. It took the single player aspect of the first person shooter, gave it a unique twist, threw in and incredible story and a very well designed locale and just lets you go to town. It even gives you a fair amount of freedom for a game that is otherwise a purely linear experience. It may not play or even handle any different than your normal FPS, but honestly that is not the genre's problem. It doesn't need a new gimmick, it needs people with decent ideas and the ability to deliver them. Bioshock may only be good because it is a refreshing change in an otherwise stale and overharvested genre, but sometimes that's all it takes to make a masterpiece. And believe me when I say.... they have.

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With Christmas comes new games, and that means more things to review. I have 10+ games practically unopened and several more in various states of completion, so I expect this list to grow MUCH faster than I can possibly keep up with it. Well, than I choose to keep up with it, anyway. At least the first half of this year will cool off a bit, I'm not even really looking foward to anything (that I know of) until Resident Evil 5 hits in march, which gives me a good bit of time to work through my back catalogue.

Currently playing:
WoW:WotLK (PC)
Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice (DS)
Professor Layton and the Curious Villiage (DS)
Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn (Wii)
Lost Odyssey (360)
Banjo Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts (360)
Fable II (360)

What should be next (no particular order):
The World Ends With You (DS)
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (DS)
Spore (PC)
Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced 2 (DS)
Rock Band 2 (360)
Banjo Kazooie (XBLA)