Bioshock is a game about touching little girls. At first they say ‘no no’ and don’t want your touch, but when you are done rapturing them, they will be happy and thank you. When you are not touching little girls in all the right places, you spend your time in Bioshock stalking and photographing them from all angles. Just be aware, there are always some brute next to them, trying to prevent you from having a good time.
For full review and disscusions:
Calicifer’s Reviews
Reached for the stars
Game is touted for its story and memorable moments. I can see how it would be impressive to young adults who did not seen much, but it really falls apart under expert analysis. Story in its entirely is silly with cliche elements. Unexplained super-soldiers. Super power who is too dumb to feed its own people. Villain who is ridiculously evil in order to fulfil his master plan which changes every chapter. Bioshock has all the writing of B tier movie. The Twist
After the big reveal, game becomes a slog. You have to go through tunnels, Apollo Square or how it is called. It is one big brown level. It is designed like a living apartment. You have to go through each floor, room by room. It is not exciting to explore living quarters. What might be even more surprise to you or developers is that it is not exciting to go through railway lines. It is really boring level and it highlights how game quality starts decreasing after first levels. It is uninspired, it is uninteresting. It is more of a same, but with nothing what made first half of a journey so good. Eventually it recovers, but game really overstays its welcome.
- Game has a big twist in a middle. However, the entire premise of this game falls flat. I even went to see a speed run and had documented it in order to prove it to you.
Atlas mentions ‘kindly’ only 4 times:
1) When he asks you to pick up a wrench in order to defend yourself;
2) When he asks to lower your weapon when you are away from a big daddy.
3) When you get security key from the surgeon.
4) When his signal gets jammed by X. He asks you to continue to do what you were doing before.
5) When you are heading to kill Ryan, he asks you to kindly kill him.
6) Atlas asks to put key into a machine in order to prevent self-destruction of Rapture.
As you can see, the grand coup de grace of developers falls flat on its face. Moments like these only work when they are genuinely well woven into the story. If you do not foreshadow that you do not have agency, you cannot then have as a grand reveal that you are mind controlled and have no agency at all. it is equivalent of poking fun at a player for not having any choice in a matter. It is a video game! The only choice I have is to stop playing and then it will only mean that the game is bad.
Bioshock fails to properly foreshadow its twist. Key word is uttered either in irrelevant moments or when it is completely pointless. Your character wants to survive and he will put key back regardless of being ordered or not, because…he wants not to die. Your character wants to kill Ryan, because he for some reason constantly tries to kill him. Throughout entire story, you as a player choose to do what you do. You choose to help Atlas family. You choose to kill or save little sisters. You choose to help Atlas with his quest. Mostly because of how ridiculously silly the story is with it since Ryan pretty much just wants to destroy Rapture and your quests usually are about “lets not destroy the whole city. I’m in it and I might die if everyone dies in it”.
Even grand reveal of “would you kindly” with Ryan is nonsensical. He issues command. You start doing that command and then Ryan asks you to kindly do that thing. However, you were doing that without a key word! Then he asks you to kill him to prove a point. Really? Why he would do such a thing? The entire story is poorly done and simply does not work for someone as clever or as attentive as me.
The Setting - The entire premise is equally as ridiculous. We have a standard sci-fi nonsense of unified force with no opposition and infinite resources and technologies collapsing or at a brink of collapse. Rapture had failed, because people were starving and dying out of starvation on the streets. They had resulted in importing goods from the surface which was ought to be incredibly expensive. This speaks volumes at how expensive local food was. Throughout the story you can see how miserable one family rented apartment was for even “wealthy and needed” residents of Rapture.
What Ryan did to address all of this? Nothing. No charity. No labour laws. No investments into steady supply of food or shelter. He built a nation and tried to run it as a business man. When he encountered opposition to his rule, he betrayed everything he believed in. He nationalised all of the relevant industries. Made a massive government complex which was solely dedicated to militarism. Then he launched war against its own inhabitants. Let that sink in. Situation at Rapture even before all the plasmid situation was so abysmally bad that people were living in the maintenance rooms. They were constantly starving. Situation got so bad that Atlas or Fontaine could bribe a man to do whatever he wished just for a good meal. Ryan had run this place into the ground and it is a small miracle that it did not disintegrated on its own.
Our Villain - Atlas or Fontaine is poorly written. Their motivation seems to vary between their monologue. First, Atlas claims that he has a family. Whatever he had a family is irrelevant. What is important is why he wanted to get to the sub. This would imply escape, but later he is shown that he wanted to stay in Rapture in order to gather all the Adam for himself. So, why you spent first third of a game going to the submarine?
As a whole, villain is one dimensional. It has nothing interesting to say. Constantly monologues of how evil he is. He then tries to kill you through rest half of a game. At the end he speaks you as of family. He even has an audacity to say how you betray him. In the end, his end goal was to get all the Adam in Rapture and go back to surface world while looking like a giant, bronze statue… Conversations and a plot in this game is nonsensical. Don’t try to look too much into it, because it will fall apart.
An Underdeveloped Slog
To me Bioshock seems like it was underdeveloped. It has more than enough content and effort put into it, but none in the right place. Game is quite a long one, but it fails to establish a proper story. Most of it is down to it being spread paper thin across various characters, some do not even need to be here. When game has time, it spends it on needless details and conversations. It is very rare when audio logs are done properly. Mostly they just rant about unimportant, uninteresting things or how great one or other character is.After the big reveal, game becomes a slog. You have to go through tunnels, Apollo Square or how it is called. It is one big brown level. It is designed like a living apartment. You have to go through each floor, room by room. It is not exciting to explore living quarters. What might be even more surprise to you or developers is that it is not exciting to go through railway lines. It is really boring level and it highlights how game quality starts decreasing after first levels. It is uninspired, it is uninteresting. It is more of a same, but with nothing what made first half of a journey so good. Eventually it recovers, but game really overstays its welcome.
Conclusion
Bioshock is type of game which I love. It has a grand campaign crafted with love which is an experience in its own right. When I was in high school, I was afraid to play it and only made to medical pavilion. Now I completed an entire game and I seem had completely outgrown my own childishness. Game was exciting as it was a world which I could explore. Love and attention which developers had put into the game is plain to see. The story and the angle they were taking would had been interesting to me as a teenager. However, now in my thirties, story fell flat and is quite primitive. It is surprising how I liked this game despite its main narrative aspect falling flat to me. It might be due to general quality of this game which speaks highly of how good this game might be fore everyone else.