PS3 Review: Bioshock

Here's to a review three years late. *clinks sarsaparilla bottle*

Bioshock is awesome, but it needs to grow on you. I played a demo of it when it first came out and hated it. I then became a fan of Ayn Rand, read a little about Bioshock's storyline, and then finally ventured back into the waters of Rapture to see what everybody was talking about, and I wasn't disappointed.

That initial hatred no doubt stems from the fact that combat makes you feel a little ineffectual in Bioshock. You hit opponents with your arsenal of conventional weapons and your gene-enhanced abilities, and they don't seem to take very much damage. They certainly don't react to any of your hits until they're dead, and besides a tiny blood-spatter animation, the only way to tell you're even hitting them is to pay close attention to their life-meter. In short, I would unload on even the most basic enemies and they'd just keep coming at me. I guess I was used to the character-animations in HALO, where, as you unload a clip into the face of an Elite, they would stagger back more and more until they finally crapped out. Not so in Bioshock. They're all on PCP.

I said you should stick with it, though, and that's because, once you finally notice that enemies are being killed by your fancy footwork and on-the-fly weapon-switching, taking them down will feel that much more rewarding. And don't even get me started on the Big Daddy fights.

I should mention the story. It's great. Even the box-art suggests some deep world you're about to insert yourself into. What is that honking-huge diving-bell dude, and why is he protecting that little girl? The year is 1960, and you've crash-landed in the middle of the Atlantic. Luckily (perhaps a little too luckily), there's a bathysphere nearby and it takes you down to the underwater city of Rapture, which used to be populated by the world's brightest minds, but now houses a bunch of souped-up genetically-engineered junkies who hunt the chemical ADAM like it was their next fix. Those little girls? They can sniff the stuff out like bloodhounds. Their Big Daddy protectors? Really like their ADAM fixes.

So are you intrigued yet? There's more to the story and more than a few big emotional surprises in store, so when you combine that with rewarding FPS mechanics, fantastic graphics, and a surprisingly lengthy campagin (took me about 20 hours to beat), you've got one of the best FPSs for the system.

Award-Giving Time: Bioshock gets the Fine Red Wine award. I didn't like it at first, but that's because I was young and uncultured, and it only gets better as time goes by.

--Serge

PS: Myah! 8.5 out of 10.