The eerily beautiful dystopian video game, “Bioshock” (2007), known for its art deco style in a 1960’s setting. This game was originally created by 2K boston, and came from the creators of System Shock, a not well-known game series from the 90’s. “Bioshock” showcases a magnificently large city that it is famously known for: Rapture, the city at the bottom of the ocean.
Before you even get to start the game up, a few features immediately draw you in: The cover of the game features what looks like some creature wearing an older looking diving suit and wielding a massive drill. The alternative cover features the iconic lighthouse with the city below it, under the water. What drew me in, though, was the fascinating title.
“Bioshock”, when broken into two parts, says, ‘Biological shock.’ This is the main focus of the game, aside from the underwater city. Players come to find out that the city, that the opening area spends hyping up, is nothing but dystopia and ruins, and hints to what happened, such as a protesting sign you immediately see that says ‘RAPTURE IS DEAD’.
Following the entrance to the city players meet the first splicer, who is mutated and wears these hooks on their hands. As players explore the city, they find more and more mutated faces, and pretty quickly, they meet their first little sister; a mutated little girl used to harvest the drugs, Adam, that the city lives off of.
Aside from the mutated humans and splicers, the game has absolutely magnificent scenery. The entire city is in ruins, but despite that, players can look at these ruins and imagine what it would be like in its prime.
Rapture is filled with many windows and tube-like walkways that the character can walk through to travel from building to building. When looking through the glass, players get to see the ocean around them. They get to not only see other buildings in the underwater metropolis, but also sea life and the other creatures that inhabit the city.
The environment around you only adds to the overall game play. This game does give you objectives, but for pretty much every level, you’re able to take everything at your own pace and explore as you wish. Some levels even give you the choice of what order you would like to do each task or goal.
There is a deep lore to this game, which of course some gets revealed to you through the scripted plot line, but for those who wish to learn more you can do so through the audio diaries found throughout the game. Other games use this feature, but “Bioshock” was the first game to popularize storytelling through the use of audio clips recorded by other characters.
The first antagonist is Andrew Ryan. This man is the one who created rapture- a man with a lot of money and who did not wanna give his hard earned wages to the government. Therefore, he created his own city, away from all other continents, where he could create his own meritocracy. It is revealed in the very first level his beliefs, and a line he is well- known for: “Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?”
Andrew Ryan is based on a famous author and philosopher from the mid 1900’s, Ayn Rand. These two share the same philosophy, objectivism. She wrote two famous books on which the series itself was based: “The Fountainhead” (1943) and “Atlas Shrugged” (1957). Many ideals and characters in the game are based off of these books, such as a mad doctor or a statue based off of the cover of one of the books.
There are many things from Andrew Ryan based on her life, both being Belarusian Jews in the Soviet Union who fled to America, and both preached the same ideas. Rapture, in a sense, was created to be Ayn Rand’s utopia.
This game overall is very good, but some of the levels can feel a little easy compared to other first person shooters, or even other games in the “Bioshock” series. Another issue is locking actions based on dialogue, such as not being able to grab a flower needed to craft something until you speak with a specific person.
One of its biggest downfalls, though, is this pipe mini-game that is either tedious and annoying to play or downright impossible to play whenever you are trying to hack a turret or security camera. The shoot and plasma mechanics work pretty well, but can be a pain to swap back and forth through.
This game is a foundation for many modern popular games, such as Bendy and the Ink Machine (2017), which uses the same ambience and idea of using audio logs to tell a story. This game is also very similar to many popular games. For example, “Fallout”, which shares the same dystopian ambience and even similarities in people going mad from nuclear fallout.
“Bioshock” is a game from 2007, but has also been remastered in 2016, with better graphics. This game is available on most modern platforms such as Nintendo Switch, PS4, Xbox, Windows, and MacOS.
Despite any negative issues, the game overall is a 10/10 in my book and all of these get fixed in the second game. “Bioshock” has amazing storytelling and scenery, and a very famous twist that catches you off guard, and makes you question your own idea of morality, and I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys first person shooters or captivating game play.
“Bioshock”, 2007, 10/10
