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Playing Bioshock is a bit like playing a movie. You are a passenger on board an aircraft in 1960 that crashes into the sea.
You survive and reach an island where an elevator drops you into a deep-sea city called Rapture, made up of tube walkways connecting the rooms where the action takes place.
It's a hugely impressive scene, especially when you see the occasional whale swim past.
Using a series of public information videos and tape recordings of early inhabitants, you discover Rapture was built in 1946 by a man named Andrew Ryan who aspired to a libertarian society, free of government, where the world's greatest minds could carry out their experiments in peace.
However, putting a bunch of elitist boffins together soon went wrong, and people started mutating their bodies, resulting in a race known as Splicers. These Splicers can be found in every room, bickering between themselves in a sort of love-kill relationship.
Their ramblings and curses can be heard everywhere, and the sound effects are so good that you'll be looking over your shoulder in fear since, for no good reason, they want you dead.
You then mutate your body by injecting Plasmids, providing you with special powers such as the ability to shoot fire and lightning, or even telekinesis. You can also use a wide range of traditional weapons - the trick to survival is to use a combination of both.
While the Splicers are eerie enough, large robotic beings in diving suits, called Big Daddies, trundle around protecting even scarier beings: Little Sisters. These girls are a precious commodity since they are the only source of Adam, a special fluid that everyone desperately needs to build up their mutated abilities.
Taking on a Big Daddy isn't a pleasant experience, but once he's gone you are confronted with the ethical dilemma of killing the little sister for more Adam, or letting her live. It's a masterstroke by the developers that leaves you chilled.
Bioshock is a spiritual successor to System Shock 2 and the Plasmid/gun combination is very similar. As in System Shock 2, you never really die either. If your health drops to zero, you emerge from a regeneration chamber, which keeps the pace of the game fast and makes quick-saving less necessary. However, it's still not a good idea to die since you'll undoubtedly miss your discarded ammunition.
There's also an adventure element to the game, the focus of which is hacking. In Bioshock, hacking is essentially plumbing - you have to complete a circuit of tubes for water to run through.
Textures and lighting are detailed and vivid, while fire and water effects lift the bar for all other games. You'll need a fast PC to get the most out of it - a DirectX 10 option offers better textures and particle effects, but like other DirectX 10 titles, performance on some cards goes down the drain. It made our 3.3GHz quad-core PC with a Radeon HD 2900XT graphics card stutter, although with Nvidia-based cards DirectX 10 it isn't such a problem, perhaps reflecting that this is an Nvidia-sponsored game. Since this is a direct port from the Xbox 360, anti-aliasing can't be enabled either.
Bioshock's graphics, audio and control system are superb throughout. You're compelled to move forward through the game, if only to discover what is at the heart of Rapture, which makes it one of the best storylines we've seen, albeit one only for adults with a strong stomach.
See also:
A gruelling workout without a performance-enhancing drug in sight 06 Sep 2007
All Action & Adventure Games Tags: Game
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