Bioshock is one of the most frustrating games I’ve ever played. Its peaks and valleys are more expansive than most games will ever hope to achieve, which is a good and band thing. It is truly a rollercoaster, with all the ups and downs that you’d expect of that, riding along in a cart that has been very poorly maintained. It’s unfailingly ambitious, clearly made with a lot of passion and creativity, and when it’s hot and smart, it rolls along better than almost any other game yet made. But when it’s bad, and as it goes along and the wheels start popping off the ride and sparks start shooting off of the railway, it gets VERY, very bad.
But first impressions are everything, and Bioshock nails first impressions so well that it has really MADE the brand. I was talking to my friend @straylight about this; how the game contorts the story into a bit of a contrived place JUST to get that opening plane crash, lighthouse, and Rapture reveal. I don’t want to get into too many spoiler details, but the ultimate twist that reveals why you even were on that plane is so convoluted you can tell the developers were willing to do anything to get that plane crash.
They were 100% right to do that. It is still breathtaking. Back in 2007 everything involving Bioshock was like a revelation to a Dylan that loved Halo and not much else. I remember the original trailer, seeing it on G4 and immediately becoming completely enamored with what I was seeing: the strange vents, the hulking brick shithouse with a massive drill, the grotesqueness of the then unknown plasmids. In a year loaded with incredible games, that trailer was a definite “What the fuck was that?” moment that put the game on my immediate radar. Finally getting it and experiencing the moment that the screen pulls back and shows the city in full was something else entirely: the game delivered. It wrote this hefty check with that teaser trailer and it cashed it out and then some.
In the annals of truly divine video game openings, of which I’d include Prey 2006, Half Life 2, and FF7, Bioshock really does just slot itself neatly in with a lot of those big boys by just putting its cards on the table so confidently and clearly. It goes without saying that they probably spent a sickening amount of time making sure everything in that scene was perfect, and they GOT It. They straight up got it perfect. The first few hours of Bioshock are honestly, and truly, elite.
Unfortunately, Bioshock is a 10 hour game.
This is where the big divide in my head comes in. The first few hours of Bioshock, everything up until the end of Hephaestus, is brilliant. I sometimes bristle up at the notion that Bioshock is superior to System Shock 2, because I am head over heels in love with SS2, but those first 5 hours in Bioshock even have me doubting myself. The levels are massive, winding, brilliantly designed looks into life in Rapture. The music swells and crescendos with such flourish that you almost can’t believe a game like this exists. It really IS that good.
But then, it happens.
I’m sure you know the twist of Bioshock by now, right? You have been around. If not then punch a hole through your monitor RIGHT NOW so you don’t get any spoilers.
As soon as Andrew Ryan exits the story, the game inconceivably keeps going for another few hours even though by all rights, it SHOULD be over now. As soon as Andrew Ryan exits the story, the game completely falls apart. It doesn’t fall apart in the sense that it gets lazy or unmotivated, because the luxury apartments and Big Daddy labs are STILL very inspired locales with the same masterfully done environmental storytelling that has defined the game so far. But the game has peaked, it has played its best hand, there is NOTHING left for it to do once the reveal is over.
What it does choose to do is truly baffling. Replace the well-spoken and fierce ideologue with an asshole with a brooklyn accent who calls you EVERY TWO FUCKING MINUTES to call you a prick or a wiseguy. Around this time, the splicers all get a huge health boost so you feel like you are fighting an army of dump trucks now, constantly under fire while getting phone calls from the most annoying guy in the world. By this point, I was wishing the game had wrapped this shit up. Hephaestus had all the makings of a final level, and the fact that the game just keeps happening after that point makes me wonder what happened during development.
I did end up watching the developer’s commentary and it did illuminate some things for me: Irrational knew the multiple endings were a joke. It was clear to me that the good ending is clearly the one they cared about and it’s good to have confirmation on that. The other is that they knew the final boss was terrible. Which it is.
I do understand the pivot to Fontaine for the last half of the game though. He represents not only the perfect foil to Ryan, but he represents perfectly the main flaw in Rapture: that Fontaine is the poster child of what Ryan wanted from Rapture. Fontaine is a self-made man, entirely individualistic and ruthless in that pursuit. Narratively, I get it. Functionally, after a great reveal and huge climactic scene? It’s asking a whole lot of the player to keep their investment level up that high.
This is where I begin to remember why I ultimately prefer System Shock 2. Yes, the Body of the Many is a very mechanically painful level due to it being VERY punishing if your build isn’t correct, but it feels like a necessary climax. The game doesn’t peak with the Polito reveal in Ops: it gets kicked into high gear. That is when SS2 REALLY gets going. The reveal of Bioshock is when it functionally ends and ceases to be interesting. I had actually forgotten everything after Hephaestus, and I have beaten Bioshock multiple times. Point Prometheus might as well be a brand new fucking level to me. Ask anyone what happens after Andrew Ryan and they probably will have to really strain to remember, if they even got that far! It’s such a massive and catastrophic collapse that it takes my opinion of the game down with it. Everything up until Hephaestus was a 4 ½ star experience. But I cannot in good conscience rate a game with that final boss that high.
That also doesn’t get into the political implications of Bioshock. I find Ryan’s ideology a little too alien to fully buy into, although a brilliant vocal performance does help mask some of its more confusing aspects. A society based entirely on the individual and what one person can do for themselves is a clearly terrible fucking idea for an entire city, especially an underwater one. But judging from Levine’s comments in the documentary, a lot of this was in service to the setting. Why would a city be underwater? Because a weirdo Libertarian was being a weirdo Libertarian. Understood, makes perfect sense to me. I can’t get a good handle on anything the game might be saying politically because, like its sequel, it’s too divorced from anything tangibly real to meaningfully say anything.
It is more interested in freedom of choice, and on that end, it actually does have some interesting nuggets in that regard. In an entire city focused entirely on the choices and will of its citizens, Bioshock really cares more about the choices that help other people. In the end, Jack’s choice to save the little sisters and give them the freedom to choose a life they want to live is what the game really cares about. Our choices define us, after all. Jack, after all, is a man almost bereft of any choice of free will, so using the limited means he can make a choice to help people is the ultimate Fuck You to Ryan’s ideology. You should help people when you can, even if you don’t have to, even if it doesn’t serve you in that moment. In a game I remembered being insufferable, mostly due to Bioshock Infinite rotting like a banana and taking all the fruit in the pantry with it, I was pleasantly surprised to find such an affirmation to humanity in it in the end.
Andrew Ryan chooses to die with his city, as he is his city, it is his definition. Jack, however, chooses to grant that freedom of choice onto the little girls he saved throughout the story. That is what ultimately defines him.
Before I wrap this up, I really should talk about the GAME part of the game. But there really isn’t much to say. It’s a very fun shooter. The weapons are some of my favorites in a video game, the splicers are an inspired enemy type, and the streamlining of the RPG elements was ultimately the right choice. In the doc, Levine mentions that they realized that Rapture was the most important character, and having the player buried in their character sheet would have taken away from that aspect, and he is completely right. The more you spend marveling at the scenery and less you spend in menus is what the meat of the game really is about.
These are great menus though. Remember when games actually had good menu design? It’s one of the vestiges that tie Bioshock to a long-gone era of artistic expression of bland utilitarianism. I even respect the hissing steam and grinding gears present in the pipe dream minigame. While that minigame is such a bad idea that BioShock 2’s improved hacking system is an actual knock against Irrational for not coming up with a better one sooner, it is a really good looking one! For real though, hacking is absolutely hideous in this game. The first half of the game really is staring at Pipe Dream for a lot of it, and once you can afford automatic hack tools there is no reason to ever do it again because it honest-to-god starts generating UNWINNABLE ones. Nice job, dickheads.
The Big Daddy fights are also REALLY lame in this game though. In the first few hours, they mostly consist of getting stunlocked while unloading AP ammo, and by the time you get the crossbow, the greatest gun in gaming history, they cease to even be anything, as the crossbow just shreds them to bits. The downgrading of Big Daddy’s from “problems,” to “minor nuisance” also coincides with the game’s debilitating slide to the finish line as well!
Is Bioshock worth playing? Christ, yes! When it’s excellent it’s one of the best games I’ve ever played. Fortunately, it spends the first half of its runtime being excellent! Even when it reaches its slump, it will still drop reminders of why the game is so beloved, and why it’s still regarded as a high point in gaming as a medium. Avoid the Remastered version though, because it’s kind of a piece of shit! On PS4 the hacking minigame honest-to-god lagged, and if you know Bioshock, you know you’re going to be doing that minigame 300 thousand times in one playthrough. Thankfully, this is one of the few remasters that, on Steam at least, gives you the original release alongside the remaster. It’s almost a tacit admission that the remaster stinks!
I’m happy to say that even with Infinite’s overwhelming stink clinging to the franchises clothes like shit, Bioshock 1 still comes out relatively clean. It’s an artistically ambitious game, fun to play, and really, provides a definitive answer on if you should inject random syringes you find lying around into your body. Which you definitely should.
But first impressions are everything, and Bioshock nails first impressions so well that it has really MADE the brand. I was talking to my friend @straylight about this; how the game contorts the story into a bit of a contrived place JUST to get that opening plane crash, lighthouse, and Rapture reveal. I don’t want to get into too many spoiler details, but the ultimate twist that reveals why you even were on that plane is so convoluted you can tell the developers were willing to do anything to get that plane crash.
They were 100% right to do that. It is still breathtaking. Back in 2007 everything involving Bioshock was like a revelation to a Dylan that loved Halo and not much else. I remember the original trailer, seeing it on G4 and immediately becoming completely enamored with what I was seeing: the strange vents, the hulking brick shithouse with a massive drill, the grotesqueness of the then unknown plasmids. In a year loaded with incredible games, that trailer was a definite “What the fuck was that?” moment that put the game on my immediate radar. Finally getting it and experiencing the moment that the screen pulls back and shows the city in full was something else entirely: the game delivered. It wrote this hefty check with that teaser trailer and it cashed it out and then some.
In the annals of truly divine video game openings, of which I’d include Prey 2006, Half Life 2, and FF7, Bioshock really does just slot itself neatly in with a lot of those big boys by just putting its cards on the table so confidently and clearly. It goes without saying that they probably spent a sickening amount of time making sure everything in that scene was perfect, and they GOT It. They straight up got it perfect. The first few hours of Bioshock are honestly, and truly, elite.
Unfortunately, Bioshock is a 10 hour game.
This is where the big divide in my head comes in. The first few hours of Bioshock, everything up until the end of Hephaestus, is brilliant. I sometimes bristle up at the notion that Bioshock is superior to System Shock 2, because I am head over heels in love with SS2, but those first 5 hours in Bioshock even have me doubting myself. The levels are massive, winding, brilliantly designed looks into life in Rapture. The music swells and crescendos with such flourish that you almost can’t believe a game like this exists. It really IS that good.
But then, it happens.
I’m sure you know the twist of Bioshock by now, right? You have been around. If not then punch a hole through your monitor RIGHT NOW so you don’t get any spoilers.
As soon as Andrew Ryan exits the story, the game inconceivably keeps going for another few hours even though by all rights, it SHOULD be over now. As soon as Andrew Ryan exits the story, the game completely falls apart. It doesn’t fall apart in the sense that it gets lazy or unmotivated, because the luxury apartments and Big Daddy labs are STILL very inspired locales with the same masterfully done environmental storytelling that has defined the game so far. But the game has peaked, it has played its best hand, there is NOTHING left for it to do once the reveal is over.
What it does choose to do is truly baffling. Replace the well-spoken and fierce ideologue with an asshole with a brooklyn accent who calls you EVERY TWO FUCKING MINUTES to call you a prick or a wiseguy. Around this time, the splicers all get a huge health boost so you feel like you are fighting an army of dump trucks now, constantly under fire while getting phone calls from the most annoying guy in the world. By this point, I was wishing the game had wrapped this shit up. Hephaestus had all the makings of a final level, and the fact that the game just keeps happening after that point makes me wonder what happened during development.
I did end up watching the developer’s commentary and it did illuminate some things for me: Irrational knew the multiple endings were a joke. It was clear to me that the good ending is clearly the one they cared about and it’s good to have confirmation on that. The other is that they knew the final boss was terrible. Which it is.
I do understand the pivot to Fontaine for the last half of the game though. He represents not only the perfect foil to Ryan, but he represents perfectly the main flaw in Rapture: that Fontaine is the poster child of what Ryan wanted from Rapture. Fontaine is a self-made man, entirely individualistic and ruthless in that pursuit. Narratively, I get it. Functionally, after a great reveal and huge climactic scene? It’s asking a whole lot of the player to keep their investment level up that high.
This is where I begin to remember why I ultimately prefer System Shock 2. Yes, the Body of the Many is a very mechanically painful level due to it being VERY punishing if your build isn’t correct, but it feels like a necessary climax. The game doesn’t peak with the Polito reveal in Ops: it gets kicked into high gear. That is when SS2 REALLY gets going. The reveal of Bioshock is when it functionally ends and ceases to be interesting. I had actually forgotten everything after Hephaestus, and I have beaten Bioshock multiple times. Point Prometheus might as well be a brand new fucking level to me. Ask anyone what happens after Andrew Ryan and they probably will have to really strain to remember, if they even got that far! It’s such a massive and catastrophic collapse that it takes my opinion of the game down with it. Everything up until Hephaestus was a 4 ½ star experience. But I cannot in good conscience rate a game with that final boss that high.
That also doesn’t get into the political implications of Bioshock. I find Ryan’s ideology a little too alien to fully buy into, although a brilliant vocal performance does help mask some of its more confusing aspects. A society based entirely on the individual and what one person can do for themselves is a clearly terrible fucking idea for an entire city, especially an underwater one. But judging from Levine’s comments in the documentary, a lot of this was in service to the setting. Why would a city be underwater? Because a weirdo Libertarian was being a weirdo Libertarian. Understood, makes perfect sense to me. I can’t get a good handle on anything the game might be saying politically because, like its sequel, it’s too divorced from anything tangibly real to meaningfully say anything.
It is more interested in freedom of choice, and on that end, it actually does have some interesting nuggets in that regard. In an entire city focused entirely on the choices and will of its citizens, Bioshock really cares more about the choices that help other people. In the end, Jack’s choice to save the little sisters and give them the freedom to choose a life they want to live is what the game really cares about. Our choices define us, after all. Jack, after all, is a man almost bereft of any choice of free will, so using the limited means he can make a choice to help people is the ultimate Fuck You to Ryan’s ideology. You should help people when you can, even if you don’t have to, even if it doesn’t serve you in that moment. In a game I remembered being insufferable, mostly due to Bioshock Infinite rotting like a banana and taking all the fruit in the pantry with it, I was pleasantly surprised to find such an affirmation to humanity in it in the end.
Andrew Ryan chooses to die with his city, as he is his city, it is his definition. Jack, however, chooses to grant that freedom of choice onto the little girls he saved throughout the story. That is what ultimately defines him.
Before I wrap this up, I really should talk about the GAME part of the game. But there really isn’t much to say. It’s a very fun shooter. The weapons are some of my favorites in a video game, the splicers are an inspired enemy type, and the streamlining of the RPG elements was ultimately the right choice. In the doc, Levine mentions that they realized that Rapture was the most important character, and having the player buried in their character sheet would have taken away from that aspect, and he is completely right. The more you spend marveling at the scenery and less you spend in menus is what the meat of the game really is about.
These are great menus though. Remember when games actually had good menu design? It’s one of the vestiges that tie Bioshock to a long-gone era of artistic expression of bland utilitarianism. I even respect the hissing steam and grinding gears present in the pipe dream minigame. While that minigame is such a bad idea that BioShock 2’s improved hacking system is an actual knock against Irrational for not coming up with a better one sooner, it is a really good looking one! For real though, hacking is absolutely hideous in this game. The first half of the game really is staring at Pipe Dream for a lot of it, and once you can afford automatic hack tools there is no reason to ever do it again because it honest-to-god starts generating UNWINNABLE ones. Nice job, dickheads.
The Big Daddy fights are also REALLY lame in this game though. In the first few hours, they mostly consist of getting stunlocked while unloading AP ammo, and by the time you get the crossbow, the greatest gun in gaming history, they cease to even be anything, as the crossbow just shreds them to bits. The downgrading of Big Daddy’s from “problems,” to “minor nuisance” also coincides with the game’s debilitating slide to the finish line as well!
Is Bioshock worth playing? Christ, yes! When it’s excellent it’s one of the best games I’ve ever played. Fortunately, it spends the first half of its runtime being excellent! Even when it reaches its slump, it will still drop reminders of why the game is so beloved, and why it’s still regarded as a high point in gaming as a medium. Avoid the Remastered version though, because it’s kind of a piece of shit! On PS4 the hacking minigame honest-to-god lagged, and if you know Bioshock, you know you’re going to be doing that minigame 300 thousand times in one playthrough. Thankfully, this is one of the few remasters that, on Steam at least, gives you the original release alongside the remaster. It’s almost a tacit admission that the remaster stinks!
I’m happy to say that even with Infinite’s overwhelming stink clinging to the franchises clothes like shit, Bioshock 1 still comes out relatively clean. It’s an artistically ambitious game, fun to play, and really, provides a definitive answer on if you should inject random syringes you find lying around into your body. Which you definitely should.
3 Comments
@curse: i did a replay of bioshock with my partner and i have grown to like olympus heights and apollo square more. the environmental storytelling and visual worldbuilding are still top fucking notch even when the gameplay starts to regress. i'm starting to feel like i rated the game TOO low tbh because when it's good it's stunning.
I will just say that I think BioShock 1 would be even better if it strayed much farther from System Shock 2 than it did in the final product and doubled down on being an actual survival horror game that eliminated the RPG elements almost completely, atleast from a gameplay perspective, while also focusing more on the horror tone somewhat inspired by Vincent Price's movies like with Medical Pavillion and Fort Frolic, though still retaining everything else the game already has in terms of story and such things still.
Oh and getting rid of the Proving Grounds and Fontaine's Boss right as well.
But of course that is just my opinion.
Oh and getting rid of the Proving Grounds and Fontaine's Boss right as well.
But of course that is just my opinion.
curse
5 months ago
this game rules until it doesn't, and it's a testament to how good the art direction, moment-to-moment dialogue writing, world building, and plotting are that it doesn't fall off sooner. I've been avoiding the syringes scattered around my neighboring premises but thanks to your review I've taken a new lease on life. if you don't see me soon, well, them's the breaks
p.s
if post-hephaestus was worth anything it's that you get those unhinged "Go get stepped on by a BIG DADDY" bits that rule. amazing vocal performances all around and one of the few games that earned its audio logs without question