As I write this, I have mixed feelings toward this game - it is a good game to experience, but other than the visuals and the sounds, the gameplay is not all that impressive. I will try to break this down into specific details, good and bad.
Wonderfully Spooky Environment
The creepy environment made me so cautious in the beginning, I crawled around the areas slowly. After I realized splicers are usually noisy and don’t materialize out of thin air (other than Houdini Splicers), I traveled around quicker with more confidence. A lot of thought and attention were put into the layouts of a stage - each place looks unique. I don’t feel like I’ve been to a place twice.
Game Details
I like how anything that is incinerated takes on a charred look. It adds to the realism. Yes, even splicers take on this effect when you burn them.
Water is also marvelously done. In my previous post, swimming in the water made my chest tighten up. Little speckles show up on your screen when you get wet, as if your camera got sprayed. And if you stand under spraying water, you get a nice ripply effect on your camera view.
Hacking
It’s fun, but can get quite old. I can’t imagine doing this with an XBox 360 controller - I found it difficult to do towards the beginning with a mouse! Hacking is basically like the old Pipe Dream game, but you have to uncover the tiles before you can start swapping out the pieces. It gets easier as time passes, when you get more engineering tonics to make the ordeal easier.
You can also hack sentinel bots that fly around so they follow you and shoot at your enemies. They’re quite cute (to me) and sound like bees, but they can get in your way sometimes. I’m sure a lot of players found them to be annoying. Still, every time I feel lonely, I convert some, and it feels like I have company.
Photography
I like the fact this game incorporates photographing your enemies as a way to study their weaknesses and increase your damage. It’s a creative addition to the rather non-existent RPG aspect of the game. After a while it does get old (I zap everybody, take a photo, then bash them with a wrench).
Big Daddy
I’m sorry, but who finds Big Daddy scary? If you run by them or leave them alone, they do nothing. If they’re without Little Sisters, you can pass them amicably in the hallway. Be careful, as they have unforgiving collision detection, which is quite annoying at times (I got stuck once trying to pass one).
And they groan once in a while. Scary? Disturbing? Not at all, they’re dumb and harmless unless you initiate combat. Pyramid Head from Silent Hill 2 was TONS scarier, had an attitude, and I didn’t even WANT to get close to him.
Fighting Big Daddy can be a challenge until you get the proper weapons. But until you do, what’s challenging about them? Just die and get resurrected at the closest insta-chamber - you come back with some health and eve (mana) and then just zerg the sucker. No strategy needed. Don’t even waste your health kits. Use up your eve before you use up your ammo. Which brings me to my next point…
Insta-Chambers
A lot of hardcore players out there say “if you find these cheesy, don’t use them and reload at the last savepoint.” Ok, I can do that so I feel good about myself because I have mad skillz, but what’s the point when it’s readily integrated into the gameplay?
This means that finishing BioShock on hard difficulty is not challenging for anybody. This means strategy is not as important, even though this game emphasizes flexibility in doing so. This means the game is less scary - why be cautious when death has no consequence?
Lack of Strategy, but also Lack of Consistency in the UI
If I start off the game with electricity powers and a wrench, and I can end the game with electricity powers and a wrench, I’m not sure strategy is even needed. Part of this is also because I find it difficult to load my powers in a specific order that I want. If I can’t dependably hit hot keys to bring up the plasmids, I won’t use them.
I’ll demonstrate the UI inconsistency. I have 6 slots available for magic that I can swap at a gene bank. Here is the UI for the gene bank slots. I would expect, based on this image - 1. security bullseye 2. telekinesis 3. incinerate 4. insect swarm 5. dummy 6. electricity.
But instead, when I bring up the actual hotkeys, it’s mapped to….F1. electricity F2. security bullseye F3. telekinesis F4. dummy F5. insect swarm F6. incinerate.
This means I’m panicking while I’m looking for my plasmid by trial and error vs being strategic with what I have, because every time I swap skills at the gene bank, its hot key location is random. Because I’ve had electricity since the beginning, and because it’s always been F1, I know I can count on it.
Now, there is one spot in the game where you will have your abilities removed and then given back to you. It took me 5 minutes (I’m not exaggerating!) to figure out how to put electricity back into the F1 slot. A lot of it was trial and error, standing at the gene bank. If it was this frustrating trying to get one skill into one hot key slot, I don’t even want to waste my time configuring the other slots, hence I don’t use other plasmids.
For this reason, I’ve stuck to using electricity as my main power - robots and about 80% of the monsters are vulnerable to this.
Long-ranged Weapons Suck
Now, the weapons are another thing. I would’ve preferred it if the weapons had better aiming accuracy while giving me less bullet capacity. I’m fine with games that include recoil in weapons, but that means the first shot is accurate while the subsequent shots are not (unless you pause between each shot to re-steady the gun). In this game, first shot is horribly inaccurate.
Based on the image, this does not mean you will hit the trap bolt, even though the cross-hair is glowing red, which means “target in view”. In fact, it took the 6th shot to finally hit it (without me moving the mouse once). I like the fact that they have 3 different types of ammo for each weapon, so I appreciate the fact that I should be using antipersonnel bullets on splicers and armor-piercing on Big Daddy, but…
Reloading takes 5 seconds. That’s too long. Factor in switching ammo on the fly to pick the suitable type, and you’ve wasted even more seconds. Also, take into consideration that sometimes I panic and accidentally hit the B key that changes ammunition type, and it’s frustrating as hell to run around, wondering why I can’t fire. It’s realistic, I appreciate that, but I avoid all that unnecessary frustration by using the dependable wrench that never requires reloading. Although it’s melee distance only, there are plenty of combat tonics that make it useful.
It’s funny, some guys I talk to think it’s admirable I use the wrench. I think it shows that I’m an unimaginative player. It could also be that I suck. I’m not sure - I prefer long-ranged weapons in Half-Life, Halo, and Gears of War to meleeing. What’s wrong with me and BioShock?
What’s the Story?
After playing through the game once, I’m confused with the story. I like the fact that people leave recorded diaries for me to listen to, but the chronology is confusing, and in the end, I’m still not sure what happened. Why was Adam and Eve ever introduced to Rapture? I have no idea how the guy at GameFaqs wrote a plot summary (although after reading it, it makes a lot more sense).
Also, the transmitter often relays messages while I’m in the heat of the battle, when I cannot listen to them.
The Annoying Stages
I’d have to say one annoying stage is at the bee farm - you have to hit the switch that releases smoke that calms the bees, and you have a limited time to gather enzyme samples. In the meantime, splicers are always always ALWAYS coming. Not when I’m at the door waiting for them, but the moment I hit the switch, it causes splicers to magically show up at my door. AGGH! Leave me alone!
The second annoying stage is when you have to escort the Little Sister. Keep in mind I use the wrench for attack, so I need to get close to the enemies. Usually the Little Sister will squat into a little ball in front of me where I can’t see her, and prevent me from getting at the splicer. Horrible collision detection! Also, inconsistency - why don’t Little Sisters block Big Daddies from getting to me?
Fortunately, two annoying stages is not much in this game. The other stages are better
My Strategies
Since I fight with the wrench, I need the chameleon skin/natural camouflage, wrench lurker, wrench jockey, and increase your running speed tonics. I felt so much like a ninja, watching splicers walk by me, photographing them, and then bashing them.
There’s a spot in the wine cellar you can hack the security cam, then wait for big daddy to walk by and toss a security bullseye on him. Let him duke it out with the bots. Collect the money afterwards. In the later stages, I’ll lure the big daddy to the hacked security cam, then use the liquid nitrogen sprayer to freeze him in place, then toss security bullseye on him. When the bots come, just hide in a corner and he’ll usually forget you.
When I’m feeling particularly lonely, I’ll use Shorten Alarm tonic (decrease amount of time security cam is activated once it spots you), stand in front of a non-hacked camera on purpose, then hack the sentinel bots it sends. You can only have a max of two hacked bots at any time.
Conclusion
So there you have it. Overall, I still recommend the game for the experience - some of the quests are morbid, and there are clever surprises thrown into the game (caused me to jump and squeak). I think the gameplay left more to be desired. Also, I harvested all the Little Girls to see what I can buy, thinking the next round, I’d save all the Little Girls. As I sat down to play the game a second time through, I suddenly felt tired, and looked up the Good Ending on YouTube.
I wanted to like this game, I really did. Gameplay is a huge factor for me, however.
Here is a funny review from someone else’s point of view on the game. It brings up some points that I agree with.
