Bioshock: Plus and Minus Five

Well, it's certainly been long enough that most of you who were going to play BioShock have now played BioShock. This allows me to write a review of five most and least favourite aspects of BioShock without having to lock it all behind a giant painted pachyderm labelled "Spoilers".

For completeness' sake, however, below be Spoilers. Turn back now if that bothers you.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed BioShock and I can certainly see why it has been so highly acclaimed. I'm going to briefly describe the five things that I enjoyed most about it. I realise that I may have missed some things that are possible in the game because I don't read walkthroughs or spoilers and I've only played through it once. Corrections and information welcome!

Before I start: BioShock is fun. A lot of fun. Yes, there are some things I don't like but I certainly goy my money's worth from this game and it is a very good game. Let's talk about some standout good things.

1. It's Stunningly Beautiful. 

There is no doubt that the world of Rapture is gorgeous. The Art Deco inspired architecture, combined with the sea-tinged light and well-rendered fittings, make it a delight on the eye. There are parts of the game where, assuming you're not wading knee deep in blood or Splicers, you can just look around in wonder. A lot of work has gone into the appearance of the game and it shows. Someone had a solid design bible and stuck to it.

2. You Have a Lot of Choices Of How You Play.

Are you a long distance shoot-em-up player or an up-close-and-personal guy who favours a pipe wrench? BioShock will give you a lot of choice in how you deal out your damage. Combine that with taking photos of splicers on the run to get more info, and more possibilities, and you can become very effective at removing obstacles to your mission.

3. Some of Your Actions Have Significant Outcomes.

One of the big advertised features for BioShock was the "morality-based" storyline. If you choose not to kill the Little Sisters, you get less ADAM overall, but the game rewards you with a very happy ending, as well as some very good defensive plasmids and tonics that you don't get if you kill the sisters. As it turns out, you'll be slightly weaker if you rescue, rather than harvest, but not so much that you'll lose the game. So, ultimately, you have to choose between short-term offensive capability or long-term survivability. Hmm.. This is very interesting, but is this all that moral? (More on this later)

4. The Variety of Splicers Is Pretty Good - And Very Scary.

When the teleporting Splicer showed up, I nearly jumped out of my skin. I was wondering around in some rooms and I saw something out of the corner of my eye. I turned to look. It was gone. I turned back to the bench I was examining, heard a noise, turned around and OH MY GOD IT WAS RIGHT ON TOP OF ME! For a reward, I gave it a surprisingly large amount of high-speed lead, from memory. Did it say thank you? No. Ingrate.

The Spider Splicers are very creepy but those damn teleporters freak me out every time.

5. It's an Amusing Satire of Objectivism.

It's no secret that the whole game is based on Objectivist principles and rhetoric, played out as if every objectivist in the world had been convinced to disappear under the water. There're a lot of in-jokes and comments through out the game - even to the way that Andrew Ryan chooses to die.

If you haven't played BioShock, go and do it now. It's got enough interest and beauty to reward you for spending money on it.

And now the least favourite things. I know, I know - it's only a video game.Why am I so demanding of it? Because we had games (or, at least, A game - hi, Deus Ex) that did most of these things about 11 years ago. We should be doing better 7-9 years later, not treading water.

1. Any More On Rails And You'd Be A Train.

You very quickly work out that the connecting tunnels and halls of Rapture form a profoundly effective framework for linear transition and narrative control. Regrettably, the game suffers from a lack of imagination beyond a certain point and completing the game is more of an act of bloody mindedness than sheer enjoyment.

There are some mind-numbingly dull quests that you cannot avoid at all - and they require you to perform repetitive actions to meet the requirement. Yawn. If I wanted to harvest 17 frog skins to complete the TOADMASTER's quest, I'd play an MMORPG. These quests show up in the second half of the game and have "We have to make this game last longer" written all over them.

One big failing, for me, is that you really do have to kill a lot of things to achieve the games aims and, ultimately, you have to EITHER rescue or harvest the Little Sisters to get enough ADAM to complete. This means you generally have to kill the poor saps in the suits - the Big Daddies - at least until you get a combination of plasmids that sometimes lets you lure the BD away. Generally, however, death is the only way through the poor victims of Rapture. This is why the moral issues are, ultimately, window dressing. This is a shoot-em-up that's read a bit of philosophy, not a warrior-monk.

I like games where I don't have to kill everything - or, preferably, anything. It generally makes the game a lot harder but that's often far more fun! Yes, I can hide from things, and sneak past, but a number of key fights need me to have spent considerably on combat or I'll keep dying.

The story is farcically over the top in BioShock - the Objectivism satire is a ham-fisted affair by the end, a bumbling fool, stumbling over its own shoelaces. Even the Ryan's son story makes little sense in the amoral objectivist paradise of Rapture, ignoring the sheer unlikelihood of the whole thing. Dear Andrew Ryan, WEAR A CONDOM. Your solution to an out of control, insane, superArmy is to create another one? Dear Andrew Ryan's Dad, GO BACK IN TIME AND WEAR A CONDOM.

2. A Lot Of Your Actions Have No Effect Whatsoever.

This is combined with the previous point. At one key point of the game, you have to kill Andrew Ryan. There is nothing you can do to avoid this. All of your paths go through this nexus. (When I say "all of your paths", I actually mean "your single path". You don't really have that much choice.)

You're swinging a wrench instead of shooting a gun? You're still killing things. At key points of the game, your only choice is to 'carry out a single action or quit'. Even where it looks like you have a choice, you generally don't. Explore the alternative and all you've done is waste your time.

There's an early scene where you show up as some whack job is conducting amoral surgery on a young woman and, apparently no matter what you do, he kills her before you can get to her.

No. Unnecessary. You've already been shown lots of death and mutilation as the surgeons free themselves from conventional morality. Either show a corpse on the table or give me an option to save the person. This is one of the biggest giveaways that your role in BS is as a carrier for someone else's narrative. Once you start looking for the effects of your actions, as you travel on the train line through the story, you quickly realise how little effect you have.

The various machines around the place are also far too cute in many ways - oh, no, I can't have more shotgun shells because I didn't manage to find enough of part X. I have three million of Y, but that's no good here. I did not play this game to practice my l33t inventory skills and it boggles the mind as to how many pieces of crap my character was carrying by the end of the game.

3. The Variety Of Splicers Stops. Dead.

I was so blown away by the surprise of the Houdini and Spider Splicers that it was a great shock when these were the final variants I ran into. Sure, they started getting tougher, but from that relatively early point in the game, there were no more surprises in my enemies.

But here's another weakness - all of the Splicers are using the same technology that I am, so why can't I climb like a spider or teleport?

For the final SuperSplicer, Fontaine himself, I have one word: Bwahahahahahaha. Seriously? I TAKE ALL POTION AND GRAAAA, I BAD. Far too easy to kill. Far too silly. Far too heavily on rails. Nothing new.

You know what I would have liked? Random (but sanity checked) combinations of the splicers, with all tonics and plasmids available to everyone. Difficult? Yes! Unpredictable? Yes! A game where you tread carefully and never know what's around the corner? Oh, yes. Now there's a game.

Oh look, another Leadhead with a big jacket. Ho hum. Fire instead of electricity from memory. Wow. 5 attack patterns. I'm the 1960s American Football Conference.

The sanity checking, evolutionary computation anyone?, of the combinations would be important. A purely defensive Splicer leaping out at you is one thing, a self-electrocuting Spider is just silly.

"From Hell's Heart I *BBZZZZZZT* GODDAMNIT! *urk*"

4. The "Ethical Dimension/Morality Play" Aspect is as Deep as a Shallow Puddle on a Warm Day.

Once I worked out what the extent of the so-called morality-based play was, I actually laughed for a solid minute at my computer. This could have been a magnificent feature of the game - had it been done properly. Instead, it's token and a bit creepy.

The Jack character, the protagonist, is mind-controlled and heavily indoctrinated. He is a programmed assassin. If Tenebaum wanted to protect the Little Sisters, she could have reprogrammed Jack, or freed him of his programming earlier. Instead, she allows him the illusion of free will, herself demonstrating the high amorality that has contributed to the overall degradation of Rapture.

But, as a player, you have a choice of killing little girls, or not.

Let's leave that sitting there for a moment.

The Little Sisters obviously live in a different reality to that of Rapture. The dead are angels, the Big Daddies are knights in shining armour, and they are only doing what they've been programmed to do. You've been told that they can be saved.

While this is certainly a moral choice, yes, even in game, it's not exactly a hard one. Having never actually ever killed a Little Sister, I didn't know what it sounded like when they died. I had hoped that the software producer had put some effort into some _really_ unpleasant screams and visual effects.

(For some of the most effectively unpleasant screaming ever put on film, The Baby Of Macon has a protracted audio-only rape scene that will show you how nasty that can be.)

However, having viewed a YouTube clip of it, the screen sort of blacks out and there are some rather tame noises, then you have a slug in your hand. Little girl is all gone away. The writing of the little girl as you rescue here is actually slightly more unpleasant, to my viewing.

There are some interesting comments on that YouTube post, but I'll only put one up here:

"@VampirateYuki it being disturbing is fine, but you did call someone a 'fucking creep' simply because they chose the bad ending over the good. the little sister dies, but remember, the kid lived a life of paddling around dead bodies, getting shot at, and drinking blood from corpses. it isnt like you murder a child in the prime of life, you kill a monsterous kid, you can rescue them, but I doubt anyone could recover mentally from such extreme experiences, no matter how young they were at the time

PaladinGear15 3 weeks ago"

Well, that's ok, then, PALADIN. (As it turned out, VampirateYuki called someone a fucking creep because of insinuations of pedophilia with a virtual child. Killing them is not enough to be a fucking creep. Good to know! And, as Paladin says, they were beyond saving anyway. He's actually doing them a favour...)

Moving on, and all aspects of morality and virtual/real interplay aside, is that all you've got to do to make a game that is noted for morality issues in the game play? The Undersea Dr Mengele has a change of heart and tells you not to kill the babies but let's you commit murder - and this is somehow a serious game based on moral issues?

For me, the missed opportunities here are enormous. Imagine if, having been deprogrammed earlier, Jack had the choice of pretending to be in league with Atlas, and siding with Ryan, or delivering Tenenbaum to Ryan and then selling them both out to Atlas - or confronting Ryan and refusing to kill him, forcing Ryan to confront his dependency upon other people. At this point we have at least three seriously divergent storylines, which will actually take you to the pitifully undifferentiated endings that currently exist.

Maybe, like Deus Ex, you get many conflicting stories, and you have to work out who and what to trust at each stage? Remember Deus Ex? If you didn't stay around to defend your brother early on in the game, you'd find his corpse in a medical facility later on. If you helped him, you'd meet up with him again. Are you playing a game or you are getting involved in a story?

In BioShock? Well, it's not that subtle.

Awwww, I saved all the little girls, so they'll graduate from college and look after me as I'm dying. I'm a two-year old genetic freak, aged artificially and loaded with plasmids - when is this death bed scene? Next Thursday?

Oh no, I killed a single girl - maybe at the start. LOOK OUT! I CAN'T BE TRUSTED! I'M GOING TO HARVEST EVERY OTHER LITTLE SISTER AND START A WAR!

What bullshit. Yes, if I killed every single one then my moral compass is pretty much set - Jack is Andrew's son after all - but to come up with three endings that have no effect on game play based on that when we could have diverged at the "kill Ryan or not" section is such a terrible, terrible waste.

If I were to describe my feeling of the last half of BioShock, it would be 'rushed'. So much potential, and certainly enough to be enjoyable, but make sure that you switch your brain off to avoid getting too caught up in what's actually happening.

5++. In The End, None Of Your Choices Matter. (Not Just BioShock's Problem)

Yes, there's another part 5. Sadly, no-one has really cracked a particular problem in the sequel game environment. When you release Game++, how do you cope with the different options at the end of Game 1? Release n different games for each ending? No, you assume one and then move forward. Invisible War (Deus Ex 2) had to do this. BS2 had to do this. Someone is going to properly crack this problem one day, if WoW already hasn't by using a different mechanism, and it will change gaming forever.

What would you do if your actions in a game meant that a particular character, that you'd been playing for months or years, lost an arm and couldn't swing a sword anymore? Would you play? Would you pay to play? How good would the game have to be that, one armed, you kept playing because you couldn't bear to give up what you had gained?

Ultimately, of course, how do you deal with the death of a character? Even if it's from the unavoidable scourge - old age.

I read recently that what differentiated really good games from really bad games was sometimes marketing, sometimes graphics but quite often writing. The quality of the story, the change that the player felt that they could make or were making, and the constant impression that their actions mattered, were only really supported by good writing.

BioShock started really well but it's no Deus Ex. DE was also heavily railed, didn't have too much choice, but the way that it worked with you to give you the impression of achieving something was done to the attention to detail and the quality of the writing.

I haven't played BS2 yet, but I hope that they fixed some of the problems from 1 - because BS could have been a stellar game, rather than just a very good one, had they addressed some of these issues.