A little while back I did a fairly negative article about one of the best-selling games in the past decade.
In that blog post I focused on the useless map, the confined spaces, the repetitive battles and kind of boring AI, among other things.
However, I don't want anyone to think that I am totally dogging this game because it is still pretty good. Here are some positives that I took away from this game that I feel are worth mentioning.
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Pros
Fantastic Setting
This is actually a topic of much controversy: There seems to be camps that found the setting to be dumb and too out there but others that feel it was a wonderfully different take on science fiction. I liked the fact that it was futuristic but yet also took place in the past but not "long long ago" as it was in the 50's.
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Also, as you may be aware, the city that you find yourself in is underwater for some reason. I don't remember why that was and logistically, it makes zero sense but it does help to create a wonderfully eerie ambiance. Speaking of which...
It's creepy, without being "survival horror"
There is no doubt that something is terribly terribly wrong with the city of Rapture right when you arrive. You witness some sort of creature murder something right in front of you as you wait inside of your arrival pod and this is before you have any weapons. Once you start obtaining them you are always wondering when that creature is going to appear.
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Rapture was a very vanity-driven place, and this is evidenced by the massive surgical wards that were dedicated to making everyone as beautiful as possible. Of course they are all dead now except for a few mad scientists and doctors that are still around.
Despite being creepy, the game's ambiance isn't driven really at all by jump scares. There are a few of them in the game but it isn't a core part of the game. Your feeling of dread is driven by the creepy scenery that keeps you wondering "what is the next crazy area going to look like?"
Great audio and voice-acting
This can make or break a game. I was recently playing Batman: Arkham Knight and that game is absolutely beautiful but I can't enjoy the game because the voice acting for Batman and most of the people I have encountered thus far are really bad. Other games have bad musical scores that get on your nerves after a while and make you happy that most games have an audio slider for "music" that you can completely switch off.
Bioshock sticks with the the 50's theme with the music the entire way through with a scratchy "record player" type appeal with video sequences on a reel-to-reel. This is something they definitely "borrowed" from Fallout but that's ok... it works here too.
The acting and cinematics are so good that this is actually one of the few games I have played recently where I didn't complain about the number of cutscenes because there weren't that many of them and when they did happen they were done extremely well and this was due in part to great voice-actors and wonderful choices for sound.
Unpredictable story
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Some have complained that the story was too convoluted and impossible to have happened but I, and many other people like me, feel as though that was necessary in order to make it exciting. When the pieces came together for me and I met what we had been told all along was the "boss" only to have it not be, I was genuinely surprised. Then the game carried on for just long enough to keep it interesting, but not so long that it annoyed me.
There is also the major choice about what you are going to do with the creepy "Little Sisters"...
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What you decide to do with these strange creatures drastically changes your rewards in-game but also changes the ending of the game. Don't worry, it doesn't matter as much as you think.
Overall, I think Bioshock 1 was a pretty decent title, but having defeated it, i would never play it again and I am not terribly excited about playing the sequels of which I have all of. It is important to note that I am not generally a fan of FPS games though and I realize that this heavily influences my opinion.
I would say these days, if you aren't getting it for less than $5, it probably isn't worth getting into. I can see how this would have been a really hot game back in 2007 when it was released though.