Bioshock...a game, different to all I've played before, an experience that cannot be described by simple words, and a story that will remain in my mind for ever

Pros:

+One of the best storys I've ever heard
+Excellent and varied gameplay
+The game is still looking great after almost 10 years
+Amazing characters
+An overwhelming,brutal and fresh ambientation you will never forgive
+Great voice acting and thrilling sound effects

Cons

-I can't erase my memory and re-experience it again from zero :)


Hey! Just go and buy the damn game already!

Would you kindly? This game is gold, and I cant believe I didnt play this 9 years ago back when the time Bioshock was released. I thought this was a generic FPS, I was wrong.

Pros:
- Story is brilliant.
- Horror atmosphere
- Graphic's good
- Tonic plasmid system, I love the sight of splicers getting electrocuted
- Big daddy

Cons:
- ♥♥♥♥ Spider splicer
- Big daddy
- Me for playing this game 9 years later after it's release

This is the root of Bioshock Infinite, where all the mind blowing, confusing story begins. Buy it and 'Welcome to the Rapture'!!

BioShock is often lauded as one of the pinnacles of FPS/RPGs as well as one of the finest video-game narratives. Although the game is essentially a spiritual successor to the System Shock series, the consensus from journalists and consumers alike is that it's a classic.

However, with all that being said, it's interesting how both its narrative and gameplay has not aged as well after a decade, and how fans probably have misremembered its flaws.

Don't misunderstand this as some hipster review; BS is a good game. Rapture is one of the most well-polished atmospheres ever made, the level design is very good in spite of its linearity, and its core gameplay is tolerable at best.

The problem is none of these qualities elevates the game into greatness nor to ignore its many flaws. Even worse, these problems that plague the first game are only dwelled upon in later games when they originated here.


Before we talk about the game, I do want to mention the PC version. This port is rather terrible; however, it can be fixed. Mostly.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=266981933

What I don't think can be fixed is any nausea you may feel if you turn up the mouse-sensitivity. I don't know whether it's the art-style, the FOV (I doubt it as I play the game with 90) or some mouse acceleration but I cannot play at anything higher than four (out of ten.)

If you don't want to deal with the configuration set-up (which has some issues in BS2 as well) or the low aiming speed, then I would suggest you wait for the BS Collection coming out on PC soon. (It is free if you own the first two games.)


BioShock suffers from two major faults: It lacks the dual-wielding system where you have Plasmids in one-hand and your gun in the other. The other mistake is the unnecessary fluff that takes away from the survival horror experience.

The former can be excused for being the first in the series; however, the latter is something that cannot be easily overlooked, namely the crafting system and camera "research" system. Both of these inclusions are utterly worthless except when you get less ammo and tougher enemies.

However, if you use the camera ASAP you can play two-thirds of the game without it. A better idea would be to throw away the camera and opted for better resource management and fixed enemy damage values. The game would be a better FPS for it, and it would be more honest.


Although this question is more often one of semantics, I think it'll illustrate a point: In what way is BS an RPG other than streamlining the RPG-mechanics from its predecessor?

SS2 focused on specializing builds around weapon types, PSI-onic abilities and/or attributes in other skills. You had the ability to shape your character from the introduction, and throughout the game you could change it to suit your playstyle.

BS strips all the complexities away with its plasmids and gene-modifications. You will get all the weapons every single playthrough, and the gene-mods are in specialized categories that discourage any freeform experimentation. You're a Jack of all trades; master of all, specialist of none.

The system itself is not bad but it is a clear sign of streamlining. With that being said, is BS's system truly an RPG or is it something more along the lines of the Far Cry's perks system?

Content is still gated by placing plasmids and mods in specific locations, but the same result is the same stilted growth of your capabilities. It's one of many instances where I have to wonder how influential BS has been on modern games (for better and for worse).


BS's role in influencing games is undeniable, but what is more interesting is what has been forgotten as to why these aspects are so enrapturing.

For starters, the usage of audio-logs. Recorded messages are now the butt-of-the-joke, but their inclusion here was to keep the horror elements without littering NPCs or to bore the player from the lack of interactions. More importantly, they told the player of what cannot be gleamed from the environments as they provide a contrast to what the player finds. They provided something for your imagination to use.

Another aspect that holds up is its environmental storytelling. For example, if you were to compare this game to Fallout 3/NV the biggest difference is how BioShock conveys more with less clutter. The developers were able to focus more so on the visual input, and let the finer details (visual or the audio) fill in the rest. And without the simple distractions like a constant UI notification for junk, the player focuses more on the surroundings.

Now are these aspects perfect? God no. BS (and SS) is the originator of the trope of hiding key-codes and/or recording information at the worst times like a Lovecraft protagonist. And compared to F3/NV, BS has tighter and more sensible level-design that lends itself to having the time to add more details.

However, it's the purpose and execution behind these storytelling methods that I think is forgotten about why they work so well, and when you dwell further on what the game set out to do you find more of its flaws more obvious now than back then.


In spite of wanting to keep spoilers to a minimum, I do want to criticize the narrative because that is what everyone remembers BS most fondly of.

No matter how many times I replay this game I can't tell you what the game is really about. BS tries its damnedest to provide an objective, apolitical story about a free-market city freed from conventions of morals and politics. The only problem is that it never commits to the idea of, "Unrestrained societies are possibly bad!", and instead gets jumbled up in its "family" nonsense and blatantly good/evil choice which comes across as being pretentious. (Sound familiar?)

It could be argued that Andrew Ryan was right all along—the city fell to parasites like Fontaine—and he was the more upstanding character as he valued merits alone. However, in contrast, the characters like Dr. Steinman and Cohen show that merit is not satisfying enough. Usually I'd be fine with this vagueness of a message, but with the forced good/bad-ending to the game it hampers any middle-ground to be found.

It also doesn't help that gameplay can clash with the narrative. For example, why can you leave money on security devices to "hack" machines? (How does that work?) Why does Andrew Ryan let his enemies buy bullets to fight him? Is he that committed to his free-market values?

Or, for less pedantic questions, why is the WYK effect on Jack inconsistent? He doesn't appear to remember being "activated" (if he didn't forget it after the plane-crash), and he doesn't respond to the command the same way (ex. when you are told to get the radio and when you are forced to lower your weapon). If it was a simple mental suggestion, then why (when he obviously knows) does he not react with speaking like how he talks at the beginning? (Why is he mute anyway?)

The obvious answer to these questions is that the developers were too busy making a good game, and that's perfectly fine. BioShock is a great game for what it tried to do, but it's by no means a masterpiece of storytelling or gameplay.


I'm under no dellusion that the remaster will address all these narrative issues. I expect the gunplay to be better and for a better performance like Infinite.

What I wanted to share is when you return to Rapture to relive the glory days under the sea it won't be same as what you remembered. Games have come a long way from BioShock in both gameplay and narrative, and the only way we get better is to learn where the mistakes were made behind us.

For people experiencing sound stuttering issues and cannot enable EAX (WINDOWS 10 USERS) , here's a possible quick solution:

1.) Download "openal" (google "openal download") and install it.
2.) Go to windows/system32 map and copy "wrap_oal.dll" to game executable location (E.g.: C:/steam/steamapps/common/bioshock) .
3.) Rename "wrap_oal" to "openal32". After that you can enable EAX in audio options and hopefully that'll fix sound issues for you.

Would you kindly buy the game?

I directly jumped trough the hard mode without the knowledge of the mechanics, it was worth.

pros -

• amazing atmosphere
  
• interesting story
  
• gameplay has held up mostly okay
  
• one of those "must play" games

cons -

• really slows down after a reveal towards the middle of the game
  
• garbage optimization for windows 8.1, crashes constantly. i'm not exaggerating when i say a good hour of my playtime was me having to reset the game over and over

Klasik za sve generacije.

Favorite game 1 million/10

Even though I put the game down so many times because I did not want to relearn it, I still loved it. The tension in this game is so good not to mention the chills you feel searching these abandoned halls of a once wealthy dystopia. For once I see a shooter that has an amazing story and it shows how much lack lust things have become. This game might not be perfect but it did something games rarely do for me. It made me feel and that is odd when you don't feel anymore, it left me speechless if it can do that for me then it might do it for you as well. Now I was spoiled a little from a few YouTube videos on the storyline but it still even with spoilers had a huge impact on me like getting hit by a bullet train.

Now the game play made my heart race, that never happens that function in my brain was broken a long time ago and it worked. The last time a game had this huge amount of an impact on me was fallout 3 mostly because I got to see my character grow up and left more questions about my virtual parents than answers. This one if you do the good ending you actually feel like a hero. Now unlike many other games with more than one ending the cause for the bad ending is something that you know is wrong from the start, unlike other games that ask you to put the work into doing some long quest exploring the map and finding secrets, you know how to get the good ending from the beginning . The mechanics are a little tricky that's why I did not pick it back up I had to put it down because life happened and I did exactly what I did with portal 2 and forgot to finish the game.

I am glad I did, I actually came close to tears but still I am speechless this game will forever have a long lasting impact on me.

The game play reminds me of half life if half life had more of struggle with ammo and required you to know thy enemy rather than shoot thy enemy with gun and take his ammo. You must learn this new environment and all it holds conserve ammo and modify your genes to allow you to better fight against the enemy.

Though a warning a lot of people are complaining that it does not work with newer hardware unless you tweak it a lot. But it's from 2007 usually games from 2007 have issues with newer hardware, but there is a remake coming but I don't think it will be better than this one.

Bioshock , one of the best games I`ve played ever! I recommed it!