BioShock is a simple, straightforward first-person shooter (FPS) dressed up in next-generation trappings and superb artistic design. There are numerous distractions attempting to draw the player's eye away from the basic formula at its heart, but really, that's all it is.
Is there anything wrong with this? Well-polished, enjoyably playable games are always welcome amidst the scores of shoddy cash-ins, inspiration-free clones and unrealistically ambitious projects needing six more months of development (but not getting them) before hitting retail. In this context, it's easy to appreciate BioShock as a strong effort.
On the other hand, I can't help but feel a little disappointed that there isn't more to it. In all fairness, there's nothing really wrong with the experience it provides; it just lacks the sort of vision and hook truly memorable games possess underneath the graphics, physics and sound effects. During my time in the undersea world of Rapture, there were many small occurrences that didn't mean much on their own. But, when added together and taken in total, the ability to become engrossed in the adventure was chipped away until all that was left was an underlying desire for completion. It's as good a reason to play a game as any, but perhaps not the most satisfying.
The most serious issue is that BioShock's character development and dramatic narrative never come together. The "silent protagonist" approach is rife with its own set of dangers, these problems only magnified by choices like having an absurd number of passive audio journals waiting to be picked up, or the absence of any real conversations. Even worse, a huge blow was struck against believability in the opening moments, setting the tone for the rest to come:
After arriving in Rapture, my character happens upon a glowing syringe. Rather than questioning its contents or waiting for a clue or verbal order from someone else, this mysterious substance is immediately and illogically self-injected on a whim. Not only does this action fly in the face of common sense, but when the ability to generate electricity is imparted, my character has no reaction and makes no comment. There's no sense of fear, or even of awe. As a player, how can I be expected to give events in BioShock any credence or weight when the person I'm supposed to be playing as doesn't?
Further undermining intellectual buy-in, the much-discussed inclusion of Little Sisters as a catalyst for triggering moral choices falls incredibly flat. Reduced to a repeated resource-gathering scenario, the "good" or "evil" in capturing these carbon-copy moppets seems to be solely based on whether the player has any empathy for the iconic visual representation of a small girl. It may give pause the first time, but when every subsequent encounter is revealed to be an exact duplicate with neither the action nor the individual having any unique quality, all impact is negated.
Although these can be taken as fairly high-level criticisms of things that many games wouldn't even have attempted, BioShock also suffers from other issues that hold it back in ways besides the intellectual.
Seeing the game lapse almost immediately into a series of fetchquests without the proper motivation was offputting. Some may claim that the game accounts for this later on, but to me it was too little, too late. In addition, despite the superb realization of the period through architecture, music selection and voice acting, it was hard to escape the sensation that most of my time was spent in a series of corridors and abstract areas. Since the game failed to create a place where I believed geniuses could congregate under the sea, I was left to admire specific elements while being unconvinced of the whole.
Finally, the egregious multitude of power-ups available could have been a significant addition to the mix, but again, their handling lacked the weight and importance needed to raise these systems above the level of idle toolgathering. Between Plasmids, Tonics, Photos, Inventions, Hacking, Weapon Upgrading, Ammunition Types and simply picking up audio logs or the millions of items strewn throughout every environment, there were too many things to be distracted by, with none of them feeling as vital or important as they should be.
So what does BioShock do right? It looks great, it sounds great, and it absolutely knows which genre it's in. The difficulty is quite reasonable (and adjustable as well) so I'd actually say that it's a great place for beginners or people who don't have a lot of FPS exposure to start. Beyond this, my feeling is that it doesn't do much beside meet the usual expectations. Without the kind of adrenaline-inducing pace that carries action blockbusters or the kind of emotionally involving characterization that can sustain a slower think-piece, BioShock certainly satisfies the standard FPS criteria but falls short of carving itself a place in the top tier.
Disclaimer: This review is based on the Xbox 360 version of the game.
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I’ve just read through the original review and all the comments, as well as this second opinion, and comments and something just seem to hit me. Here we’ve had a reform of how grading works in education. I’ll spare you the details but in oral exams, in the old system you’d start low and have to prove you were good to get a good grade, the top grade was technically unachieveable, since if you started giving those away you were saying there was no way to make improvements. In the new system you start at the top grade and unless… Read more »
the games that come crashing down due to being over hyped are the ones like haze… and just about any movie game
bioshock hasnt ‘crashed down’ at all,
but i supose ur right, 7 out of 10 does still equate to good… (some people these days seem to think that anything below 90% is terrible…which annoys me)
but id still happily have a huuugeee argument about why its a 95ish% game tho because i think its better than good 🙂
u can redeem urself by giving mgs4 a 95% score tho! 😉
I dunno about IGN, but here at GameCritics, a 5 is a perfectly ‘average’ score- not good, not bad. it’s in the middle. With this line of thinking, BioShock is clearly ‘above average’ when compared to the body of GC reviews in the archive using the same numbering scale. anyway, everybody’s got their own take on each game, and that’s cool. if you thought it was a 9.5, that’s all right with me. as for me, i made my case and i’m still good with what i wrote– BioShock’s a good game, nothing more, nothing less IMO. the last thing… Read more »
thats a very fair point that popularity doesnt make a game… but you hav to take into consideration that the average rating is 9.5 across 58 reviews, with a large amount being professional reviewers… sure a review is an opinion (and i guess the game just didnt do it for you) but in my opinion the game easily justifies a 9.5/10. the immersion is incredible in this game… the sense of a total breakdown… and the audiodiaries are there to add depth and side quests… they arent a major part of the main storyline… as are the tasks of attaining… Read more »
Wouldn’t you say reviewing a game objectively is far more informative than singing its praises simply because of hype the way other critics do? Since I discovered it a few weeks ago, GameCritics has in fact become the only review site I truly trust, simply because it is the only one I’ve seen to compare games with external media, like film and music. If our reviewers don’t expect games to do something truly new and do it well, how can the industry expect to evolve?
So since McDonald’s has served billions and you can find tons of people to “praise” the food, that makes it a great restaurant? Equating the quality of something with the number of people who praise it is a misleading and often false comparison — especially so with games, since the vast majority of people get utterly swept up in groupthink and hyperbole without really being honest about what it is they’re playing. If i wanted to listen to an audiobook, i’d buy one and take a road trip. as a critic, i strongly disagree with the decision to put so… Read more »
Let me get this straight, you didn’t want to listen to the audio diaries because there… were a lot… And you didn’t like where they were placed?… Well you’re right! Absolutely right! What kind of idea was that? Why should we have to listen to the story of the game, when the story is long and cofusing for our wee sized brains! And the nerve of placing them in such ludicrous places. And just for that, let’s not even listen to the story, and simply assume this game is as straightforward as we played it, simply running to all the… Read more »
If (according to you) listening to an absurd amount of non-interactive, audio-only logs (which I find impossible to believe would be recorded or left lying around in the first place) or playing System Shock 2 are required to “fully” get the BioShock experience, then I’ll leave you to it. AFAIC, my review sums it up– the game is good but not great, and everyone out there who’s so desperate to believe it’s deeper or more revolutionary than it really is… please continue to do so. personally, i’ve got enough faith in the medium to not run around holding up half-full… Read more »
Brad..ever think your getting a bit too old for games?..in this review it certainly feels as though you have missed many of the nuances which make Bioshock a superb game and a fantastic experience. Maybe this is why Gamecritics is not popular?..you choose not to make the audio tapes, the aesthetics involved in the story telling important to your enjoyment of the game…which to me seems ludicrous as these are the major sticking points which lead to me having a great experience. Perhaps Gamecritics see it fit to purposely mark games which have received critical praise from less “intellectual” sites… Read more »
Thanks for the spoiler dumbass. You should go back to grade school and learn some grammar before embarrassing yourself on the internet.
first off homo reviewer bioshock is awesome. its fun has lots of shooting and blood. the story is entertaining and has twists and turns. did u expect to find out the main character was created on rapture.the fetch quests as you call it are in almost every single game made. alot of rpgs have it where u must get an item for someone to get what u need or to pass a certain part of the game. the audio logs are just for achievements like the flags in assassins creed, the packages in grand theft auto and the other games… Read more »
Just came upon this site, found it using Metacritic. It’s somewhat of a relief to see a less than rapturous review of BioShock. (Oh. No pun intended, really.) I’ve been playing through it more for the story than the gameplay — never been a fan of the story-free FPS, Ã la Doom — and after about five hours of “is that all there is?” I wondered if something was wrong with me, not seeing the forest for the trees. But no, in fact, there’s no forest. A forest requires complexity, diversity, the joy and thrill of the unexpected. BioShock’s story… Read more »
It’s not a horrible game. It’s just that the usual ‘console tards’ proclaim the game as something new and inventive that has never been done before. This is patently false. The game is just an FPS. And, as an FPS, it has flaws- for example, the wrench being the most lethal weapon in the game, and how easy the game is overall. It certainly doesn’t deserve the ’10/10, BEST GAME EVER’ reviews it seems to have received quite a few of.
Typical gamecritics obvious response to a game which receives praise. If you analyze a game in single blocks instead of like you should(as a whole) its not a whole lot of game anymore and it will fall apart because especially this game revolves around the experience as a whole
seriously, its abit tiresome to see gamecritics come up with such obvious reviews. i could see it coming from a mile away, atleast
Good stuff. I haven’t completed this one yet, but I certainly feel the same way about it.
The bottom line for me is a game makes the player feel. When I turn off the power after playing this game, I feel like I just punched out, and not like I’m reluctantly putting down a story with its hooks in me.
Like my good buddy said the other day: “The only stop on the Hype Train is Disappointmentville.”
( That said, I don’t believe that my feelings or any negative reviews are just backlash, however. )
It just so happens I’m working my way through Bioshock right now, so I enjoyed your perspective of the game. Although it’s true that Bioshock doesn’t generate the same kind of emotionally invested connection that, say, Deus Ex does nor does it have that game’s strong narrative, I find that I’m willing to overlook those things just to spend time in the stunning environments. And I’m referring to the tones and flavours of the environments more than the just the cutting-edge graphics. In many ways, environment IS the game with Bioshock. In fact, I’ve noticed that Bioshock can evoke a… Read more »
You do understand that he’s just reviewing the game based on his personal tastes right? Nobody said you had to agree, and what in god’s name is lambasting him going to achieve? That’s right, nothing. You say the things don’t matter, but to some people, they do. It’s not Mr. Galloway’s fault that to you the audio logs are not necessary thus not worth complaining about. But if you read his review carefully you’d realize that in fact they are important because you’re dealing with a silent protagonist. Thus in order to flesh out the narrative development, the audio logs… Read more »
Just for the record, i actually *can* grow hair if i want to, i just choose to keep it shaved. ; )