Bioshock Is An Underwater Blast

BioShock

2K Boston

First-person shooter

Xbox 360, Windows

Four Stars **** (of 4)

BioShock is a great first-person shooter with satisfying combat that is set apart by doing two big things right: story and atmosphere.

The story involves an underwater city built in the 1950s by a proud industrialist named Andrew Ryan. Ryan believed that the fruits of a person's labor belonged solely to them, and that talents should not be bound by morality or society. Thus, he built Rapture, a place where the talented and the powerful could serve their own interests.

However, sequestering thousands of proud geniuses resulted in power struggles and genetic experiments that left many dead and the survivors slightly insane.

Your plane crashes into the Atlantic and you find your way to this decaying metropolis. Flooding little by little, the world you explore is beautifully detailed in twisted Art Deco. The graphics are gorgeous and really let you be sucked into the terrifying world. Everything is falling apart, and the not-quite-human denizens roam the shadows.

You set about helping the few sane persons left in Rapture and unraveling the mystery of its downfall. To do this though, you must survive."Plasmids" are genetic augmentations you can use on yourself and are BioShock's way of justifying magic in a shooter. Some let you light things on fire, while others help you hack machines more easily. Combat is very tactical, and requires you to mix your plasmids with the right kind of weapon and ammo to take on different foes. You can light them on fire only to shock them when they run to water or freeze them and shatter their body with conventional bullets. The many options make each battle feel like a sandbox of destruction and keep things fresh throughout the lengthy adventure.

To buy plasmids, you need Adam, a substance found on Little Sisters, little girls mutated so that they can harvest Adam from dead bodies. The moral crux of BioShock is the choice between killing the Little Sisters for maximum Adam and curing them for less Adam but other promised rewards. No violence is shown; the choice is made with a key press and then a short, surreal cutscene takes over. This moral dilemma reflects the self-serving choices made by Rapture's residents and also affects the plot. But before making your choice, you have to deal with the protective Big Daddies, hulking creatures in diving gear that are tough and deadly.

While death might come often when fighting them, it sends you to a Vita-Chamber which regenerates you and everything you carried. This certainly makes the game easier, but keeps the pace swift and the game from becoming frustrating. Even with death's limited consequences, if you try to explore every nook, the game can take 20 hours or more to complete.

BioShock ultimately is about sacrificing your humanity for personal power or redemption, and lofty themes aside, it's a tremendous amount of fun. When it was over, I took a deep breath, ate some dinner, and started over again.

Review by DAVID HEGLE of blog Power On