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| Game Details | Released
24 August 2007 | | Format
PC, Xbox 360 | | Developer
2K Games |
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Bioshock
 Review
Creepy little corpse-sucking girls. Lumbering behemoths clad in antique diving gear. Screeching harridans hurling fireballs from their palms. Blood, sweat, floods, drugs, guns, scares, robots... and an underwater retro-futuristic utopia that’s sprung a leak. Welcome to the macabre world of BioShock, a peerless shooter that stylishly rethinks the conventions of digital gun-slinging.
Developed by Irrational Games - the coders behind the innovative System Shock adventures - BioShock thrusts players into a crumbling underwater city where the inhabitants are addicted to a drug that tore their civilisation apart and turned the bright and the beautiful into crazy mixed-up zombies. But while the game’s inventive premise is an ideal jump-off point for relentless, finger blisterin’ gunplay, your canny rivals and limitless options for slaughter make this trigger-happy quest feel fresh and unique.
Boasting what Irrational term ‘artificial intelligence ecology’, the enemies you’ll meet beneath the waves boast behaviour patterns that go beyond the traditional ‘kill on sight’ routine followed by most gaming monsters, your rivals’ inhuman habits instead making for diverse and intelligent combat. While the hulking Big Daddies are generally unmoved by your ant-like presence, get too close to one of the cadaver-raiding Little Sisters they protect and you’ll find yourself on the business end of a skull-shattering punch; so rather than squandering valuable bullets on plugging the pugnacious, flame-tossing Splicer that’s hounding you, you can lure the mutant close to a Little Sister and watch her gigantic bodyguard pummel it into dust.
Even better, for a more thoughtful approach to the carnage you can hack into the city’s defence systems and reprogram the security robots to fight on your side, the hovering automations continuing to empty bullets into your adversaries while you plunder the environment for treasures.
But while BioShock’s scarily-smart enemies make for flexible and open-ended gameplay, it’s the game’s bleak, melancholy atmosphere that will keep you gripped until the end. Unlike the sombre spaceships in System Shock, the world of BioShock is a submerged art-deco metropolis, where incongruous ‘50s pop songs blare from abandoned shops and echo around the deserted corridors, enforcing a clawing and tangible sense of isolation. Moreover, piecing together the puzzle of what happened to the city relies on collecting audio tapes left by former citizens; ghostly voices from beyond the grave that slowly paint a horrific picture of the seabed society’s last days. And while the entire game is staged under the sea and there are a handful of water-based challenges, the game only hints at your perilous situation with occasional cracks in the walls where seawater drips in, subtly conveying the immense pressure of the ocean around you and making the worlds feel oppressive, eerie and sharply atmospheric.
Shooting and eye candy aside, this superb package is rounded-out by inspired RPG elements that add tremendous depth to the bloodshed, giving players a wide variety of drugs to inject that enhance their hero’s skills and use superhuman attacks, reach previously blocked areas or even cause enemies to turn on each other.
In a year that’s seen a wave of groundbreaking blasters hit the shelves, BioShock stands shoulder-to-shoulder with established franchises such as Halo and Enemy Territory. And while it’s not the total FPS reinvention many were expecting, multifarious action and a sinister atmosphere nonetheless make Irrational’s adventure one of 2007’s most gripping, innovative gun-toters.
Reviewer: David McComb
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Average user rating for Bioshock
| RE: wowee! | | | It's the best game I've played so far on the 360 with Call of Duty 4 and GTA not far behind. ... Read More
| | | Diggler About me | | 06:48, 30 September 2008 | Report This Post | |
| | | | RE: wowee! | | | Possible one of the best games ever created. 10/10 ... Read More
| | | The Dark General About me | | 23:04, 30 August 2008 | Report This Post | |
| | | | wowee! | | | i am a huge fan of FPS and when i played on the demo for this game i got well in to it and admired the graphics that were there. they are sick. very happy this won the bafta game award for best game because it is very deserving ... Read More
| | | IsabelB About me | | 13:39, 16 April 2008 | Report This Post | |
| | | | RE: Bioshock | | Out of all the first person shoot'em ups on 360 Bioshock has the best single player. ... Read More
| | | thepluginbaby About me | | 20:19, 28 January 2008 | Report This Post | |
| | | | RE: Bioshock | | | Wow thats what bioshoack say to me as soon as i pick up the controller if you like fear half life or any other scary shoot em up this is for you. ... Read More
| | | necron4204 About me | | 00:40, 19 January 2008 | Report This Post | |
| | | | The greatest game since HALF LIFE 2 | | | im a old school gamer. i started in my jurrasic period with a atari. from that to a sinclair spectrum 48k, commodore 64 nitendo, megadrive, playstation, xbox, playstation 2, xbox 360, psp.
so i know my shit when it comes to gaming. anyway BIOSHOCK is the game equivalent to finding a 18 year old cheerleader lying in your bed after a hard day at work. its sex its gorgeous its brilliant.
This game is the missing link between george orwells 1984 and aldous huxley's BRAVE NEW WORLD with a horror mo... Read More
| | | Horrorguru About me | | 15:48, 16 January 2008 | Report This Post | |
| | | | Boring and overhyped | | | I absolutely wanted this game when it came out and sure the first three days were fine but it gets extemely repetetive. VERY OVERHYPED. ... Read More
| | | lwepenn About me | | 10:46, 17 October 2007 | Report This Post | |
| | | | | | I agree it was good for a couple of days but then it got boring ... Read More
| | | Paulie Wallnuts About me | | 19:36, 16 October 2007 | Report This Post | |
| | | | at first i thought great but near the end it got boring and repetive | | | not 5 star material good but get's boring very overhyped this game and the Big Daddys are easy ... Read More
| | | alimac About me | | 01:41, 10 October 2007 | Report This Post | |
| | | | Never underestimate the power of the mind. | | | Bioshock Review.
Never underestimate the power of the mind.
Welcome to a game that I never thought I would ever play, welcome to a world so believable, so enthralling and so challenging. Welcome to Bioshock.
To define Bioshock as a First Person Shooter is a bit like describing a vintage Dom Pérignon champagne as a bottle of plonk, everything you will experience in Bioshock will shake your expectations about what should constitute a great game. The plot will confound you, the dial... Read More
| | | punisher1588 About me | | 14:03, 20 September 2007 | Report This Post | |
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