Sound, story, and combat

BioShock puts a great deal of emphasis on sound and music to build tension. Ken Levine, creative director on BioShock, has stated that he looked to Stanley Kubrick’s "The Shining" for inspiration and it shows especially in the sound design. You can eavesdrop on the conversations of the denizens, the desolate city itself crackles and clatters with fire and falling debris, and the music is full of atonal melodies and sharp sounds similar to the score for "The Shining." The sound is so good and such an integral part of the experience that I’ve considered playing the whole game on the 360 rather than the PC in order to experience it in a real surround-sound environment and on a truly large screen. Ultimately my PC roots will win out because I believe that while the graphics are good to great on the 360 they might be astonishing on the PC (and when given the choice who chooses a gamepad to mouse and keyboard for shooters).

You aren’t given much story to work with in the demo but the clues are there in the dark corners of the game. A posted sign near where you arrive states, "Attention: All bathysphere travel is now denied," and the ground is littered with luggage and picket signs that say things like, "Rapture is DEAD," and "Let it end. Let us ascend". It’s clear that a number of the residents of Rapture sought a return to the surface but were being kept in the city against their will. BioShock is more about exploring the surroundings almost like a detective than a straight forward shooter. Rushing through looking to shoot everything may only result in missing out on the story and the answers to the mystery. The demo may be brief but already had me asking several questions. Why did my plane crash directly over this lighthouse? Why was I the only survivor? What is the significance of the chain link tattoos on my wrists and do they have any relation to "the great chain" that is spoken of so much in the Rapture propaganda?

The "little sisters" are an important part of the ecosystem of Rapture.

Some story elements are relayed through Accu-vox personal recorders that can be found around Rapture. They reveal messages or recordings left by the people of Rapture during or before whatever catastrophe caused the downfall of the city. I was a little disappointed to see BioShock employing this method but maybe it’s the best way to reveal a story in pieces when a character is exploring a desolate area after a cataclysmic event. You see this same kind of thing done in System Shock 2, Doom 3, and F.E.A.R. There’s got to be a better way to do it aside from listening to voice mails but I don’t know what that would be. As complaints go this is pretty minor and it’s really the only one I have with BioShock so far. There were some areas in the 360 version that would benefit from another pass of anti-aliasing but there were only a couple of corners that really ran enough for me to notice them. From the looks of the demo this may be the best game of the year.

Of course this couldn’t be classified as an FPS without some first-person shooting. The demo gives you a taste of combat with the splicers - residents of Rapture who took things too far with the plasmids and have subsequently lost their minds. Plasmids are injections of restructured genetic material that grant magic-like abilities such as lightening and fire. You use plasmid abilities in your left hand and projectile / melee weapons in your right. It gives the combat a nice variety and I can imagine having much fun with using plasmids and weapons in amazing combinations in the final game. It’s hard to gauge from the demo how much combat there will be but I anticipate there to be less than your average shooter. The exploration and depth may frustrate people looking for a pure shooter experience. I would expect lots of tension broken up by sporadic violence with a generous helping of plot and mystery.

The demo’s incredible and if the game can deliver on that experience throughout its entirety we’re looking at something very special here. All the pieces have come together from the graphics to the sound and the horror to the action. Like Stranglehold you’re treated to a new trailer for BioShock once you complete the demo but it will only make you ravenously hungrier for the real game. Our Managing Editor Rob is furiously plugging away at the full game now for our review that will go up in the near future, but luckily it’s only a matter of days until we can all get our fix and plunder the depths of Rapture for ourselves.