Ken Levine and his team at 2K have toiled away to produce a behemoth of a game in Bioshock, an experience that fuses the strengths of several genres to produce an awe-inspiring experience.

Players venture through the underwater city of Rapture, fighting its inhabitants, now freakishly (and super-humanly) altered by stem cells known as ADAM. Bioshock goes right for the emotional jugular, invoking more varied and powerful emotions than most games can hope for.

Bioshock has been touted as the “spiritual successor” to System Shock 2. Where System Shock 2 was well known for instilling an incredible sense of fear and isolation, Bioshock masters the art of inducing a subtle empathic and emotional reaction. The corrupted populous of Rapture were once great thinkers; which both explains the feat of running an underwater city and adds a depressing overtone to their current state.

Lumbering monsters in diving suits protect ’Little Sisters’; children genetically altered to collect the genetic manipulation resource, ADAM, from the dead. Your lone guiding voice in the sub-aquatic night is Atlas, a mysterious stranger with a thankfully more-Colm-Meaney-than-leprechaun Irish accent who saves the protagonist’s life soon after he finds Rapture. Atlas’ accent is a prime example of Bioshock’s rich texture; it’s completely unnecessary, but in giving Atlas’ voice some defining characteristic, it’s somehow easier to relate to the character.

The player begins their plasmid enhanced journey in a plane that crashes into the ocean. When the game begins, the only sign of civilization beyond the dazzling burning plane in the well-rendered water is a monolithic lighthousethat forms the strangely dark and silent entrance to the underwater city of Rapture.

Bioshock is a multi-faceted game; while it contains much of what has become standard to first person shooters, it expands on those traits with interesting gameplay mechanics (the plasmids, the realtionships between enemies etc.). It also boasts a deep story, drawing on a philosophy and ideology (and its imperfect execution) to build the setting of Rapture. Pleasantly enough,game has been designed so it’s playable and enjoyable regardless of a player’s level of interest in the story.

Bioshock’s solid foundation is a first-person shooter with intelligent AI and the standard choice of weapons, each with its own ammo types and visually interesting upgrades. This should be unsurprising as the team recently worked on SWAT 4, a solid shooter with admirable AI.

Enemies work in teams to flank and attack, ensuring a feeling of constant pressure. In addition to the usual armaments a selection of plasmids (genetic alterations using ADAM) are available to protect the player and aid in the destruction of foes. These range from telekinesis to sprouting insects and sending them after enemies, and include more passive abilities to aid in combat and survival.

The opponents the player will have to survive against are the previously-mentioned denizens of Rapture, known as Splicers for the dubious amount of genetic ’splicing’ they have subjected themselves to. They range from thugs to beings capable of teleporting (in a cloud of blood), all soldiers in a grizzly civil war that appears to have died down when the player begins their journey.