Extra Nate: Bioshock
Here I am with a non-book for some reason. Probably because Ben gave me access to this blog and he never checks it so I can slip in a video game. I guess there are books for this series and I will never read them. So this is the best you’re going to get.
I just finished the first game for the first time. Spoilers for a game that came out like a million years ago. I remember really liking the demo back in the day. I bought the game based on the well-crafted atmosphere and intrigue. I remember getting to where Atlas’s fake family is killed off and then never revisiting it again. I saw that I had at one point bought the remastered version and decided to finally give it a go. What can I say? It’s still got a solid atmosphere of being a derelict underwater city full of lunatics. There are tape recordings everywhere… which I skipped. It also has incredibly poorly aged gameplay.
The friendly AI will constantly kill you on accident. If you hypnotize a Big Daddy he’ll hang out near you rather than going after enemies and God help you if you equipped the skill where anytime you’re hit by a melee attack you release a shockwave because the shockwave will hit your Big Daddy and he’ll turn hostile to you so don’t even bother. The guns don’t feel to have any weight to them. The hacking mini-game is the worst thing ever and having to do it 400 times is physically painful. The difficulty randomly spikes toward the end but not in a way that you can physically tell things are different. You only know because suddenly your weapons do a lot less damage. The camera feature where you take pictures of people to “discover their weaknesses” was kind of lame too. Oh and there’s a moral choice between saving little girls or murdering them. If you murder them you get more genetic powers. If you save them you get less… but then they give you more anyway?
Then there’s the story. It’s a good thing that Fontaine sent you to the surface with some pre-programed ancestral memory junk to come to this city and follow all his orders because otherwise it wouldn’t make any sense. Your character says a few lines at the beginning of the story. He then shuts his stupid face for the remainder of the game. Somehow he finds himself wanting to kill the city’s creator: Andrew Ryan. When that’s done he kills his own creator: Frank Fontaine. The whole time it’s like… why? Just give me a sub and send me back to the surface. Fontaine himself, after you break free of your genetic conditioning, offers to give you a sub and send you back to the surface with a boatload of cash in exchange for leaving him alone. He then betrays you for no reason? If I’m supposed to be roleplaying this character… yeah I’m cool with a sub and a bunch of cash. Let’s go. You can have your shitty fallen city that, by your own admission, is beyond saving. But no, I guess I’ll kill you.
The game ends with an escort section for some reason and after that you fight a super-splicer. Fontaine has loaded himself with all the super powers. I’m supposed to care I think but I don’t really think I can. I’m just here to put down old yeller. Not sure what Fontaine even gets by killing Andrew Ryan and ruling the city. I suppose since I’m stream-of-consciousness writing this I need to mention that most of the msision objectives are “you need to go from point A to point B but whoops something just fell in the way… guess you gotta go to point C to unlock the path to point B!”
Anyway it was alright. It was about double the length of my enjoyment. I can see why people liked it and why I liked it. It’s definitely aged like milk though. Can I rubric this? I dunno… uhh… 5/5 for original ideas, 3/5 for organization, 3/5 for word choice, 3/5 for personal preference, 2/5 for recommendation strength. ‘K bye.
