|| REVIEW || Bioshock - Remastered (PC)

Developed By : 2K                                                                               Published By : 2K
Category : First Person, Horror, Shooter, Action
Release Date : August 21, 2007 (Original) September 15, 2016 (Remaster)

One thing I've always prided myself on is forming my own opinions for things. Whether it's movies, games, books, whatever. No matter how many negative reviews, no matter how horribly something is panned, even if everyone in my close personal circle tells me how good or bad something is, I always hold off and form my own opinion first hand. Because in my experiences, some things that have been widely accepted as amazing I wasn't a fan of, and things that most people hated I loved and was hooked on. 

For me, BioShock was one of those games that was widely and utterly praised, but never drew my interest. I had attempted to play it a few times back on the Xbox 360, but could never make it very far before I just found myself turning the console off to do something else. Then, a couple years ago, some of the streamers I follow on Twitch were playing through the games, and I found myself getting hooked by the story without having to worry about the gameplay. And I was loving it. Fast forward to last week (or at least, last week from when I'm writing this) and a broken game on stream led to an impromptu game change...to BioShock. 

In all honesty, when I fired it up the first night I didn't know what to expect. I was flooded with memories of all the times I'd tried to play previously and I felt like I was running blindfolded down a hallway where I knew there was a brick wall waiting for me. But instead of using that as an excuse to leave the game behind yet another time, I reminded myself of how much I loved the story bits I had seen on watching other people play, and I did something I've only talked about doing. I said screw it, and threw the difficulty down to easy. If the combat was holding me back from enjoying a story I clearly loved, I had the solution so why not use it? 

An Easy Time in Rapture 

For the...I don't even know...fourth time? Fifth? I watched the plane crash. I woke up in the water, I swam to a lighthouse, and I got into a small submarine-like capsule and descended through the water. Once again, I stepped out and arrived in the splicer-inhabited world that was Rapture. Wrench in hand, I pressed forward, following the commands of Atlas who was kindly trying to help me. 

Eventually I found myself armed with more than just a silly little wrench, as Splicers began dropping the guns they were trying to kill me with. I found myself with a pistol, machine gun, a shotgun, and by the end things like a grenade launcher and crossbow. Most importantly, I started picking up Plasmids. 

Plasmids are the games form of what are essentially super powers. Through these you can give yourself various enhancements to you. Some of these apply to combat, allowing you to cast bolts of electricity or balls of fire, others cater to your hacking abilities and help you get into the various systems around Rapture, and even others affect you yourself, giving you more toughness against attacks, or even shooting off a ring of electricity when you are hit and damaged. 

 

 Dealing With The Enemy

Just about all the enemies you'll deal with in Rapture are the various forms of Splicers. These creatures are the former residents of the underwater city, and they have fallen under the addictive spell of ADAM. ADAM is the substance that can grant those who consume it the ability to use plasmids. However, like any drug it can have adverse effects with any level of use, and the Splicers wander the streets of Rapture looking for more. 

Each variant of Splicer has their own specific form of combat that for the most part doesn't cross over with the other types. Spider Splicers, the first ones you're introduced to but not the first ones you fight, try to stick to the ceiling to ambush you, but will throw hooks at you for an attack. Thuggish Splicers rely on melee combat so you'll see them toting wrenches, pipes and the like. Leadheads are the gun toters, able to carry and fire pistols or machine guns. Houdini Splicers can teleport and attack you with balls of fire and ice, and lastly the Nitro Splicers that hurl grenades and molotovs at you. 

The one enemy everybody knows about though are the Big Daddies. These massive enemies roam around Rapture protecting and escorting Little Sisters. The Sisters are gatherers that wander around, taking ADAM from the dead bodies around before the Splicers can get it, hence why they have the protection of a Big Daddy. 

 

The Little Sisters can be avoided completely, and in turn the Big Daddies as well. But, if you can eliminate the Big Daddy, the Sister can be harvested or rescued for ADAM. Atlas initially tries to get you to harvest all of them, but this conversation is interrupted by Dr. Tenenbaum who begs you to rescue them instead. The difference is that in harvesting them you get much more ADAM for yourself, which in turn will make you more powerful in the long run. Rescuing them gives you less ADAM immediately, but it makes Tenenbaum happy which gets you gifts periodically. Just don't expect the fight against Big Daddy to go over easily.

 

Not all your enemies are on the ground either. Rapture has an extensive security system, complete with cameras, flying robot drones, turrets, all ready to attack you and take you down if their systems detect you. These are systems that can be destroyed, or hacked and turned against your enemies. If you choose to hack, you'll be presented with a pipe-flow mini-game. Depending on the difficulty of the hack, the water can flow faster and give you less time to prepare the correct path. 

You can also hack various vending machines you'll find around too. Healing stations, ammo machines, generic machines that carry other non-gun items. If you're successful in hacking these you'll sometimes unlock "hidden" items that are only available once a machine has been hacked. But, whether or not you open one of these up, you'll always receive a discount on everything inside. 

Twists and Turns, Ups and Downs

BioShock is so much more than its combat. Rapture is sprawling underwater utopia with so many areas to explore. And while I found the world and it's lore incredibly intoxicating, the game's combat just didn't do it for me. You're introduced to the plasmid system, which maybe finding the perfect combination helps the issue I was having, but it felt like the game didn't really want you to use it? The first power you get is the electro-bolt which can stun splicers and, for most splicers, invite you to one-hit them with a wrench for an easy kill. The problem is one shot of electro-bolt uses about half of your initial EVE bar, and EVE doesn't auto regenerate. 

To go a little bit further though, if you're like me and enjoy a good narrative/game universe, turn BioShock down to easy and soak it all in. Chances are, you're going to love all of it and begin planning a re-play of the game before you're even halfway through your first run. I fully intend to ramp up the difficulty on future playthroughs, but I'm perfectly happy and content having made my first run on easy. 

The enemies, the areas, the recordings, the people...everything you find just gives you another deeper taste of Rapture and it's history. It's a beautiful place with a dark past and an even darker present. However you choose to explore it, whether its for a challenge or with ease, this is absolutely a game to be experienced. My only recommendation is to pick it up on PC. You'll spend a lot of time with the games hacking mini-game and this is much easier to manage with a mouse than a D-pad or joystick.