BioShock is a shooter unlike any you've ever played, loaded with weapons and tactics never seen. You'll have a complete arsenal at your disposal from simple revolvers to grenade launchers and chemical throwers, but you'll also be forced to genetically modify your DNA to create an even more deadly weapon: you. Injectable plasmids give you super human powers: blast electrical currents into water to electrocute multiple enemies, or freeze them solid and obliterate them with the swing of a wrench.
What can I say baout Bioshock that has not already been said before.
This is a new ball park in fps, cerebral and introspective, it captures not only the Randian ideal of Objectivism in beautiful counterpoint to 'Atlas Shrugged' but the underlying nature of the role of the gamer itself.
The lush decay of the city of Rapture provide the player with a new and intersting environment of which one has very real choice to mould and shape, whether in hacking the various machinery placed around or using character enhancing 'plasmids' to freeze, burn or electrocute puddles, barrels and oil spills.
This game is all about the story, Rapture is a rich world with characters of depth and intigue, most of whom are discovered through surviving audio diaries. If you want the most from this game and want to understand the world or Andrew Ryan and Rapture then I suggest you search high and low to get the full story.
Beyond the myriad of characters there is a shrewd sense of self-discovery as you play the silent protagonist Jack. the more you learn about Rapture the more it coincides with your fortuitous arrival in the crumbling underwater city.
The psudeo-antagonist of Anrew Ryan is one of the best written characters ever formed in gaming in terms of his overall and underlying ties to everything you know about the world and yourself, and finally metting him ingame is one of the quinticential gaming moments.
Written with a flair that surpasses the most cerebral hollywood fayre, Bioshock, on a very subtle level takes on the very notion of choice in gaming. Are we free to do as we like in these digital environments or do we simply follow instruction?
All in all this game, along with a few others of note, has set the bar in terms of what we can now call a 'good game'.
It is mature, intelligent and crafted with all the artistry you could expect from a David Lynch film, while activley taking on the philosophies of choice and determinism.