First Impressions: BioShock

Okay, I like a good first-person shooter (FPS). And no, I'm not some ultra-violent creep who carries concealed weapons and leaves disturbing anonymous message board posts about how I'm going to kill you all in your sleep. I personally prefer the "human versus things that aren't" shooters; I can't bring myself to play things like Call of Duty or even FarCry, and even though Half-Life 2 featured zombies etc., it was too gross for my liking. I'm a Halo kind of girl. We can debate the ridiculousness of giving FPS games all the credit for violent teenage actions another time; today, I want to talk about BioShock!

I've been looking forward to this game ever since Corey told me about System Shock II, the old PC game BioShock spawns from - or, as I like to call it based on Corey's stories, the Crazy Monkey Game. When the trailers, artwork, and screen shots first became available online, I really started looking forward to it. For one thing, I'm obsessed with the ocean, and BioShock takes place in an underwater dystopia; for another, it was also the most beautiful game I'd ever seen. On top of that, I appreciate the thrill of a high-quality scare, and BioShock sure looked creepy as all else. Been wanting to buy it, been waiting for the price to go down, got loaned it by Tim and Scott, and here we are!

Well, I've played about fourty minutes - the introduction plus - and BioShock is meeting all my expectations and then some. Set in 1960, the game opens in a first-person view (and stays that way) as your commercial passenger flight goes down over the ocean. First Bit of Great: when you get dumped in the ocean, it's no cut scene between water and finding land - start swimming! 'Land' in this case is the underwater city of Rapture, created in the '50s by a man named Andrew Ryan as a place where artists, scientists, and inventors could work unrestricted by such constraints as government regulation, bioethics, morality, all those pesky constructs of The Man. Sounds like a great place, what could possibly go wrong?

Ha...Ha...Ha!

If I ever encounter a better-looking game than BioShock, I'll eat my hat (so long as my hat is made of nachos, with salsa in the middle). The art-deco city and the view out its windows are...well...just Google Image Search "Bioshock Rapture City", you'll see what I mean. It's the kind of game that makes you tempted to splurge on a better TV. Even poorly lit and half-ruined, it's incredible, and the period jazz soundtrack does a world of good. This, unfortunately, can be a downside, as I want time to mosey around soaking in the sights...yeah, there's not a lot of that happening in a horror FPS, unless you want to clear all the areas and then spend a while backtracking to you can sightsee. And I do. :D A small price to pay for beauty. From a playing perspective, the controls are pretty intuitive, the world interaction is swell, and giving your bioengineered capabilities finite usage makes for an interesting strategic touch. Your radio-only (so far) helper, Atlas, is a good actor, too, and if you miss any of his messages due to fighting or other distraction, you can replay them at any time. You may find it tough to find the right difficulty, though - I'm playing on medium, described as for "veteran gamers", and so far it's not quite a challenge, though this will hopefully increase as the game progresses. I should mention here than the equivalent Halo difficulty ("heroic"), though doable, is a challenge for me. Corey tried the highest difficulty, and said it was verging on too hard to be enjoyable - and this is someone who typically doesn't have issues with whatever the hardest setting of a shooter is. But there's the rub - for someone like that, 'medium' is far too easy, and though one could play easier the first time through and then step up after they're familiar with the game, BioShock may turn out to be too disturbing to have replay value. A dilemma, indeed!

And did I mention: this game is creepy as all else? BioShock is a horror on the scale of films like Alien or The Thing. In other words, other emotional and adrenaline-related issues apply, on top of the ones associated with a more relaxing shooter like Halo. The first time I played that game, my body responded to all the adrenaline being released while not engaged in physical activity by creating a week's worth of nightmares, mainly involving being out of ammo, that eventually morphed into happy dreams to cruising around with a Warthog full of Marines, eliminating Covenant troops with ease. Fourty minutes of BioShock tempered by a hasty retreat to Fable II as I realised I needed something I could sleep on didn't spawn any nighttime visits, but I'm not looking forward to whatever will accompany more intensive gameplay. That doesn't mean I won't continue playing. Does that make me a masochist?

In a nutshell: Gorgeous. Scary. Fun. If you have the stomach for a high-quality video game scare, I don't see it getting much better than this. More to come when I actually pass the game.