Pros: Gameplay variety; graphics and environment; intelligent, engaging plot and expert storytelling
Cons: Small enemy variety; hacking minigame; no consequences for dying; occasional glitches
The bottom line: Bioshock is a brilliant creation, and will linger with you long after you've completed the adventure.
Perhaps there is little sense in adding another review to the heaping pile of stratospheric scores that Bioshock has garnered. But, even as I assign my perfect score to this undeniably excellent game, I hope I can help level out some of the hyper-exaggerated praise contained in most professional reviews.

Is Bioshock one of the best games of the past five years? No question. Does it present the player with one of the most intriguing and engrossing worlds ever conveyed through the video game medium? You bet it does.

Does it completely redefine third-person action? No. Not in any way.

Truth be told, Bioshock is almost entirely derivative. Regarding sheer gameplay, there is nothing new here at all. What's so amazing about Bioshock is the way it takes bits and pieces of so many other great games, and ties them up into such a beautifully executed whole.

Story:

After miraculously surviving a mid-ocean plane crash, you stumble across Rapture -- an underwater city constructed by objectivist visionary (madman?) Andrew Ryan. Your first sight as you enter Rapture is sufficiently horrific to indicate that something has gone terribly wrong with Ryan's city. And as you take your first steps into the submerged hallways, you befriend (via radio) a fellow named Atlas who recruits your help in rescuing his family from Ryan's increasingly demented schemes.

Rapture has fallen prey to its own ideals. It is populated by deranged individuals who have irrevocably altered themselves in search of personal perfection. Their faces are scarred from plastic surgery, and they wear grotesque masks to hide what they've become. They modify themselves genetically, using ADAM -- a sort of genetic currency that allows them to accept plasmids, granting them superhuman skills. And their quest for ADAM leads them to the Little Sisters.

Little Sisters are young girls (maybe eight years old) who have been modified to function as ADAM scavengers. They scour the halls of Rapture with giant syringes, bleeding dead bodies of their ADAM for reuse elsewhere. They are, in turn, protected by Big Daddies -- hulking steampunk diving suits, and the most powerful beings in the game. And you must face them in order to retrieve the ADAM held by the Sisters.

Gameplay:

Controls are relatively standard dual-analog FPS fare. Your right arm (and thus the right trigger) handles standard weaponry. Your left arm (left trigger) is equipped with any offensive plasmids you manage to assimilate.

What sets Bioshock apart is the variety of weaponry. Your left hand can fire bolts of lightning, fireballs, ice rays, and even swarms of bees. Your right hand juggles pistols, shotguns, chemical throwers, and grenade launchers. Each weapon can equip three separate types of ammunition, which can be found, purchased, or crafted at "U-Invent" machines.

The variety of ways to deal damage is impressive. More impressive is the way that abilities can be used in combination with each other to create different effects. For instance, a fireball might be used to ignite an enemy. If there is water nearby, the enemy will likely dive in to douse the flames, at which point a lightning bolt should fry him the rest of the way. These sort of interactions require that the artificial intelligence be a bit brighter than the usual video game zombies, and for the most part it works well. Enemies generally react in realistic ways, which allows you to "play" them with your skills.

Most rooms feature some assortment of enemies and stationary defenses (turrets, security cameras), and you are left with the freedom to choose how to proceed. A turret can be destroyed, or it can be hacked to target your enemies. You can fight enemies directly, or use a plasmid to trigger infighting between them. Most situations offer multiple solutions, and your choice will be determined by your own play style.

An additional measure of choice and customization exists within the game's plasmid system. Apart from offensive plasmids, you can equip a variety of plasmids that upgrade your character in other ways. You might make yourself more resistant to damage, or improve your ability to hack turrets. These character customizations can be switched around during the game, but only at designated "gene-bank" locations.

Hacking is accomplished through a mini-game that has you redirecting fluid using bits of tubing (very similar to the old Pipe Dream puzzle game). By the end of the game, it's rather tedious. Hacks can often be bypassed using auto-hack tools (but you can only carry 5 at a time), or by bribing the machine with a usually-exorbitant amount of cash.

Enemies come in a moderate variety, but more should have been done. The designers, unfortunately, seemed to be at a loss in handling the ever-increasing power of the main character as you progress through the game. Rather than present you with new and more powerful enemies, your targets simply (and inexplicably) withstand a greater amount of damage later in the game.


Inspiration and Evolution:

As stated, very little of Bioshock will seem new to seasoned gamers. The control scheme is derivative of every console FPS since Halo. The "multiple solutions to each problem" mechanic will be exceedingly familiar to veterans of Deus Ex or the developer's own System Shock. The gradual exposure of a dark storyline via audio journals scattered throughout the environment has already been done in Doom 3. The semi-linear world that remains permissive of backtracking isn't unlike the Metroid Prime series. Even the 1950s setting, complete with propaganda cartoons, seems dangerously similar to the one seen in Fallout.

I'm not knocking the game... if you're going to seek inspiration, you could do worse than the games mentioned above! But to pretend that Bioshock has reinvented the wheel (as many reviewers have) is to ignore the wealth of quality games that precede this one.

What Bioshock does so well is to take these components, and weave them together with an intelligent and compelling storyline. In most games, the narrative is a rather simple affair on which the action sequences are fixed. In Bioshock, it is the primary impetus to continue playing. And the fact that the entire story is delivered within the game (rather than resorting to cut-scenes and movies) is a powerful testament to the strength of videogames as a storytelling medium.

While the action sequences reward strategic thinking and quick reflexes, the plot rewards cultural literacy and thoughtful consideration. Did you ever expect a functional knowledge of the works of Ayn Rand to enhance a video game experience? I'm not saying Bioshock is the intellectual event of the year, but it does evoke thought and contemplation in players so inclined. And the first-person nature of the experience, in many ways, enhances those feelings beyond what a book or movie might be capable of.

All of this is aided by the compelling environment crafted by the designers. The submerged city has a 1950s art-deco feel, rendered in fabulous detail. Your initial descent to the city will be mind blowing, as you glimpse this surreal construction for the first time. It's hard not to skip a breath when you walk into a decadent but defunct nightclub, begin to piece together the history told by overturned tables and blood spattered on the walls, all while Billie Holiday croons from the phonograph in the corner. Rapture feels like it was lived in. It's various bits and pieces don't feel like fighting arenas. They have life and history, and stories to tell.

In the end, the designers have artfully leveraged the strengths of the video game medium to create a remarkably powerful and evocative experience. When the game ends, you will not be thinking about how similar it was to Deus Ex. You'll be thinking about how completely engrossed you were in the world of Rapture. And that's a success by any measure.

Moral Choices:

Bioshock aims to force the player into moral decisions through the Little Sisters. It is likely impossible to finish the game without obtaining the ADAM held by each girl, and each time you encounter one (after defeating the Big Daddy, of course), you are given a choice. You can "harvest" the girl, which extracts the maximum amount of ADAM by killing her, or you can "rescue" the girl, which trades some of the ADAM gained for a warm and fuzzy feeling.

Naturally, this aspect of the game has been controversial. Killing toddlers (even if they seems somewhat demonically possessed) is generally considered in poor taste. It makes sense within the game's dark plot, but it firmly sets the title in "not for children" territory.

Interestingly, despite the degree of moral offense that should accompany slaughtering children, these decisions ring hollow within the game, particularly after the first two or three Sisters. This is not a deficiency of the medium, but an error in presentation. The game does, in fact, reward you for saving the children. You are told so up front (even if the reward is not specifically identified). And for many gamers, the choice to save the girls will not come from any moral imperative, but from the desire to have those rewards. Had the game stuck to its guns, and asked you to trade power for morality, I think this aspect of the game would have been much stronger.

Other Hiccups:

Despite the magnificent presentation, Bioshock doesn't quite get everything right. I've already discussed the hacking mini-game drudgery and the repetition of enemies throughout the game.

Much has been made of Bioshock's lenient take on death. Getting killed merely warps you to the nearest "Vita-Chamber." When you emerge, nothing has changed. If you've half-killed a Big Daddy, for instance, you will still find his life bar at 50%. Although the game even goes so far as to explain why your character can avail himself of this remarkable convenience, it does diminish the challenge by a boatload. Many players will choose to restart from their most recent save rather than "cheat" with the game's default arrangement, and I'm inclined to agree with them.

The ultra-slick graphics are occasionally glitchy. Textures will occasionally pop in and out of existence. There were more than a few pools of blood on the floor which would vanish depending on the exact angle from which I viewed them. And the game had occasional non-fatal freeze-ups, where things would just lock for a few seconds. On my XBox 360, these usually happened when I picked up a new item or plasmid, and did not interfere with play. But I've read reports of slowdown and stickiness on other peoples' consoles.

The interface has a few frustrations. The most glaring is the complete inability to ever check your plasmid inventory without visiting a "gene bank." There is, similarly, no way to check your physical inventory. Want to know how many grenades you have? You'll have to equip the launcher to find out.

Although regular vending machines let you know how many of an item you're already carrying, the "U-Invent" machines do not. Say you want to build electric buckshot. The machine will tell you how many shots you can create, but it won't tell you how many you already have. So you need to back out of the machine's interface, equip the shotgun, and then switch to the electric buckshot, just to see how much you're carrying. If you don't, you risk creating more than you can carry, and wasting the materials.

The button assignments occasionally cause some trouble when you accidentally manage to waste a full syringe of plasmid power instead of hacking a turret like you intended.

And the climax and endgame are, sadly, a bit of a letdown. The game ends rather abruptly, and on a strangely dull note before tossing you back to the title screen. Plot-wise, the most exciting moments actually happen at around the 2/3 mark, and I think the story could have been paced better within the structure of the game.

These occasional frustrations stand out because they are found in such an otherwise accomplished game. While they occasionally annoy, they do not diminish the overall experience.

Summary:

Bioshock is not the second coming. Its gameplay mechanics have been lifted from countless games, and spliced like so many plasmids into this final product.

But the sum is more than its parts. Bioshock expertly weaves these components into a total package that is unlike anything you've ever seen. Never before have these elements of gameplay been so perfectly melded with storytelling, or so effectively used to evoke such pure wonder, fear, and (perhaps) moral confusion.

Although many reviewers have misaimed their praise, their perfect scores are well-deserved. Bioshock is a brilliant video game. If you own an XBox 360, there is simply no reason in the world not to own this title.