This review contains big spoilers for the original Bioshock game, basically revealing the core plotline. If you are just here to see if you should play it, then the answer is undoubtedly a resounding yes.
Would you kindly?
Powerful words. A polite way of asking someone to do something for you. On the surface it’s a completely innocent phrase, and on its own it is nothing more than that. But the writers of the 2007 game Bioshock use it to manipulate us and show us one of the most incredible stories that video gaming has been able to share with us. In my journey to make it through my gaming backlog I have included a couple of games I wanted to replay again since it has been many years, and the Bioshock series is part of this. Mainly because I never got the second game to work on my computer back in the day, so I only played the original Bioshock and then Infinite. Now I’m replaying the entire trilogy.
Bioshock takes place in the underwater city of Rapture. Built by an oligarch named Andrew Ryan, it is supposed to be a paradise away from the regular constraints of society. No pesky government to take your taxes from you, no pesky morality, no one bossing you around, just working hard and expressing yourself in the ways you want to express yourself. What could possibly go wrong? That’s where we come in. At the time we first make our way into Rapture, things have already gone horribly wrong. Most of the people living in the underwater city have fully lost their minds and the culprit is a substance named Adam. Without going full midichlorian on you, Adam is a substance that allows you to alter your body and give you superpowers. It rewrites your DNA and it is used to power up the protagonist in the games. The problem with Adam is that most get addicted to it and it makes the person unstable. This results in the addicts we fight throughout the game known as splicers. They were once humans who – due to using Adam on their body – have totally lost it. Then we also have the big daddies and little sisters, who go around harvesting the Adam from deceased splicers. Big daddies are guys in big suits that walk around protecting the little sister, a genetically modified little girl that can harvest Adam from corpses. In this crazy underwater world, we need to find a way back to safety and our only ally in all of this is a man by the name of Atlas.
Atlas tells us that his family is stuck and he’s trying to escape with them to the surface, and if we would so kindly assist him in his escape. We’re a good guy, so we obviously do and we soon come face to face with our first little sister, making the most important decision of the game. Do we harvest her or do we save her? We’re a good guy, so we obviously saved her. In neither of my playthroughs did I have the heart to go for the bad ending. We now get a little bit of Adam and the thanks of Tenenbaum, the person who seems to be responsible for these girls’ condition but is now trying to fix her ways. We continue our journey through Rapture and meet all sorts of strange people, most of whom are trying to kill us. Eventually we get to the escape pod for Atlas’ family but Andrew Ryan kills them. Now fueled by revenge, our goal is to go after the man himself, the capitalist anti-government creep named Andrew Ryan. After making our way through parts of Rapture, fixing up some systems and disabling some guard systems, we go into Ryan’s office and “kindly kill the son of a bitch.” It is here that Ryan reveals to us that we were a sleeper agent all along, working for Atlas – nay, Frank Fontaine – and being activated by the phrase would you kindly. On my first playthrough I did not expect this twist at all. Ryan manipulates this phrase to get us to kill him and we’re now at the mercy of Atlas who tells us to kill ourselves, but fails. It turns out that Frank Fontaine (Atlas), Tenenbaum and a scientist by the name of Dr. Suchong were the ones who created us and faked our personality while putting the activation phrases in our head. Tenenbaum feels remorse and removes some of the damage from us, while Suchong was killed by a big daddy during an experiment. Most of this lore we learn through audio logs that you can find throughout Rapture and it’s really nice that you can just hit play on those while you continue the game or choose to listen to them and wait. This is a feature more storygames need to add. Either way, we now have a new task. Deal with Frank Fontaine and save the little sisters.
The gameplay of Bioshock is mostly a lot of fun because of the resource management. You get money and ammunition from enemies as well as health and Eve hypos (mana). Yes, you need Eve to use more of your Adam powers. What makes it fun is that if you aren’t great at shooters – like me – you need to plan ahead, especially when fighting a big daddy. So put down some traps, make sure you have some grenades and anti-armor rounds and look for a spot where you can kite the enemies enough to have some cover. That last part feels like it is often a lost cause. The game isn’t so hard that it’s a problem, but I do remember struggling a lot more on my first playthrough. I didn’t play games as much as I do now, so I was really bad. Now it wasn’t that hard and the final boss fight felt very easy, but none of that detracted from my enjoyment at all.
What stands out in Bioshock to me isn’t so much the gameplay – which is solid considering it is a 20 year old game – but most of all the atmosphere. The combination of often somber and intense music with the dark environment, the beautiful ocean floor and the real feeling of Bioshock being a space that was once thriving – we get to see some of this in a DLC for Bioshock Infinite – makes this a truly haunting experience. I will never forget a scene early on in the game where we first get our shotgun. Right after picking it up from the corpse of a splicer, the lights turn off and we’re stuck with only a small spotlight. In the dark we can hear other splicers moving around and taunting us, before they attack us in waves. That scene genuinely freaked me out both times I played through it. The vending machines have some of the most memorable marketing tunes and add onto it a sometimes fun, sometimes very frustrating hacking minigame and you even managed to make shopping a tense experience.
There is much more to talk about when it comes to this game, which is impressive considering you can get through it in less than 10 hours if you rush things, but I recommend taking your time. I am not one who cares much for story in video games. I find that it’s often hard to tell a truly good story that can compete with movies or books in the setting of a video game, since the gameplay can sometimes take you out of it. But the way Bioshock feeds you information while you play, doesn’t force you to stand still and listen, but really lets you experience things at your own pace, while constantly keeping you occupied and tense really works wonders. Even if you did play this game when you were younger, I would recommend you play it again if it has been a while. Or let me rephrase that. Would you kindly (re)play the Bioshock series? Thanks for reading.
Opal Kaharis 