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If you're a fan of shooters but have got tired of killing terrorists, monsters and members of the Axis of Evil, BioShock might be a nice change for you. Set in an alternate 1960, you play Jack, a plane crash survivor, who ends up in a secret, underwater city called Rapture.  The city was conceived and constructed as an Utopian society for the best of humanity by a scientist named  Andrew Ryan. But in addition to creating the city, Ryan spent much of his time studying and performing experiments in genetic manipulation. So the city is overrun by mutated beings called splicers which Ryan sends to kill you, because he's gone a wee bit insane himself. As Jack, you explore the city and try to find a way to stop Andrew Ryan and his creations. In addition to the splicers, creatures called Big Daddies wander around the city. Genetically enhanced beings in antique diving suits with drill-bits and guns for hands, Big Daddies are often seen offering protection to Little Sisters, who are little girls whose genetic makeup were altered. The splicers ttack Big Daddies as they want to drain these Little Sisters of their life force and harvest their ADAM, a mutagen the splicers can use to enhance their own genetic makeup. Big Daddies generally leave you alone unless you attack them first. But if you kill them, you can also harvest these Little Sisters and use the ADAM you receive to alter your genes and give you special abilities at a machine called the Gatherer's Garden. You can procure a variety of enhancements here, from simply increasing your maximum health, to adding “active plasmids” that give you the ability to electrify things, set them on fire, freeze them etc. Alternatively, you can choose to rescue the Little Sister whose Big Daddy you just killed. You remove her genetic changes without killing her and she can go back to being a happy, little girl. But you receive far less ADAM as a result. How you treat the Little Sisters affects the outcome of the game. Other vending machines in the game will offer you such things as health, weapons and EVE hypos  which you can use to recharge your plasmids. In case you missed all of the religious references so far, Ryan was trying to create a new Eden. His Gatherer's Garden offers up genetic manipulation using a piece of ADAM while EVE is needed to maintain it. And the city is called Rapture, which of course, is when God judges the world and brings all the truly worthy up to heaven but people like Kirk Cameron wonder why there were left behind. Granted, the religious significance here is more to show the classic insanity of a mad scientist playing God than actually alluding to God Himself. Still, ADAM and EVE seemed to have destroyed the new Eden as they have driven the inhabitants crazy. BioShock's strength lies in its setting and atmosphere. The reason the game stands out is because you get to explore a bunch of art deco buildings with a cyberpunk aesthetic that play tinny recordings of old-time music, such as “Buddy, Can You Spare a Dime?” and “Danny Boy.” All the while, you're fighting off crazed mutants dressed in decades-old evening wear. And some splicers are inexplicably wearing cat or bunny masks that will make you feel like you're in the middle of that disturbing costume party in The Shining. But when you take that and the strange narrative away, it's not much more than your garden variety first-person shooter. Despite giving the impression there may be some puzzle-solving involved in the gameplay, the only puzzles to solve are when you try to hack machines. You can reduce the cost of items in vending machines, reprogram security bots and gun turrets, crack safes etc. To successfully hack something, you have to complete the path from one piece of pipe to another using pieces you uncover from the screen before the flow of onrushing water spills out in what is an homage/rip-off of the old computer game Pipe Dream. If you fail to complete the pipework in time, you electrocute yourself and lose health. But you can usually buyout the hack with enough money or use an auto-hacking tool if you have one instead. For what BioShock is, it's a decent game. But if you like shooters or really have any gaming experience, I would suggest not to set it on easy as then you're virtually indestructible. I forgot to pause the game at one point when I switched back to watching TV. I was being attacked for a good hour by various   creatures running around and when I switched back, I still hadn't been killed. Granted, I was almost dead. But all I needed to do was use one of my nine first aid kits and I was fine. Then again, it's kind of fun acting like a monster in a horror movie as I would interrupt splicers in mid conversation and they would go all out, shooting me with machine guns and the like. Then I'd casually walk over to them and bash their heads in with my trusty wrench. Betcha Solid Snake and Sam Fisher couldn't do that. BioShock Format: Playstation 3 Publisher: 2K Games Developer: 2K Marin ESRB Rating: M for Mature Official Site: http://www.2kgames.com/bioshock/ Rating: 7 / 10

 

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