Since I'm sick anyway - headaches, coughs and sneezes kinda take the fun out of everything - I can as well do something productive with my downtime, resulting in this here fine post about one of the greatest game evah: Bioshock.
"I am Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? 'No!' says the man in Washington, 'It belongs to the poor.' 'No!' says the man in the Vatican, 'It belongs to God.' 'No!' says the man in Moscow, 'It belongs to everyone.' I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose...Rapture, a city where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city, as well."
1960. After a planecrash in the middle of the ocean, the player in this First-Person-Shooter can save himself to a strange tower, leading directly to an underwater city - aforementioned Rapture. Build by Mogul Andrew Ryan, this Ayn-Rand-like Utopia should be a place where the inhabitants would be free of social and political, even ethical rules. But as the player can see and hear over the radio by his mysterious self-acclaimed new mentor Atlas, something went terribly wrong.
Since the backstory of rapture, how it came to be into this devastated state and what the frak all those strange creatures are, is told mainly in scattered audio-tapes or over the radio, the player is thrown right into a very very strange and scary environment with little to no clue to the bigger picture. The city is in ruins and plagued by it's former inhabitants turned into zombie-like "Splicers". Little girls with yellow eyes wander around, poking red needles into the dead. They harvest the so-called ADAM which could be used to genetically upgrade a person with plasmids (active "spells" like firing electroshocks or using telekinesis) and gene-tonics (passive "buffs" that raise abilities and probabilities). It would be easy to free those girls or harvest them for ADAM for yourself, if it weren't for their protectors, the hulking Big Daddies.
"You think that's a child down there? Don't be fooled. She's a Little Sister now. Somebody went and turned a sweet baby girl into a monster. Whatever you thought about right and wrong on the surface, well that don't count for much down in Rapture. Those Little Sisters, they carry ADAM- the genetic material that keeps the wheels of Rapture turning. Everybody wants it. Everybody needs it."
As if the dwelling creatures wouldn't be scary enough, the darkness is accompanied by a very strange 50's style in everything. Cartoonish Vending machines, neon-lit signs, black and white "infomercials", horrible jingles... this tainted version of the perfect city would give the Stepford Wives the creeps.
Before I venture further into the atmosphere and story, a few words to the gameplay. As in most FPS the player has a constantly growing arsenal of pretty standardy weapons (which can be upgraded later on in a very cool way: the bigger clip-size of the revolver is realised through a second big roll glued right onto the gun) and the plasmids. The usage of the latter require doses of EVE, a blue liquid, that has to be injected directly into the arm, health is restored with First-Aid-Kits. The player can hack security turrets, flying drones, cameras and safes to make his life easier. The Ammunition limit is pretty low, I usually was out of electric-shot-gun-ammo after one fight against a big daddy. Later in the game, the player can photograph enemies to research them to get boni and special tonics out of research, and he can produce his own ammo with found materials. The player can't really die, when health goes out, he's resurrected in a Vita-Chamber (which could be pretty far away from the spot the player went down). But as cool as the gameplay is, let's get back to Rapture.
"When Picasso became bored of painting people, he started representing them as cubes and other abstract forms. The world called him a genius! I've spent my entire surgical career creating the same tired shapes, over and over again: the upturned nose, the cleft chin, the ample bosom. Wouldn't it be wonderful if I could do with a knife what that old Spaniard did with a brush?"
Though it's sometimes hard to follow the storytelling, I found the way it's done pretty genius. You're completly alone in a hostile environment, even the few non-spliced people you meet are lunatics and you're best friend is the radio. The two plotlines - one recapturing fragments of the events before the arrival of the player, the other the mission of bringing down Andrew Ryan (voiced by Armin "Quark/Principal Snyder" Shimerman, btw.) - are solely (with few exceptions) told through the radio, so that the scary loneliness is almost never disturbed. Little after the middle of the game, the story takes an interesting twist, that left me jawdropped - how nice that the roommate is playing the game now so I can rewatch some of the earlier scenes from a different angle.
After reading this post I kinda realize you just have to see and play the game for yourself, you can't describe it very well. Maybe try a demo like I did. Oh - part two is announced for later this year, and there are rumors of a movie. FYI.
"I am Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? 'No!' says the man in Washington, 'It belongs to the poor.' 'No!' says the man in the Vatican, 'It belongs to God.' 'No!' says the man in Moscow, 'It belongs to everyone.' I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose...Rapture, a city where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city, as well."
1960. After a planecrash in the middle of the ocean, the player in this First-Person-Shooter can save himself to a strange tower, leading directly to an underwater city - aforementioned Rapture. Build by Mogul Andrew Ryan, this Ayn-Rand-like Utopia should be a place where the inhabitants would be free of social and political, even ethical rules. But as the player can see and hear over the radio by his mysterious self-acclaimed new mentor Atlas, something went terribly wrong.
Since the backstory of rapture, how it came to be into this devastated state and what the frak all those strange creatures are, is told mainly in scattered audio-tapes or over the radio, the player is thrown right into a very very strange and scary environment with little to no clue to the bigger picture. The city is in ruins and plagued by it's former inhabitants turned into zombie-like "Splicers". Little girls with yellow eyes wander around, poking red needles into the dead. They harvest the so-called ADAM which could be used to genetically upgrade a person with plasmids (active "spells" like firing electroshocks or using telekinesis) and gene-tonics (passive "buffs" that raise abilities and probabilities). It would be easy to free those girls or harvest them for ADAM for yourself, if it weren't for their protectors, the hulking Big Daddies.
"You think that's a child down there? Don't be fooled. She's a Little Sister now. Somebody went and turned a sweet baby girl into a monster. Whatever you thought about right and wrong on the surface, well that don't count for much down in Rapture. Those Little Sisters, they carry ADAM- the genetic material that keeps the wheels of Rapture turning. Everybody wants it. Everybody needs it."
As if the dwelling creatures wouldn't be scary enough, the darkness is accompanied by a very strange 50's style in everything. Cartoonish Vending machines, neon-lit signs, black and white "infomercials", horrible jingles... this tainted version of the perfect city would give the Stepford Wives the creeps.Before I venture further into the atmosphere and story, a few words to the gameplay. As in most FPS the player has a constantly growing arsenal of pretty standardy weapons (which can be upgraded later on in a very cool way: the bigger clip-size of the revolver is realised through a second big roll glued right onto the gun) and the plasmids. The usage of the latter require doses of EVE, a blue liquid, that has to be injected directly into the arm, health is restored with First-Aid-Kits. The player can hack security turrets, flying drones, cameras and safes to make his life easier. The Ammunition limit is pretty low, I usually was out of electric-shot-gun-ammo after one fight against a big daddy. Later in the game, the player can photograph enemies to research them to get boni and special tonics out of research, and he can produce his own ammo with found materials. The player can't really die, when health goes out, he's resurrected in a Vita-Chamber (which could be pretty far away from the spot the player went down). But as cool as the gameplay is, let's get back to Rapture.
"When Picasso became bored of painting people, he started representing them as cubes and other abstract forms. The world called him a genius! I've spent my entire surgical career creating the same tired shapes, over and over again: the upturned nose, the cleft chin, the ample bosom. Wouldn't it be wonderful if I could do with a knife what that old Spaniard did with a brush?"
Though it's sometimes hard to follow the storytelling, I found the way it's done pretty genius. You're completly alone in a hostile environment, even the few non-spliced people you meet are lunatics and you're best friend is the radio. The two plotlines - one recapturing fragments of the events before the arrival of the player, the other the mission of bringing down Andrew Ryan (voiced by Armin "Quark/Principal Snyder" Shimerman, btw.) - are solely (with few exceptions) told through the radio, so that the scary loneliness is almost never disturbed. Little after the middle of the game, the story takes an interesting twist, that left me jawdropped - how nice that the roommate is playing the game now so I can rewatch some of the earlier scenes from a different angle.
After reading this post I kinda realize you just have to see and play the game for yourself, you can't describe it very well. Maybe try a demo like I did. Oh - part two is announced for later this year, and there are rumors of a movie. FYI.
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