Having played through BioShock now, I’m left with a desire to see more of the city of Rapture.  That game really didn’t end the way I wanted it to…  I would really have liked to see some kind of sandbox type mode at the end, so I could continue wandering around.

So, I’ve fired it up once more and I’m playing through it again…this time I plan on being evil - I’m going to harvest every Little Sister that I see.  Maybe the evil ending will be a bit more rewarding than the good one was.

So, I finished BioShock. Terrific game, lots of fun. Probably one of the better games I’ve played in a while…definitely the best shooter I’ve played in a very long time. Very atmospheric, very creepy, interesting storyline. I thoroughly enjoyed myself. But there are a few things I’m not terribly happy with…

As I’ve said elsewhere, I wasn’t much impressed with the moral dilemma presented in BioShock. The whole question of whether you harvest or rescue the Little Sisters just didn’t have that much of an impact on the game for me. Ultimately it appears to have affected the ending I got…but we’ll get to that later…

One of the things I saw advertised time and again was this moral dilemma with the Little Sisters. Review after review touched on it. It stirred up quite a bit of discussion - a game where you could choose to kill little girls, oh my! But ultimately it just really didn’t seem to matter much in the context of the game. There was no strong reason for you to choose one way or the other. You were never ADAM-starved enough that harvesting a Little Sister was really necessary, and they didn’t make the harvesting process gut-wrenching enough that you’d actually want to avoid it. The choice just didn’t matter.

And speaking of choices… This game, or the characters in it at least, talks a lot about choices. Ryan goes on and on about men and parasites…about choosing and obeying…about free will… Yet it seems that I had less choice in this game than your average shooter.

The game itself was very linear. You progressed from one area to the next, step by step, until you finally meet the boss. There was no back-tracking. There was no choice of which section to approach next. This is in rather stark contrast to BioShock’s predecessor System Shock 2. System Shock 2 had you traveling back and forth from one end of the ship to the next…doubling back on yourself…going back to open up new areas and pick up new tools… There was a real feeling of wandering almost aimlessly through a decaying spaceship. BioShock felt more like I was on rails.

There also wasn’t much choice in developing your character…or no difficult choices, at least. You could rebuild your character at any time. There were no consequences as a result of your choices. Beefed up your technical skills too high and you can’t kill a monster? No problem, just run back to the nearest Gene Bank and throw some stuff into combat instead.

Another choice that was notably missing is that of how to end the game. I understand that by choosing to rescue the Little Sisters throughout the game I have essentially chosen the “good” ending…but what if I was just setting them up for betrayal? What if my plan all along was to string them along, get their help, and then seize control of Rapture for myself? Well, too bad - you saved the Little Sisters so you have to be a good guy at the end.

I also felt that BioShock was, ultimately, too easy.  Yeah, I was playing on “normal” rather than “hard,” but it still should have been challenging.  As it is, there seemed to be plenty of ammunition and EVE to go around.  I never really had to worry about running out of resources.  I never had to avoid combat because it wasn’t worth the ammunition/EVE.  I never had to run and hide from anything, not even the Big Daddies.

It seems to me that a game set in a slowly dying undersea city should have more of a “survival horror” feel to it.  Some limited resources, or some overwhelming odds, or some unkillable enemies.  Something to really make you wonder if you’re going to get out of this alive.

And finally, I really don’t think they did enough with the setting of the game.  Rapture is a city built under the sea, you’re surrounded by water.  The city itself has been the victim of combat and negligence, it is slowly falling apart.  There are leaks here and there…showers of water falling from the ceiling…plenty of windows that look out into the ocean…  But the water itself never really poses a threat.

In the first few minutes of the game, as you’re being led through basically a gameplay tutorial, there is a moment where one of the tunnels collapses and you have to quickly run through to the other side as water rushes in around you.  That is the one and only time something like that happens.

I kept looking around at all the windows, waiting for one of them to shatter.  I kept waiting for a room to suddenly fill up with water.  I kept expecting to have to swim towards safety and slam some bulkhead behind me.  But it just didn’t happen.

With so much emphasis placed on the fact that Rapture was built beneath the sea…it was disappointing that the water just didn’t matter.  It could have been built in the middle of a desert for all that the water actually affected gameplay.

All of which is not to say that it was a bad game.  It really is very good.  I truly enjoyed myself over the last few days.  But I do think there are some things that could have been done better.

Well, I feel kind of stupid.  I just figured out how to hack the turrets in Bioshock.

I’ve been muttering about these damned turrets for about a week now.  It seems like you should be able to hack them…  You can hack just about anything else in the game…  And there are several places where characters make a reference to hacking the turrets or setting up a defense…  But I just couldn’t pull it off.

They’d shoot and shoot and shoot.  I’d run up, ducking and weaving, get into range…and not have the ability to hack them.  Wave the mouse cursor around, click frantically, hit the hack button…nothing.  Eventually I’d get so shot up that I’d have to kill the turret just to make it go away.

Turns out you need to disable them first with a blast from the Lightning Bolt plasmid.  Then you can stroll up and hack them all you want.

I’m really struck by how similar Bioshock is to System Shock 2.  This certainly isn’t a bad thing - System Shock 2 was a terrific game.  The problem is that there have been a few changes for the worse in Bioshock, which are made all the more noticeable by the obvious similarities to System Shock 2.

The skill system, for example, is completely gone.  Where you used to have to train up various skills in System Shock 2 you can now do pretty much anything and everything you want to right from the start in Bioshock.

In System Shock 2 you actually developed a character that was somewhat unique to your playstyle.  If I put lots of points into hacking and other technical skills my combat abilities would suffer - meaning that I would need to use my hacking and technical skills to overcome the challenges.  I couldn’t be both a master hacker and a master gunman.  It was one or the other.

Character development now consists of simply swapping in the right plasmids and tonics to suit your needs at the moment, and then replacing them with something else when your needs change.  There is really no penalty to changing your plasmids and tonics out.  All you have to do is find one of the many Gene Banks and spend a few moments pointing and clicking.

Research is also greatly simplified…  In System Shock 2 you’d have to collect a couple organs from your victim, then go locate the appropriate chemicals, then do the research.  I recall sitting in a relatively safe corner of one deck and looking at the map, wondering if it was worth the effort of traversing several monster-infested floors to get the chemicals I needed to complete my research.  In Bioshock you simply take a picture or two.  You may need to take several pictures…it may take you a few tries…but there is really very little time and effort involved in researching your enemies.

The inventory system is gone…which is both a blessing and a curse.  It’s much easier to keep track of your various ammo types in Bioshock, but it’s harder to keep track of everything else.  You can’t carry food around with you, there’s no body armor or anything like that, and there’s no straightforward way to keep track of all the various U-Invent components you’re carrying around.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m thoroughly enjoying Bioshock.  It just seems like a few things were changed that really shouldn’t have.

So, the developers are claiming that no two people will play Bioshock the same way. That every time you play it will be different in some way. And while I don’t want to call them lairs, I certainly haven’t seen any evidence of that yet.

Sure, I haven’t been playing all that long… I just got to Arcadia. But so far the game seems pretty linear. There really hasn’t been much choice of where I go or what I do. And most of the encounters have been very straightforward as well - no real chance to avoid the critters, and hardly any opportunity to do anything underhanded.

Hopefully things will get more interesting as the game progresses…