PCs aren’t considered to be the premier platform for video games. Instead, designers come out with game after game for consoles like the Xbox 360 and the Wii.

But when it was released on Aug. 21, BioShock stormed both PCs and game consoles with its captivating storyline and complex enemies – a revolution in the first-person shooter (FPS) genre.

First-person shooters are simple. Players travel around, weapon out in front of them, blasting apart all that is in their way. BioShock is not different.

The game is set in a fictional underwater utopia called Rapture. Being a hardcore FPS gamer, I had high expectations for this so-called ‘prodigy game.’

Rapture was created and designed by Andrew Ryan, the fictional mastermind who will stop at nothing to have his city flourish.

The game’s protagonist, Jack, must survive his time in the underwater city after a plane crash.

When Jack arrives, it is clear the dangers he will face. Ryan discovered a way to genetically alter the DNA of humans by giving them special abilities called Plasmids.

The abilities of these Plasmids range from the control of electricity and bees to telekinesis and more. The only way to gain these abilities in the game, though, is with an unknown substance called ‘Adam,’ which is needed to purchase new Plasmids.

These Plasmids can prove to be quite effective when facing multiple enemies. No matter how many times you battle, it’s never the same and the enemies never attack in the same manner, which is one thing that makes the game so challenging.

If you’re a simple FPS gamer and you just like to just plain shoot things, then you’ll love the arsenal of weapons allotted to you.

They range from a six shooter to a chemical thrower that spews out electric gel to liquid Nitrogen and everyone’s favorite: Napalm.

Plasmids are the main cause of Rapture’s failure, as well as the main cause of all of your problems when facing enemies.

In BioShock, the most common enemy is the ‘Splicer,’ a kind of psychopathic experiment gone wrong. These are humans who went insane from overdosing on Plasmids, and they seem to run around in a frenzy, attacking anything they can to get more Plasmids.

Splicers can cause an awful lot of ruckus, and they are one of the more interesting aspects of the game. When attacked by a Splicer, you are never quite sure from which direction they are coming because not only are they fast, they’re smart, too.

The difficulty of trying to defeat the enemies is intense and the game design gives the player freedom when going against certain obstacles.

The graphics, however, are a disappointment.

Here is where BioShock didn’t hit the nail quite on the head. I was unimpressed by most of the visual effects in the game. It was nothing a serious PC gamer hasn’t seen before in a first-person shooter.

Being as Rapture is falling apart and literally destroyed from the inside, not to mention in an underwater world, water needed to be a major part of the game, and it was. Unfortunately, the water distracted me from all the other graphic flaws.

Graphic imperfections aside, BioShock improved on the first-person shooter genre and provides plenty of gameplay that makes the game last a decent amount of time while the story lines have plenty of twists to keep you guessing.

Published on September 26, 2007 at 12:00 pm