BIOSHOCK 1 REVIEW BY PHILIP OSBORNE WILL GRIFFITHS

BIOSHOCK 1 REVIEW BY PHILIP OSBORNE, WILL GRIFFITHS AND TODD KYLE

SUMMARY- STORY • Bioshock 1 is a first-person shooter based in the 1960 s. It takes place in a mythical undersea city called Rapture that has been affected by drug addicts called splicers. You are a survivor from a plane crash that used a light house to get down to Rapture, you are helped by a man called Atlas to help you escape from Splicers, Little Sisters, Big Daddies and Andrew Ryan ( the creator of Rapture ).

SUMMARY PARTY 2 • The reviews of this game are generally positive from the online community. On Metacritic the average score is 8. 5 out of 10 with 298 bad reviews (<5/10), 412 mixed reviews (5/10) and 2, 946 good reviews (>5/10). On the same website they also gave professional critique reviews. Those were averaged at 96 out of 100 with no bad or mixed reviews. These reviews came from people like IGN and Eurogamer, there were 44 critique reviews overall. • The comments with this review say that the art style and moral choices are great and do a lot for it but the main positive of this game is the intricate story that develops throughout the game.

PLAYING TIME • The game can last anywhere between 7 to 15 hours. If you try to rush through the game you can complete it in 7 -9 hours but if you take your time and search everywhere thoroughly, it can take up to 15 hours.

DIFFICULTY CURVE They have 4 different difficulty modes; easy, medium, hard and survivor. Easy difficulty is designed for people who haven’t played first-person shooters whereas survivor is designed for hard-core gamers who are looking for a challenge. If you couldn’t tell that is a wide range. On Easy difficulty: • Enemies have 40% health (e. g. a default Thuggish Splicer has 40 health, and a standard Bouncer has 1100 health). • Enemies only do 17. 5% damage (e. g. a Pistol shot only does 3. 5 damage). • Enemies are less accurate and less agile. • Plasmids cost 50% EVE (aka half as much) (e. g. Enrage costs ~ 15 EVE). • Random loot is more generous. On Normal difficulty: • Enemies have 100% health (e. g. a default Thuggish Splicer has 100 health, and a standard Bouncer has 2750 health). • Enemies do 100% damage (e. g. a Pistol shot does 20 damage). • Enemies possess standard accuracy and agility. • Plasmids cost 100% EVE (e. g. Enrage! costs ~ 30 EVE). • Random loot is standard. On Hard difficulty: • Enemies have 155% health (e. g. a default Thuggish Splicer has 155 health, and a standard Bouncer has 4263 health). • Enemies do 150% damage (e. g. a Pistol shot does 30 damage). • Enemies are more accurate and more agile. • Plasmids cost 130% EVE (e. g. Enrage! costs ~ 39 EVE). • Random loot is less common. On Survivor difficulty: • Enemies have 240% health (e. g. a default Thuggish Splicer has 240 health, and a standard Bouncer has 6600 health). • Less EVE restored after dying and being resurrected by a Vita-Chamber • Enemies are very accurate and very agile. Random loot is scarce.

ART STYLE & THEME/ VIBE • Art style • Theme/ Vibe • The art style is based on an altered 1960’s style e. g. clothes and technology • The main themes of Bioshock are firstperson shooter, Biopunk style with a small amount of horror thrown in. It has a generally dark and dingy vibe to it. • The style as said before is based on very dull colours. Everything is very wet and very worn since it is an underwater city that is slowly falling apart. Everything is covered moss or other life that grows in damp spaces.

CORE PILLARS The core pillars of the Bioshock games are in the story its self. Like most multi-game series, the story carries on between games for instance assassin’s creed and the other games in the Bioshock series. If you were to give the fans a game that made no sense in the lore, then it would get a lot of bad reviews. For the Bioshock series there is a few things that are repeated in Bioshock infinite these are even stated as ‘variables and constants’. The constants are things like the light house at the start of the game, A strange city separated from the rest of the world, A man and a girl. Bioshock and Bioshock 2 these girl/s are the little sisters and the man is you however Bioshock infinite moved away from little sisters and had Elizabeth instead so there is room for variation. The only other core pillar is the long and confusing plot that will leave you with a headache what may not be as easy to replicate.

REPLAY ABILITY Something that is played upon in the Bioshock series is the idea of parallel dimensions. This may seem irrelevant but in short, each time you play through a new game of Bioshock the choices you make will always be different. The creators of Bioshock have said that each play through of the game is supposedly like playing through a similar yet slightly different parallel dimension. This may be a ploy to get you to keep playing the game however I think it is quite possible that when you replay the game it will feel different from the last time because of the choices you can make e. g. draining the little sisters of all of their adam and killing them in the process because you’re a drug addict or deciding to save them because you’re not some heartless monster. Sometimes it can be boring to replay through a story intensive game especially when you already know the ending but Bioshock won’t always feel like that.

UNIQUE SELLING POINTS To look at its unique selling points you will want to compare it to other FPS that came out at the same time as the original Bioshock did. Some of the better-known FPS from this year were TF 2, COD Modern Warfare and Half Life 2 episode 2. These games were very successful so they were unique in their own way but what made Bioshock different was most of things we have already mentioned. Unlike TF 2 it was a solo experience that didn’t require you to repeatedly do the same thing and unlike any COD game it has a story people are actually interested in (pause to laugh at call of duty) … Half Life 2 may have had a unique story may have been single player and may have had a better story than COD but it didn’t have controversial decisions of Bioshock ( I haven’t play Half Life 2 so I don’t know too much about it). Also Bioshock has an art/ environment style that hadn’t been used before.