The embargo period is over and finally we're allowed to talk about what we saw at 2K and Irrational's BioShock event in New York. Read on for the lowdown on the hottest game set in a 1940s alternate underwater world, ever!
Bioshock - New York
Friday Jun 08 2007, Cover by kreese
It’s a freezing night and I’m surrounded by stars. Real ones, not the frail human beings whose lives gossip mags and tv shows insinuate are more important than ours. These stars are looking down on the international games press as we bundle out of warm coaches and into a edgy urban space on the lower west side of New York.
The wind is whipping straight from the Hudson River a block or so over so we hustle inside. What we’re here for: an exclusive first look at BioShock, one of the most prominent games vying for our hard earned this year.
Everyone is here. MTV, the nucleus of a miniature galaxy of wannabe-game personalities that is coalescing in the States. There’s even the English games press, refreshingly sarcastic and dour in the face of such extravagance.
A central bar adorns the event space, with a massive projected screen at the end of the room. Flanking the bar is a netcafe-style array of twin screens and Xbox 360s. Later on – we all know – they will be running BioShock code.
Before long the place is packed. The stage area, off to the right of the projector wall has attracted a small forest of boom mics and video camera tripods. Things are about to get underway so I use a level of rudeness and physical imposition that only years of travel on Sydney rail can teach to get myself into prime position.
We’re taken on a ride through the opening sequence of BioShock by Irrational Games headman Ken Levine. As we drift beneath the water into the 40s themed alt-world of Rapture – the detailed storyline depicts how Andrew Ryan, the creator of the world sought a better reality.
As they always do, things go wrong in utopia. The undersea locals discover Adam, a genetic altering substance found in sea slugs, and before you know it the same old story of humanity one-upping each other leads to chaos. Enter you.
The projector wall looked fine, but every one of the attendees was stinging to get a look at how it was on the small screen. And so we did.
If you look at it dispassionately, BioShock should be up against it. In our current world obsessed with online and ever expanding player limits, it’s a throwback. You play BioShock solo. No multiplayer. It uses the glorious looking Unreal 3 engine, but so what – Gears of War was doing this last year. And it’s a first person shooter. Nothing against FPSes, but they aren’t exactly news.
To succeed against the status quo – and even to gain the level of attention BioShock has to date – is a pretty good signal that the game itself delivers more than the sum of its parts may indicate. And when you grab the controller and play for even a few minutes – we were gifted several hours, albeit across a couple of levels – you get what the buzz is about.
BioShock is one of the rare games that actually aims for a proper alt-history based storyline and delivers. The likes of Resistance: Fall of Man fell flat for many because the storyline had the best of intentions, but seemed awfully game-y. The world of Rapture, the failed aspirations of its creator, and the deterioration of society through the perversion of human nature all resonate in this world.. Not only does the storyline seem eminently credible as a concept, its execution is stellar – at least from the play we’ve engaged in and parts we’ve seen. As our video feature will reveal – Irrational made a conscious decision to go the route less travelled in design – get the creative souls and educate them about game development’s realities, rather than grab a bunch of coders and get them brainstorming and drawing.
Of course, by going heavy on story there’s a risk. Irrational are aiming for the players who are ready to immerse themselves into this world. If you’re an objective based gamer who views a storyline as window dressing for the next boss fight, you’ll be missing the point of BioShock.
That’s the intangibles. The actual meat of the game is stunning. The theming is pure 40s – the era that we’ve seen on old fashioned movie posters and science fiction paperbacks of times gone by. There’s such a feeling of authenticity here that you feel like Wikipediaing up the WWII and beyond period to double check you didn’t miss anything.
Moving around is as smooth and lush as you can expect from the engine that also powered Gears of War. We’ll save detailed discussion for the review but the preliminary impression is that the effects are fantastic – especially the fluid dynamics – which is just as well, given the game is underwater – but the execution maybe stops a few degrees shy of the awe-inspiring visual effort in Gears.
That’s not saying the visuals in BioShock are anything but superb. The character models have scarily realistic animation, and the level of interaction with the scenery is nothing short of stellar. The gameplay – at least in the initial levels – is very linear. But because the storyline is woven so tightly to the play you have the feeling that you’re doing actions you *should* be doing. There’s no “perform idiotically random action to achieve objective” stuff in here.
Combat of course comes into play early. With the Sea Slugs conveniently made extinct, and everyone and their dog in Rapture being transformed into Splicers (bad guys) via their consumption of the superpower-gifting Adam, you need to clean house on a regular basis. By collecting Adam yourself, you can then spending up on nifty powers to go along with merely toting a handy cudgel or firearm. And the game makes you
use these powers. Try taking out some of the early bad guys with brute strength and you’re in for a pasting. You need to think about your attack sequencing here.
The best news is that there’s multiple ways to go about dispatching foes here. Running straight up to them and wailing on them simply won’t work. Often your type of enemy will necessitate a lengthy game of cat and mouse as you stalk each other around a room. It’s the kind of AI experience that’s not often seen in gaming – and while we haven’t yet seen any scenes where a whole pack of enemies systematically spread out and hunt you – the tension that can be achieved by one intelligent enemy coming after you is superior to having a football team’s worth of kamikazes.
And while Irrational and 2K are keen for people to receive BioShock as a first person shooter, there’s unmistakeable RPG elements in place here. You won’t ever mistake this for Fallout, but you can and do need to upgrade your abilities and use your head a lot more than a point-to-point shooter.
Probably the most controversial aspect we saw – and one bound to rear its head in the future – is a scene you will see replicated many times in the game. In it, a Little Sister – a possessed junior-burger genetically constructed kid – cowers before you after you dispatch one of the game’s idiosyncratic bad guys – the old-fashioned deep diving-suit clad Big Daddy. Your choice is to do the genetic equivalent of an exorcism of the kid, or harvest her for her Adam. If you thought the spooky girl in F.E.A.R. was a little strange this is downright disturbing for anyone with any imagination – especially if you go the harvest route. It wouldn’t surprise if we heard more about this from mainstream media – despite there being no gratuitous gore.
And so it goes with BioShock. You don’t tell a good story nowadays without some controversy and spice. And you don’t get a single player game off the starting blocks unless it has a kick ass story. Them’s the breaks. By the end of the night most of us have seen and / or played through the levels on offer multiple times. The verdict – a big thumbs up. With plenty of punters still playing as staff usher attendees into the now arctic post-midnight Manhattan chill, it’s about as good as a result that any game publisher can hope to achieve. The final vote of confidence – as always – will be you.
For our exclusive interview with Irrational Games' Ken Levine,
click here and be sure to stay tuned for our special video feature on BioShock, heading your way next week.
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