Bioshock Playthrough

Channel:

proa007

Subscribers:

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Published on March 17, 2022 11:00:00 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-bwl0cT1GBE

Game:

BioShock (2007)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 4:53:38

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2007, PS3, X360. Rating: 3.5 out of 4 stars

Bioshock is an interesting combination of dystopian sci-fi, film noir and some heady philosophical ideals (namely, objectivism). Yes, it still delivers the goods as a first-person shooter that has a few RPG elements thrown in with plasmids, which gave the gamer the ability to do more than shoot everything in sight. There’s plenty of that going on, too, but it’s little elements like these that help Bioshock be more than what it seems at first glance.

So, too, is the story, which involves our mostly silent protagonist, Jack, finding himself surviving a plane crash near a lighthouse that leads to Rapture. Rapture, created by industrialist Andrew Ryan, is an underwater city designed to let people make the most of themselves without the constraints of government or religion or other outside forces. As stated, it draws on Ayn Rand’s Objectivist philosophy, but it’s not a 1:1 parallel. And like any good dystopia, whatever good ideas Ryan had for his utopia have vanished by the time the game starts. The city is a hellish shell of what it once was with people genetically splicing themselves and behaving like monsters. This is the world Jack, with some help from Atlas, must navigate.

And what a world it is. The art direction is stunning and easily the high point of the game. Bioshock looks and feels like someone is stepping into the future through the past. The architecture and design is very much of the early 1960’s, but it has a sci-fi feel through the machinery and mechanics behind it. It’s an audacious piece of work and the world feels very alive and lived in.

The game itself, while using RPG elements, should feel familiar to FPS experts. Many of the areas you enter require a fetch quest to proceed to the next area, which gets a little tedious. There is plenty of explore and see and there are Big Daddies and Little Sisters to contend with, though this is optional. There is some weight to the choices of fighting the Big Daddies (who are quite formidable) and whether to save the children or not. This is rooted in another key theme of the game, which is free will. It’s a nice subversion of the silent protagonist often seen in first-person shooters and there does seem to be a reason for it.

Bioshock is ambitious in its ideas, but it still falls short in a few key areas. The vita-chambers, which are designed as checkpoints, make deaths somewhat meaningless in the game because you don’t lose any progress. In theory, the gamer can spam their way through most areas and fights without too much trouble. The second failing is the game loses momentum once the “big” plot twist is revealed (which isn’t too hard to guess). The final third of the game has some good setpieces, but it does feel like padding, at times.

While the novelty of Bioshock has somewhat worn off, the fantastic visuals and art direction remain potent today.

0:00 Prologue
5:04 Welcome to Rapture
17:31 Medical Pavilion
36:40 Neptune's Bounty
1:03:47 Smugglers' Hideout
1:08:21 Arcadia
1:24:06 Farmers' Market
1:42:35 Return to Arcadia
1:51:38 Fort Frolic
2:22:01 Hephaestus
3:08:04 Rapture Central Control
3:17:55 Olympus Heights
3:47:14 Apollo Square
4:02:20 Point Prometheus
4:33:59 Proving Grounds
4:48:18 Fontaine

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