Bioshock

Platform: Xbox 360, also PC.
Verdict: Art Deco horror.
Rating: 4½/5
Every once in a while a game will come along and take your breath away – be it the enchanting Ico with its minimalist design or the brutal Gears of War with its destroyed beauty. Both games excel beyond mere aesthetics but they’re always the first thing you notice about a game. Bioshock is one of the most stunning games yet and thankfully its qualities also extend far beyond eye candy.
Set in the underwater city of Rapture, a 1930’s vision of utopia, Bioshock tells the tale of a lone survivor of a plane crash seeking refuge amidst a city gone to ruin. Guided over short wave radio through the sumptuous Art Deco nightmare by the uncannily persuasive Atlas, you’re a fish out of water in a world gone insane. Signs of a civil uprising are apparent and the hedonism that fuelled the city has spiralled out of control as its inhabitants found themselves hooked on genetic upgrades that lead to madness.
Playing much like the unsurpassed Deus Ex, Bioshock is an FPS with an RPG edge. Mixing 30’s aesthetics with sci-fi technology and genetic modification, it gives you plenty of tools to fight with. Your eventual arsenal of modified guns is backed up by Plasmids, the DNA scramblers that re-programme your genetic structure and grant you abilities like telekinesis and lightning attacks - but will they send you mad?
The inhabitants of Rapture are a dangerous bunch but none more so than the lumbering Big Daddies that moan like blue whales as they escort the Little Sisters – GM girls sent out into the city to harvest corpses for rare genetic material. This unlikely pair are central to Rapture and its story and provide the game’s moral crux and subsequent ramifications – to harvest or rescue the sub-human sisters.
With shades of Metropolis, 1984 and Atlas Shrugged, Bioshock is a horrific dystopian vision with one of gaming’s most triumphant narratives (and twists), buoyed by stunning Art Deco aesthetics, fantastic voice acting and carried by solid and occasionally innovative gameplay.
Now would you kindly play this game…