Raising the bar for a videogame these days takes some doing. It used to be that creating a wholly original IP was as simple as, say, taking a 2D shooter, placing it in three dimensions and giving the player a first-person perspective. But creating a completely new genre normally isn’t viable and that particular avenue of opportunity has dramatically narrowed since the Nineties; arguably the last big commercial game that carved its own genre in the market was GTA III. Even generating conventional new ideas within each genre is beginning to dry up and it’s prompting developers to explore other ways of stimulating our senses and the steadily growing sophistication of our gaming palate. You’ll have noticed that with this generation of consoles graphics are becoming incredibly photo-realistic, music and sound effects have bigger ambitions than those of a Hollywood movie and the less tangible subtleties of gameplay are almost set in granite – almost.

And it’s probably because of this that times are a-changing in the games industry, that games have expanded to reach a broader demographic and fulfil their most obvious potential as an entertainment medium. Over the next few years we’re predicting a renaissance as major titles begin to move in a new direction. BioShock is a transitional game in this respect, straddling both the contemporary and the revolutionary. On the surface it’s obviously a firstperson shooter and, looking at these screenshots, a very attractive first-person shooter at that. Having described it to you in our preview, you’d be forgiven for thinking it was merely a very good, very attractive first-person shooter. But Irrational’s latest progeny is so much more than the sum of its parts.

“No Gods or Kings,” states the message on the red banner in the grand entrance lobby of the lighthouse, “Only Man”. It’s one of the many maxims you’ll encounter, recorded in a variety of media, on your journey through Andrew Ryan’s utopian dream. This is the ethos of Rapture, an underwater city steeped in the ideals of self-sufficiency, total independence from the rest of the world and an intellectual higher ground. That was the idea anyway, but in one of the many profound statements Ryan makes in BioShock – “Rapture was betrayed by the weak” – and through genetic experimentation gone disturbingly awry, the metropolis is turned into a ruined freak show of insane mutant Splicers and grisly corpses. It’s not a nice place to live if you’re remotely lucid, yet there are a number of people who apparently still have a tenuous grip on their sanity and choose to stay, where others have fled, died horribly or are turned more mental than a bag of frogs.

The first few stunning minutes of BioShock that see you swimming away from the wreckage of an aeroplane, stepping into the ominous lighthouse that marks the entrance to Rapture and descending into the bathysphere, seize a firm grip on your attention by the time you’re actually allowed to play the game complete with HUD and plasmid abilities. Right up to the moment your enigmatic guide, Atlas, introduces himself, it’s a visually stunning and intellectually intriguing sequence of events designed to hook you, presumably until the next event of some significance happens, although BioShock manages to maintain this same level of interest without a single lull throughout your entire journey. If it’s not treating you to the kind of antique eye candy David Dickinson would dribble over, or engrossing you in its whodunnit plot, then the sophisticated gameplay mechanics are holding your interest for the time being. Any game worth a seven out of ten score or more will do this, but the times when it falls to any single one of these major criteria to carry the game for you in BioShock are few and far between; it just keeps surprising, stimulating and stunning all your senses for most of the time – and visually it’s unprecedented.

Built in 1943, the artistic direction of this period that’s prevalent in every facet of Rapture will strike you as one of the most unique elements of BioShock. You like Art Deco? Then you’ve got it with geometrically precise knobs on here. Not that we’re pretending to be vaguely artistic here, but we never thought sepia-toned photographs and posters, black-and-white cinema and rooms saturated in primary-coloured floodlights would ever make a compatible trio, but it works for BioShock and it certainly does the business for us. We were especially inspired when watching a Big Daddy stomp through a room flooded in bloodred light, shrouded in steam hissing from the damaged valves on its backpack; we wanted a pet Big Daddy firstly and secondly, perhaps a red lightbulb would be a good look for the beige bedroom after all…

Rapture is a big city, which has given Irrational scope for locations that are quite distinct from one another. Among the most interesting from a visual perspective are the garden of Arcadia and the farmer’s market, Point Prometheus and especially Fort Frolic. Up until this level you’ve had little contact with any NPC but Andrew Ryan and Atlas, who appear to fulfil the black and white stereotypes of the evil antagonist and the protagonist’s crutch; Fort Frolic is a resplendently Art Deco theatre with Sander Cohen as the barmy choreographer and musician who runs the joint. He’s the personification of Ryan’s city: a definitive Noel Coward-type and a mad theatrical genius who strives for musical and creative perfection and nothing less. Less in Rapture, it seems, is severely punished with the disturbingly casual regard for life typical of Ryan’s regime. Yet once you’ve fulfilled your side of the bargain, Cohen is happy to honour his by unlocking your way forward. It’s the first time you’ll actually get to meet an NPC in person and the ironic part is that you can kill Cohen as soon as you’re done with him, and you’ll even be rewarded for it too.

Having this underlying theme of morality isn’t a new concept in games, Knights Of The Old Republic bombarded you with dialogue and action-based choices and most games with the merest hint of role-play will move your moral status along a similar linear slider. BioShock isn’t revolutionary in this area, the decisions you’re given are black and white and the effect of these is to advance you down a good or evil path toward an alternative ending. We had hoped for a more complex and subtle sense of right and wrong in the actual options BioShock gives you, but the moral sophistication we sought and couldn’t find in our choices as a player is more than made up for in the storyline. It becomes rapidly apparent to anyone with half a brain that the line that separates good and evil, if there is one, is extremely blurred in Rapture. Ryan’s evil regime has twisted the minds of his citizens and compelled the rabidly insane Splicers to engage in hideous acts of evil and brutality. They attack you on sight, they’ll attack Little Sisters in their thirst for more of the gene-altering Adam and they’ll ostensibly work together towards a common goal, but will stab each other in the back before sharing the spoils. Essentially, though, it’s not their fault. Even Dr Steinman, a warped plastic surgeon who you’ll meet within the first few hours of play and who strives for an unattainable level of perfection in his patients, mutilating them in the process, was driven insane by his own plasmid abuse. The only relatively wholesome character who questions whether the maligned nature of Rapture is truly evil, is Dr Tenenbaum, who goes so far as to sympathise with the plight of Rapture’s residents, comparing them to Nazi concentration camp officers and musing as to whether the fact that most were institutionalised and encouraged by their mutual cause makes them evil.

And then there’s your own confused morality as a player in control of the protagonist: no point in BioShock is more poignant as when you’re confronted with the option of killing a Little Sister for a large amount of Adam, or turning her back into a normal child for a lesser reward. Irrational was originally going to make them insects, but in the words of BioShock’s lead designer, Joe McDonagh, “no one cared”. But we care now that they are little girls. Watching a Little Sister hack into the face of a corpse with a hypodermic needle, then egg her escort on, screaming, “Unzip him Mr Bubble! UNZIP HIM!” while the Big Daddy drills a hole through your chest is particularly disturbing. Having dispatched her protector and watched her weep over its metallic bulk, though, you can’t help but feel a pang of guilt at the thought of killing her, especially once you have her struggling to wrest herself from your fateful grip.

BioShock’s gameplay is a superb and seamless fusion of plasmid use, more conventional weapons, fixed object interaction and thoroughly sophisticated AI. Even with a basic armoury of handgun, wrench, electro bolt and telekinesis plasmids – and faced with a single foe in a standard environment – you still have a massive range of options other than engage in a standard FPS pitched battle. You can use the telekinesis plasmid to pick up a gas canister and throw it; shock a machinegun turret, hack it and let it do the work for you or shock the Splicer and then batter it with your wrench. Later on, combat will frequently involve multiple and separate sets of opponents: you, your hacked security drones, Splicers, enemy turrets and drones and Big Daddies, all fighting for a different cause. As you pick up more plasmids and weapons and the enemy roster becomes more fleshed out, so your methods of dealing out death begin to broaden.

The most interesting foe for all these reasons and more still is the iconic Big Daddy. When alone, he won’t attack unless provoked and when accompanying a Little Sister he won’t attack unless you stray too close or threaten her. Splicers, however, will attack him on sight, so you can usually let this tough opponent deal with them, but the most fun you can have with these powerful metal giants is by purchasing the ‘Hypnotise Big Daddy Plasmid’. We frequently used this to force a Big Daddy to protect us, just as it would a Little Sister, although we liked the idea of having this intimidating badass as an escort so much we hypnotised one whenever we could anyway. The crowning moment that elevated this plasmid to being our favourite was when our entranced Big Daddy pushed us to one side and attacked another Big Daddy who dared to take a swipe at us, and a titanic battle ensued – a gaming moment that will stand out in our minds for an extremely long time.

With between 20 to 30 hours of play time and no multiplayer, BioShock isn’t a massive game, and though there’s both the illusion of choice in the path you take and the option to backtrack if you miss anything, ultimately you can only move in one direction to progress. Despite this, we’d still like to play the game over again because, like a favourite film we’ve enjoyed at the cinema, we want a fuller understanding of its compelling story. BioShock’s visuals make other FPSs look drab in spite of a relatively standard graphics engine and we know there are a billion other ways we could have used those plasmids. We’d also like a better understanding because BioShock actually moved us; we can still hear the groans of the Big Daddy, the pitiful cries of the Little Sisters, the insane ranting of the Splicers and Andrew Ryan’s ominous rhetoric in the quieter moments of our day, such is their impact. We’ve been playing games for so long, got so caught up in the conventional means of drawing the player into a game, that we’d become somewhat blinkered to the power that strong storytelling, characterisation and especially the impact emotion can give a big budget title. BioShock is a standout game in this respect alone, but given all the other elements that make it such a compelling experience, we’d go so far as to say it is a masterpiece of high production values and intelligent games development, and will be a benchmark for any original FPS in the near future. Regardless of your purchasing priorities in the period leading up to this Christmas, earmark some cash for BioShock, because we guarantee you won’t be disappointed by this incredible game.

Ben Biggs