Many people have followed Bioshock's development with eager hope from the very moment it was announced. Irrational Games (now known as 2k Boston), the makers of System Shock, have put a lot of expectations squarely on Bioshock's figurative shoulders. Known in the industry for making smart, unique, and risky games (which unfortunately, while loved by their fans, have not always gone on to sell as many copies, as, say, Half-Life), 2KB poured a whole lot of their creative ideas (and no doubt a fair sum of money) into Bioshock, betting a good chunk of the proverbial house on the game's success. Yet admirably, as a game, Bioshock would turn out to be no less willing to take on innovative risks than the company's previous games, and the multiplayer component for the game was even dropped in order to focus on making the game a better single-player experience. Now, granted, that may have been perceived as "anti-innovation" by some - but most true fans gave the developer the benefit of the doubt on making the right decision there. Well, you can rest easy, fans - 2K Boston have succeeded in creating not only their best game yet, but also what is probably one of the best, well-realized games of all time, period. Period, period, even.

Warning: your feet may get wet

   While Bioshock is indeed an action-packed shooter/horror, it is also a game that puts a much greater emphasis on story than most of the other shooters out there. The world of Rapture is a fully-realized, breathing world that is so well designed that, amazingly, it feels like it could totally exist - despite being an underwater world filled with monsters and creepy little girls.

   The game begins in the year 1960, after your airplane crashes into the middle of the ocean (airplanes apparently already had the nasty habit of falling out of the skies back then). The only land in sight is some rocks upon which sits a lighthouse, so naturally you, being the only survivor of the crash, decide to grace this dubious piece of paradise with your princely presence. Things, however, turn out to be more than they first seem. Stepping into the odd building, you discover a tarnished bathysphere which leads you down beneath the sea and into "Rapture", an underwater city built by idealists that have chosen to shun all known forms of government in order to create their own utopia, shut off from the rest of civilization, deep under water.

   However, instead of finding a flourishing society in Rapture, you soon realize that the city is in a state of upheaval and is quite literally falling apart. The "streets" of the vast underwater complexes are now overrun by beings called "splicers" - humans who have genetically altered their bodies so much that they now crave Adam (the material used to alter DNA) to such an extent that they have lost all sanity and attack you, each other, and anyone else on sight. Kids, this is why you should stay off hard drugs and stick to weed.

   Splicers are not the only inhabitans of Rapture, of course. Other creatures called "Big Daddies", huge, lumbering things in rusted divers' suits, roam the corridors, and are tasked with guarding the "Little Sisters", eerie, defenseless little girls whose primary purpose in life is to lug around huge syringes and use them to suck Adam out of corpses. The latter, needless to say, are abundant. So, not your ideal holiday location, then.

At least the creepy little girls aren't Japanese creepy little girls!

Houston? Houston? Pick up the goddamn phone Houston!

   Speaking of audio, Bioshock should (and undoubtedly will) get an award for its use of sound. Rarely is it completely quiet in Rapture: ominous creaks echo from the walls, the Big Daddies moan like whales, Little Sister's sing creepily and call out stuff like "Come on, Mister Bubbles, I think I see an angel!" to their monstrous bodyguards. Splicers hum and shout deranged comments to you as they attack, and music from the era such as "Beyond the Sea" can be heard playing from the occasional record player.

   Taken all together, Bioshock's graphics and sound create an absolutely incredible atmosphere that is wonderfully eerie and exciting at the same time. More so than most games, Bioshock does an amazing job in leveraging your own imagination - much of what creates the stomach knots that you will become accustomed to while playing this game is not just what you see and hear in the room that you are in right now - but what you perceive to be in the room that's just around the corner. Remote sounds hint at actions, and voices tend to travel ahead of their owners, and you never know whether a voice is coming from an abandoned spirit, an old radio, or a live splicer. In all cases, you can almost feel yourself tightening the grip around your weapon as your neurons fire on all pistons, ready to bash in a skull, real, electronic, or imaginary.

Four paragraphs without a single crack?! It's clearly time to talk about shooting things.

   With all this attention to sound and detail and plot, it may surprise some of you that Bioshock is still very much an action-packed shooter. The first weapon you will come across in the game is the trusty wrench, which acts much like the crowbar in Half Life, and standard weapons such as the pistol, machinegun, and the shotgun (don't shoot yourself in the foot!) soon follow. To spice things up a bit, all guns take three different types of ammo each, which give you effects such as the electric buck for the shotgun (shocking!...sorry!) which is extra effective against machines, or anti-personnel rounds for the machinegun that deal extra damage to splicers. This gives all the guns much more variety, and it would be good to see future shooters implementing different types of ammo for their weapons as well. Finally, the game polishes things off with the addition of various flavors of tonics, some of which can make you particularly effective with a particular type of weapon. Can't get enough of that slushy sound your weighty wrench makes as it rips its way through a splicer's medulla oblongata? Equip a blunt weapons tonic and make it twice as satisfying!

Playing God with your own DNA sure is fun and safe! ... most of the time.

   The enemies in the game don't go down easily however, and often take more than a couple of shotgun shells to the face to defeat (What? Shooting things doesn't always work? This game is deep!). This is where the "Plasmids" (learn to loooove this word, my friend!) come in. Near the start of the game your character will inject himself with a syringe filled with Adam, altering his DNA. It may seem like a rather stupid decision to you at first - what kind of person empties the first dirty syringe he sees into his arm anyway? Don't worry though - once the initial headache passes, you'll be glad you did it, because you have now gained the ability to shoot electricity from your fingertips. No, you haven't suddenly wandered into a review of Oblivion; the Plasmids (basically science talk for "magic") play a large part in Bioshock, and are all used in a variety of wondefully satisfying ways. For example, one of the more useful tactics that is introduced to you early in the game is the "one-two punch" that has you electrocuting your enemy with the Electro Shock Plasmid, and then switching to your wrench to knock them to the ground while they spasm on the spot, killing them instantly. Combining your Plasmids with the environment is another great touch: take that same Electro Shock Plasmid and fire it into a pool of water in which your enemy (and their six friends) are standing, and the results should be obvious. Just don't be standing in that same pool of water when you do it, smartass.

   There are plenty of other Plasmids to obtain throughout the game, but giving them away would be a crime, and the same can be said about the game's plot. You'll want to be as clueless as possible (that should be easy for a lot of people, ho ho!) when going into Bioshock, or else you'll ruin the many surprises and unexpected turns the game has to offer.

Spoiler: your character turns out to be a giant fish

   Any other developer may have taken all of the previous ideas and gameplay additions and decided to stop there, but 2K Boston went several steps step further. Bioshock, more than your average game (and certainly more than your average FPS!) has a uniquely complex in-game ecosystem which blends the enemies, the city of Rapture, and various critical game resources into a well thought-out and masterfully knit web of interdependencies. So, for example, the Little Sisters of Rapture carry around large quantities of Adam that the splicers would give their right hands for. Therefore, whenever a splicer spots a Little Sister, he or she will go after her immediately... too bad her protector, the Big Daddy, is always around the corner, which results in a messy, yet one-sided battle. You are giving up more than just that right hand, little splicer. I am gonna need a testicle, a head, a couple of knees, a shoulder... Conversely, Little Sisters feed on the very dead bodies that the splicers ultimately supply through their manic combat with each other and other inhabitants. And to be a more effective combatant, one needs plasmids - and those cost Adam, which, of course, is carried by the Little Sisters... It's all connected, and there are no self-sufficient parties in Rapture - everyone needs someone or something else to survive, and is locked in a life or death battle to acquire it.

   Like it or not, your character is now also a part of the ecosystem of Rapture, and to survive you, like everyone else, will need Adam in order to gain more Plasmids, health, and the like; and so soon enough you'll be after the Little Sisters as well. Here, however, the game gives you a choice when it comes to collecting the precious material. Once (or, more precisely, "if") you manage to take out a Big Daddy, you can harvest a Little Sister, killing her in the process but gaining a ton of Adam. Or, you can chose to let her live, which gives you less Adam at first, but you may be rewarded with more at a later date. This is further tied into the game's well-developed story, and depending on how you decide to treat the Little Sisters, the game will play out a little differently. You could even feasibly chose to ignore the Little Sisters and their monstrous bodyguards altogether, as taking down a Big Daddy usually requires a lot of ammo, Plasmids, and health kits to heal yourself. The choice is yours!

I bet the teachers of those Little Sisters dread "Parent-Teacher" night!

   There is also a type of economy in Bioshock, as you collect money scattered around the city, in cash registers, safes, and the like, which can then be used in vending machines. Ammo, health kits and Eve (a sort of "mana" needed to use Plasmids), can be bought in this manner, and that's not all: some machines will even allow you to invent new items if you have collected the required parts. Other machines will also allow you to upgrade your weapons. Unsurprisingly, there are no condom machines to be found in Rapture, as what would you want one for down there? Nothing will let you have it alive, and necrophiliacs don't need prophylactics. Or so they say.

Virtual Reality Big Daddy: I don't want to play this game anymore!

   Amazingly, there's still a lot more to Bioshock that won't fit into this review. For instance, hacking plays a big part in the game - by completing a timed mini-game where you switch different tubes around so that water flows through to the end of the grid (you real old skool gamers will remember this as the classic "Pipes"), you can open safes, doors, and even hack turret guns so that instead of shooting you, they shoot your enemies. Hacking a vending machine will give you better prices and unlock special items. There's even a camera in the game, which can be used to "research" your enemies; take enough photos and you'll be awarded with even more abilities.

   As mentioned, a variety of tonics can also be found and invented that empower you with a slew of special effects - these can make hacking easier, give you better defense, make you stronger, or more resilient to a particular type of damage. Depending on what tonics you have equipped (and there are a lot of them to be found), you'll find yourself playing the game differently - you could choose to be more of a assassin-style fighter, for example, since you can equip a tonic that gives you added damage for sneaking up on an enemy and striking them from behind, as in Thief or MGS games.

Your character's "holiday snaps" might not actually bore people to death

   So Bioshock must be the perfect game, then. Well, not quite. Without getting into a philosophical debate on whether there could even be a "perfect" game, Bioshock does have a few small flaws. You know "Donna's ring" kind of small, for you 'That 70's Show' fans. It shares a glitch that can be found in a number of other games, which sees corpses moving their legs and arms when they obviously shouldn't (amusingly, one dead guy appeared to be waving from the ground at one point). Hacking can also get repetitive near the end of the game, but this isn't a big deal as you don't have to hack things, and you can also find ways to hack things instantly. Lastly, you may end up feeling slightly under-whelmed at the start of the game. With all the positive press Bioshock has received, it's possible to go into the game expecting to find some sort of holy experience that wipes the memory of all other games from your mind with its excellence, only to find... well, a game. Give yourself just a little more time for the experience to sink in, though, and by the end of the game you should agree that Bioshock is, appropriately, rapture.

       ... Travis Whipps