Back to Part One.

Previously I talked a little about the main enemies in BioShock, the Splicers. These guys aren’t the only threat in the game however; by far the most fearsome foe encountered were the Big Daddies. To say these guys are hardcore would be a colossal understatement. Kitted out in heavy-duty dive-gear and with a massive drill for a fist, if you antagonise a Big Daddy or the Little Sister he protects, he will come at you like a big, angry freight train and will not stop until you are dead. It took me several attempts to drop the first Big Daddy I encountered, and even then it was only through judicious use of Splicer-baiting and a bunch of health kits that I survived the encounter. It’s fortunate that the A.I. of the Splicers is so realistic that they actually will go after the Little Sisters for the Adam they harvest that I was able to bait the Big Daddy into attacking them.

When you do finally drop the Big Daddy, the time will come for an important decision, namely, what are you going to do with the Little Sister he is protecting? The game sets up this dilemma prior to your first encounter, when you manage to trap a Little Sister without her hulking protector. The mad words of Andrew Ryan come back to haunt you here; his previous ramblings about sacrificing your humanity suddenly take on a new meaning as you decide whether to “harvest” the genetically modified child (a process that kills her), or “rescue” her, which returns her to normal or some semblance thereof. Harvesting nets you the biggest amount of Adam to spend on upgrades, as you would probably imagine. Rescuing her, on the other hand, will result in less Adam, but an clearer conscience, as well as a promised reward from Doctor Tenenbaum, the creator of the creatures. Not only that, but I discovered that one of the game’s most valuable Achievements – worth a cool 100 gamerpoints – comes from not harvesting any Little Sisters at all, so scorewhores take note!

As you can well see, obtaining Adam certainly isn’t a simple process and the indication from Joe McDonagh, Senior Designer at Irrational Games, is that even if you were to harvest every bit of Adam you could find, you still wouldn’t be able to obtain every ability in the game. This touches on one of the other aspects of System Shock 2 the team wanted to improve on: character enhancement. In System Shock 2, one of the player’s first choices was between one of three classes which essentially resulted in a weapon, technology or psionics specialty. Of course as the game progressed, players often discovered the choices they made didn’t fit their play-style or the direction of the game, resulting in frustration, restarts, or simply quitting the game altogether.

BioShock avoids this by implementing a classless, flexible upgrade system with interchangeable enhancements and the ability to adjust most decisions that you make. For example you can use Adam to purchase more slots for plasmids, which allows you to cycle through not only your currently selected abilities but also swap them out for any others you might have at the game’s gene bank locations. Likewise, when selecting a passive ability gene tonic, you aren’t limited to one specific class, but can pick from physical, combat or engineering traits – the only limitation is the amount of Adam you have.

The variety of tonics is great too; the first one I chose was called Armoured Shell, and resulted in my character being tougher than usual, and more resistant to damage from bullets and melee weapons. After that, I opted for Static Discharge, which gives me the handy ability to shock anyone silly enough to get within hand-to-hand range. Other tonics available in the early game included bonus healing from med-packs or the ability to regain some Eve (the substance consumed when you use your plasmid abilities) when you heal, but there was heaps of others available to do with stealth, damage or hacking security systems, terminals or vending machines.

On that note, hacking is great fun in BioShock, and opens up a whole new realm of tactical options for you within a level. The most obvious uses are to put gun turrets or security drones on your side, and setting them to attack enemies or providing backup can mean the difference between life or death. Alternatively, you can meddle with vending machines to provide cheaper goods for you, or in one of the more creative uses I saw, set health stations to dispense poison. Why, you might ask? Because the A.I. in BioShock is seriously so good that if it takes enough damage, it may retreat and do exactly the same thing you would – seek medical assistance! And when they do, your specially-rigged station will dole out an extra-strong helping of poison to finish them off. Nice!

Hacking isn’t simply a matter of walking up and seeing if your character’s skill is high enough though, it involves a fairly addictive minigames that requires you to mix and match tiles that represent a conduit for, well, hacking liquid I guess, and you have to guide the flow from point A to B without interruption. Increasing your hacking skills slows down this flow and buys you more time, which is just as well, because the more sophisticated systems are very quick. It’s a nice touch that ensures your upgrades go to a practical and tactile use, not just enhancing some arbitrary number that determines your success or failure. It’s also the source of at least four of the game’s 50 Achievements – one apiece for hacking a turret, security drone, vending machine and health station.

As promised, I snuck a few furtive glances at the rest of the game’s Achievements, and can give Xbox World Australia readers an exclusive look at some of what the game has to offer. As you’d imagine, there is quite a few tethered to the storyline – reaching certain milestones and defeating boss characters – but the vast majority appeared to be for more specific activities. I unlocked one for zapping a splicer by electrocuting the water they stood in, for example. Perhaps the most interesting of all were a few Achievements revolving around utilising an in-game camera to take snaps of the enemies and expose their weaknesses, and also to create 100 items. Given that we haven’t heard or seen much about either of these two features, it just goes to show that BioShock has depths we have yet to explore.

These depths include the weapon upgrade system, which I sadly did not get to see in action. What I did get to experience first-hand however was the various types of ammunition available to your arsenal of firearms, including armour-piercing, anti-personnel, explosive and more. So between this variety of munitions and the sheer range of options available for personal enhancement and weapon modification, BioShock is shaping up to be one of the most user-customisable experiences around, meaning anyone can enjoy their time in Rapture no matter how they play.

And on that final note, I should say something about our host city, because it’s easy to get swept up in all the other exciting features of the game, but BioShock looks simply stunning. The level design is among the best I’ve seen on Xbox 360, rivalling Gears of War for the ‘destroyed beauty’ award with its amazing art deco inspired designs, and putting Splinter Cell: Double Agent to shame in terms of lighting and shadows. But perhaps the most incredible thing about it is the way that the city itself tells its story – the debris, the scrawled writing, the signs of a struggle, the trails of blood…all these things combine to create what should be the most atmospheric game on the Xbox 360 to date. And I for one cannot wait to get lost in Rapture!

Article by Dominic Rozenberg