BioShock™ Reviews

Not much to say — very f***ing good. Must play. Story, atmosphere, gameplay… it’s all top tier. The Remaster is fine, but man, I’d kill for a full remake with modern graphics.

BioShock offers an immersive gameplay experience that seamlessly blends innovative gunplay with Plasmids (special powers). Each weapon and ability features unique upgrades, allowing you to customize your combat approach—whether unleashing machine gun fire or freezing enemies with ice powers, the mechanics feel fluid and revolutionary. But BioShock transcends typical shooters through its masterful atmosphere. The hauntingly beautiful underwater city of Rapture, brought to life through stunning retro-futuristic visuals and a suspenseful soundtrack, creates an unforgettable setting. The story unfolds through environmental details and chilling audio logs, weaving a complex narrative full of political dimensions and plot twists. The game's morality system presents meaningful choices, become a merciless killer or a beacon of hope in this undersea dystopia. Memorable villains like Andrew Ryan and Sander Cohen elevate the experience, with Ryan standing as one of gaming's greatest antagonists. Multiple endings and hidden details reward exploration and multiple playthroughs. BioShock is interactive art at its finest a thought-provoking journey that balances action-packed combat with deep philosophical themes. The attention to detail in Rapture's design, combined with emotional storytelling that will "invoke all kinds of different emotions," makes this a must-play title. Even with some horror elements, this gem deserves a place in every gamer's collection. Would you kindly experience this brilliant game that still packs a punch today?

Recommended for those who enjoy immersing themselves in story as well as shooter games

I like the style, this underwater art-deco is imo timeless, and the premise of city at the bottom of the ocean is so interesting it could carry the game on its own. And super interesting location makes all the game's flaws much easier to forgive; And imo, there's a lot you have to forgive to enjoy this game today ;p First of all - this whoooole game is a long ass chain of fetch quests. No joke, EVERY mission is a fetch quest. Find X amount of Y things to take a small step forward and uncover the next tiny glimpse of a story. Sometimes I had do find so many things that my mind zoned out and I forgot WHY I even look for all that stuff. Seriously, there is a mission where you go through underwater garden, and you have to collect 21 items (yep, 3 things 7 times each) to proceed! This is bonkers, c'mon, it would be enough to collect 3 things, the quest and story around it would be the same, why I have to get each one 7 times?? To keep me in the same location as long as possible - of course :) One mission to the next you will listen to recorded justifications sending you for another 'find X amount of something" hunt. Sometimes you will get a fetchquest that is recursively injected into another fetchquest - so you have to complete a smaller fetchquest to then continue the bigger fetchquest... XD I thought Its disappointing as hell - if any other game did it that way (especially today), it would be absolutely trashed for it, but Bioshock gets a free pass, bc it's a 'legend'. First Gothic had more interesting quests in 2001. It's not a hardware limitation of the era, nor a product of it's time. I'm really getting tired of these games with 'cult following' bc a lot of the time its not a metaphorical cult but a very real one, ready to over-interpret every little thingy the game does and reframe it as some stroke of genius. Lining up dozens of fetchquests in a row isn't genius, it's laaaaaazy. Only the last mission when you dress up as Big Daddy and have to cover the Little Sister as she slowly walks around (and gets attacked from all angles) has a more interesting premise. Basically it's an escort mission with a twist (when the Lil Sis dies, you can call the new one), but after 7 hours of fetch questing it was like breath of fresh air ;p Combat is... pretty stiff and very chaotic most of the time. You get the revolver, rifle, shotgun and granade launcher in the first hour of playtime... buuuut... the game really insists on using the wrench. Combined with plasmids of course. Blast the splicer with your electo hand, then you go for the money shot and smash the head. Initially petty satisfying, but over time I thought the guns were nerfed way too much for the sake of pushing the wrench and plasmids. Unless you aim for a perfect headshot - these splicers can eat more bullets than PacMan eats dots. And even a clean headshot isn't enough most of the time. You need two, sometimes 3 bullets to the head, for 1 enemy to eat dirt. Splicers are very agile, so scoring heads reliably is not an option, and your ammo is limited, so the wrench raises up to be your main workhorse whether you like it or not. And imo - too many repetitive fights against Splicers. The game will often spawn whole groups of them in places that you just cleared few minutes before - which is a giant red flag in my books. Sometimes the quest's scripting has as much finesse as Postal (that's NOT a compliment) - the moment you pick up the McGuffin - game spawns brand new groups of enemies in corridors behind you. That's a cheap shot, but whateva :( Sometimes everything is just too cramped together. You explore a new area, find the recording and try to listen to it... only to hear obnoxious screams of freshly spawned splicers jumping around you. The recording you tried to listen? Forget about it cuh' ;p It's a thunder and wrench time! :) But there is also a good side of the game's combat: Array of intersecting systems that make enemies interact with each other and environment around them - in many more ways than I would ever expect from a game running on UnrealEngine 2.5 :) You will often witness in-fighting between BigDaddys and Splicers, making your job a lot easier. Sometimes fight is already started when you enter the room, sometimes you can provoke it yourself. You can also use one of your plazmids to hypnotize BigDaddy and make him fight on your side for a while - very satisfying to use, and very helpful too. Just like hacking drones. You can use environment to your advantage in many different ways - paralyzing whole group of Splicers in the waterpuddle, or putting whole group on fire when they stand on spilled oil is very common fight tactic. You can use telekinesis to throw explosive barrels at them, or even catch their own granades and rockets and launch it back at them. Enemy AI is also smart enough to use healstations when they have low health, or even destroy the heal station near you, so you can't use it yourself! Impressive! But even with all these impressive systems, combat still lacks some refinement, polish, maybe even some serious re-balancing. If you don't know up front what will happen, you can sometimes find yourself in a situation, where your resources are depleted and a difficult fight is waiting for you right around the corner. You know that it doesn't matter how you approach the situation - you will die. What's interesting - designers knew that something here doesn't add-up, and 'solved' it with VitaChambers. Not really a solution, more a workaround (similar to the gameguru's respawn system). When you die, you don't reload the save and start the whole combat section again. Instead, you just respawn in the nearest chamber, then walk back to the place where you just died, and continue the fight. Yep, continue, bc enemy health doesn't regenerate when you respawn (unless they use a healthstation, though luck for you then). And the penalty for dying is... not there? Ok maybe it's the fact that you have to walk back to the same place few times, which makes the fetch quest you're currently on a bit more tedious ;) It feels like some sections of the game are balanced with expectation that you will die and respawn repeatedly, and slowly chip away enemy health bars. Unless you have the game memorized and you can prepare yourself for what it's going to happen before it happens ;p The game story is far simpler than people give it credit for. I've read 'Atlas Shrugged' and 'Fountainhead' few years ago, and when it comes to the sheer writing ability - Ayn Rand wipes the floor with Bioshock writers. Calling this game a 'debunk of objectivism' or 'parable against capitalism' is like calling Rich Piana's life story a 'debunk of fit lifestyle' ... if you don't know Rich Piana: It's like calling the game's first miniboss - Crazy Surgeon a 'debunk of medicine' xD You catch my drift? It's a very intellectually dishonest take on Rand's ideas. It takes only some surface level slogans and catchphrases, then slaps them on twisted, over-exaggerated bad-faith (and again - surface level) caricatures of Rand's characters - and builds the rest from there. And then it 'debunks' that twisted and over-exaggerated bad-faith caricature it just built, instead of the source material itself. At best, it shows you that when you have a society led by bunch of psychotic narcissists living in an enclosed fishtank with no escape, and they take more drugs than elephant could handle, you're heading into disaster - wow what a hot take ;p Rand's objectivist ideas are... just not here :) And the famous 'moral choices' are just absurdly banal; >Will you murder innocent kids?< >Or save them?< Was that supposed to come off as complex or morally ambiguous? XD Is this a game worth trying? Yes, 100%. Does it live up to it's own legend? Most of the time not, but is that a fault of the game? Or a bit too dedicated fans? Hmm ;)

It took a while, but the remaster is better than the original now. That said, you can't actually buy this game separately anymore.

Great and fun fps but it is a bit old, play the remastered version for fixes

This game is pretty good, easily one of my favorites. Many ways to solve problems, excellent characters, good ambiance, soundtrack, plot and an important political and philosophical discussion. The use of the book "Atlas Shrugged" is brilliant. But... the original game have a lot of issues. I had problems with sound, application execution, screen resolution and that simply prevent me from continuing the game. I literally can't open the game without fucking up my PC settings. Developers... would you kindly fix this?

on my replay when one of the big twists happened in the game one of my friends kept asking me if i understood everything while it was happening, this friend is very dear to me even though he thinks i am a 28 year old stupid person

peak game, i wish there was a game showing what rapture was like before everything happened, and it would show how it progressed into what this game was like, all in all one of the greatest games ive ever played i loved it, going to play bioshock 2 next

Released roughly 10 years after System Shock 2, Bioshock (the 'shock' in the title is on purpose) is the spiritual successor to SS2. Beginning life as another sci-fi horror game set aboard a station, the game would eventually shift themes to an underground Nazi laboratory before settling on the Art Deco underwater motif. Which is quite a trip. From SS2's deep-space to the bottom of the ocean, this started as SS3 before settling on being a 'spiritual successor' with a new world altogether. Bioshock takes place in Rapture, an underwater, man-made city. It's guiding philosophy is best exemplified by a prominent banner the player sees at the very start: “No Gods or Kings. Only Man.' (a fantastically evocative phrase). In other words, Rapture is a Laissez-faire society, where the artist, scientist, doctor, and entrepreneur is free from 'parasites' that would otherwise stifle progress. And who are the 'parasites'? Big government taxation; Communist collectivists, and the poor seeking wealth redistribution. Churches with their moral objections to research. Environmentalists. Etc. Bioshock's world is therefore Ayn Rand brought to life. Err...game. Brought to game. If you're really interested, look into Objectivism-her philosophical work. Bioshock is a Capitalist utopia that is facing some unsavory consequences in its minimal regulation. The poor are taken advantage of and used as stock, with orphans in particular being 'put to work'. Morality would reasonably get in the way of progress at times (think the Nazi experiments on humans). In a society that is unchained from that morality, you have social strife and civil turmoil. As well as extreme wealth and advancements. One of those achievements is the discovery of ADAM, which is a material that allows for the genetic modification of humans. It's the perfect plot device for a society obsessed with progress with no moral limitation: an amazing achievement in genetics, with human suffering as a side effect. ADAM allows the ugly to become beautiful, as well as telekinetic abilities. Like electric shock, levitation of items, etc. In a competitive society suffering from emerging social strife, it plays into the hands of militias, corporate warfare, and the everyday minutae of keeping up with the competition. Everyone eventually becomes 'addicted' to this material, losing their sanity without regular injections of it. If this sounds like I'm spoiling the story, I'm really not. It's all told within the first level. There's a more personal story at play here, with the protagonist's entry into Rapture (unwilling entry, that is). He's thrust into the current civil war and destruction, assisting a character in finding his wife and child. I won't spoil a lot there, but I will note that the game has a very ingenious 'twist' at play. And the main character is much more closely related to the happenings in the underwater city than originally thought. ADAM is not just a narrative element, it's also a game feature. An interesting one, because to me it represents what Psionics in SS2 tried to be. ADAM is much better than Psionics. And it's mostly because it separates the passive abilities from the 'active' ones that are used in battle. Plasmids allow you combat abilities that interact with the environment, whilst Gene Tonics provide passive benefits. Reminder that in SS2 both required activation and only remained for a set period of time. And the combat abilities were few and rather uncreative. Whereas in Bioshock you can set up traps. If Plasmids are Psionics done right, everything else is merely carried over from SS2 with minor enhancements. Ammo types are present once more. Security cameras and turrets. Even hacking. Only the hacking mini-game is more than just RNG. You solve a puzzle whereby you divert a liquid to its proper end-point. Everything from SS2 carries over, only it's done better or more competently. About the only thing I'd argue this game 'lacks' over SS2 is map complexity. SS's map had you backtrack to previous areas. Frequently. They all felt like part of a larger whole, as opposed to levels that exist separately from one another. While you can traverse back to previous levels in Bioshock, you will never have to backtrack between levels to progress. And while there are multiple rooms that require exploration within levels, you'll never get lost. It's simpler. Which isn't to say the level design is bad, but it's a point worth bringing up in the comparison. And since we're on the topic of levels, I should mention how incredible the art is for this game. The levels aren't just corridors. They're art pieces. Seriously. In fact, Bioshock was displayed at Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C (in 2012). In a 'Video Games as Art' exhibit. The game is littered with ads, musical pieces, and glimpses of the ocean surrounding the undersea metropolis. It's wonderfully creative, and evocative of 1920's America. The 'video games as art' argument doesn't just rest on the visual, either. Bioshock is an incredibly unique game in it's themes. Obviously the philosophy of Objectivism wasn't coined by the Bioshock writers, but it's certainly not a common theme in games or any other media of the time. And the implications of such a worldview are brought out in interesting manners in the game world. I recall all the conversations about the underlying philosophy and how it did, or could have, played out in the game world. And it's rare for games to inspire such spirited and substantive debate. But even beyond the 'world lore', there is a well thought out and captivating drama taking place in the background. Of a protagonist living a lie and unknowingly being taken advantage of. Which plays into the larger 'Man as the creator of his own destiny' philosophy, which is ingenious. The only real, objective issue with the game is that it is (supposedly) difficult to launch. Bioshock runs on a heavily modified version of Unreal Engine 2, which is probably why so many people experience technical issues with it. I didn't, but I see all the guides and forum threads asking and offering solutions. And yes, this game looks incredible even today (probably due to good art direction), but it's actually running on an extremely outdated game engine (even for the time). There is a 'remaster' whose purpose is entirely to get the game to run on modern systems. Because it doesn't 'remaster' anything. If anything, it actually looks worse in certain parts. But whatever the case, and however you play the game, it's one of those 'hall of fame' type of games that everyone should play. My praise for SS2 carries over to Bioshock. Only in much stronger terms.