BioShock Hands-On

Jun 8, 2007

The flaming wreckage of our downed plane sinks nearby as we swim up to a dark spire protruding from an otherwise empty expanse of the Atlantic Ocean. It's the entrance to Rapture, the setting for Irrational's newest first-person shooter infused with RPG elements. In 1946 the city was built by Andrew Ryan, a man committed to the ideal of a society where anyone could achieve anything. He separated it from the rest of the world to sever the city from God, politics, and other bothersome surface influences. Probably not the best call in the world in retrospect, but those who seek to create utopias probably aren't leaning towards mental stability to begin with. As we soon find out, Ryan's artificial paradise didn't work. Its residents are corrupted and mutated, though the reason is a mystery when first entering the waterlogged city. It's easy to see that it has something to do with genetic experiments, but discovering the precise nature of Rapture's collapse is BioShock's main goal. Considering we crashed in the ocean right next to it, there wasn't much of choice but to investigate.

The strange spire acts as a sort of flytrap, it seems, drawing in those unaware. Swimming amongst the fiery wreckage eventually reveals a staircase, bringing us to an entrance door. It opens to a dark room that erupts into bright light after a few steps inside. Like the rest of Rapture we saw, the space was decorated with a distinct art deco motif, with ceiling designs resembling the top of the Chrysler Building in New York. Heading down another staircase and into an elevator opened the way to a sprawling underwater vista which unfolded as the elevator moved through Rapture's cityscape. Along the way we passed towering underwater skyscrapers (surfacescrapers?) and leisurely sea creatues, until we finally came to rest at a pressure hatch.

A splicer, a genetically altered humanoid, immediately hacked at the glass door. From the ceiling dropped a radio with a voice on the other end. A man named Atlas speaks of help. Later the same man will ask for the favor to be returned and require help with finding his family, but that resolution lay beyond our meager play experience.As the splicer was destroyed by means unknown, and with the hatch area clear, the elevator pod opened and we emerged into Rapture for the first time. Checking around the environment showed much of it was capable of manipulation. We knocked over suitcases on the ground and dismantled a brass railing, which clanked to the floor and threw up splashes of water as it rolled. Like most of Rapture's rooms, this one had numerous leaks. Water dripped from the high ceiling, flowed down walls, and pooled amidst the debris scattered across the floor.

Something called a Vita Chamber lay nearby, which serves as the game's auto-save system. These things automatically activate and serve as the point of your respawn should you die. A detailed explanation of a new item or structure was available upon discovery. Beside the Vita Chamber were towering glass windows again giving us a view of the aqueous metropolis along with more sea life. Crossing to the other side of the room we picked up a wrench which we then bashed into a aggressive humanoid's skull. Enemies can be looted after they're killed, netting you money, ammunition, and power-ups. From this particular soggy sack we pulled a pop bar, which along with other food items like merlot and chips, restore health and EVE (mana). It should be noted that unlike in System Shock 2, you can't store food items in an inventory; they're consumed when picked up. In fact, there really isn't an inventory at all. Health and EVE hypodermic needles are stored up and can be quick-used, but there's no slot-based inventory where you stick weapons, items, plasmid power ups, and the like. Instead, the game provides a bunch of separate radial menus for selecting weapons and abilities. This is part of the reason why playing BioShock feels more like an FPS than an RPG, so we stand finally corrected from our earlier impressions.

Soon after bludgeoning our first enemy we came across the first plasmid in the game: electro bolt. When you pick up plasmids, which are represented onscreen as glowing vials, you have to slot them in a plasmid menu. Only a few slots are open to begin with, and as you progress through the game you'll need to spend money to open up more slots and allow for more plasmids to be selectable while in battle. The electro bolt attack can be used in various ways, all of which were great fun to discover. If you've set the skill to ready, your character's hand will show up onscreen flickering bright blue with sub-dermal jags of lighting. Unleashing the spell consumes a chunk of EVE and blasts forward a bolt. It stuns enemies that it hits, and actually seemed to reduce the amount of damage they're able to take before transitioning to the afterlife. For instance, we could permanently take down a splicer with only one wrench hit if we slammed them in the head while electrified. Without using the plasmid, it took three or four smacks. Then there's the electo bolt's ability to spectacularly electrify a pool of water, immobilizing and destroying any lesser enemies that happen to be ankle-deep at the time.

While moving through Rapture we were given constant objective updates, like searching for mad scientists or investigating certain areas. There was a map available that noted our position and indicated the location of our quest goal. Back on the gameplay screen we were given an arrow at the top of the screen that always pointed toward the currently selected quest's destination, making it hard to get lost. During our play session we were free to travel back and forth between previously visited areas as we pleased. This doesn't seem to be a stage-based game, more of an open world, which let us return to vending machines and health items we'd passed earlier on. Like in System Shock 2, much of the plot is told through audio diaries picked off the ground, which can all be accessed afterward through a menu log. This, in combination with the game never leaving the first-person perspective, contributes to augmenting the immersion factor established by the excellent visuals.

Early on we encountered what seemed to be a mother walking with a baby carriage. It turned out it was a splicer who tried to slam us with a pipe as we approached. After dismantling the disfigured damsel, we picked up our first weapon: a revolver. Eventually we came upon a tommy gun and a shotgun, some of which we were able to secure additional types of ammunition. Since there isn't a main inventory menu, the ammo types can be switched between at the click of a button, like swapping standard ammo for armor piercing rounds or frost bullets.

Scripted sequences were a regular feature. At one point early on the front end of our downed plane came smashing through a glass tube we were using to traverse an expanse between buildings. After the spectacular crash, we were able to squeeze through an opening, head down a soaked row of seats within the fuselage, and emerge on the other side. Another occured when our character picked up electro bolt, passing out while screaming as the genetic mutations took hold.

From the media that's been released so far Little Sisters and Big Daddies are prominently featured. The little girls are more important than just scare factor. They drop Adam, a kind of phosphorescent slug, which is the only way to actually upgrade your character with new plasmid and tonic slots. To access the sisters, who the game makes very clear are not human but mutant variations of their former selves, you need to kill their Big Daddy bodyguard. Such an opportunity presented itself at the end of the demo, and had to use grenades, the tommy gun, shotgun, pistol, plasmids, and most of our health and EVE hypo reserves to take it down. They may appear to be lumbering fools, but Big Daddies can perform a speedy charge move that's particularly difficult to avoid. He kept using the charge in combination with some kind of stun attack that drastically reduced our movement speed, making for a surprisingly intense battle, and reinforcing the feeling that this game is indeed a first-person shooter.

After his armored hulk slammed into the ground, we were able to approach the Sister. This part made us a little uncomfortable, as the girl was clambering wildly backwards in fear, whimpering. We approached anyway and were prompted with options to spare or kill her, which affects the amount of Adam extracted. We chose to move in for the kill to get maximum Adam, and were treated to a brutal death scene. The actual moment the girl died happened off-screen which in no way lessened the disturbing effect. But we had our glowing slug, so we were happy. Irrational's Ken Levine stated that saving the Little Sisters had some kind of ramification near the end-game, but since we weren't allowed to go that far into Rapture, we figured the kill was the best course of action.

With our fresh Adam, we trotted over to a Gatherer's Garden machine to tweak out our abilities. From the list we could buy Enrage, a plasmid that paints targets, inciting others to attack. We could also snap up an extra plasmid slot, physical, engineering, or combat tonic slots, or upgrade health and EVE. Like plasmids, tonics are littered around the environment. We picked up a few along the way, all of which need to be assigned to slots similar to the plasmid interface. Armored body was classified as a non-combat tonic, and boosted the amount of damage we were able to absorb before keeling over. Genetic hacker tonic, of the physical type, actually lets you regain health by successfully hacking vending machines, robots, and whatever else has exposed circuitry.

Hacking is actually a major part of the gameplay, allowing for reduced prices at vending machines, free health at dispensers, opening up new items for purchase, bringing defeated security bots back online to fight along side you, and who knows how many other things. Though we're sure players who favor action would bypass all the hacking, we just couldn't bring ourselves to walk by such opportunities. Like System Shock 2, there's a specialized interface for hacking a machine. Attempting to perform a hack brings up a special full screen display of a board separated into numerous squares. Within each square lies a piece of clear tubing oriented straight up, down, or curved one of a few directions. The goal to is to connect the tubes in a continuous line so that a liquid is able to pass from a starting point to an indicated bypass endpoint.

The tubes don't rotate, as you might expect. By selecting one you remove it from the board. Moving the highlighted square to another and hitting the select button adds in the one you just removed and removes that square's inhabitant, and so on. It was awkward at first, but after about 10 hacks we were flying through the mini-game, slotting tubes like, um, some kind of professional tube-slotter; maybe Mario after a case of Red Bull. The hack's difficulty determines how fast the liquid moves across the board. If you can't keep up and the liquid spills out, you fail. The most enjoyable application of this skill was purposefully walking in front of Rapture's many security cameras and intentionally triggering the alarm. Now we're not sure how an underwater city built in 1946 has a mechanized, flying security response team, but it does. Anyway, getting these guys to come out, popping them with a shotgun and reprogramming them to fight for our team was really effective. Once turned, these things pursued enemies, peppered them with bullets, then returned to float just over our shoulder. It may sound silly, but it's an empowering feeling to, within a minute or so, turn two threatening attackers into teammates and charge down the hall with them floating just behind your shoulders. They felt sort of like pets...with machine guns...that explode when they die.

Incineration and telekinesis were two other plasmid types we got to toy around with, both with interesting implications. Incineration immediately set enemies aflame, causing some to run around frantically looking for water sources to douse themselves. The best part about the skill was the flames it ignited were extremely contagious, passing off to other enemies on contact and even some environmental objects. In a room of huddled enemies, it can have a devastating effect. Setting objects on fire isn't just for aesthetic purposes, since through telekinesis you can pick it up and fling it at another enemy, setting them on fire and continuing the chain of pyromania.

The Big Daddy proved to be an excellent target for all our offensive combos, but Dr. Steinman was another. A traditional mad scientist type, this guy kept broadcasting twisted announcements over Rapture's PA system. He apparently considered himself to be an artist, a type of Picasso, except with human flesh as a medium. We eventually met up with him in his lab. The fight was pretty standard, he just ran around with a machine gun trying to drill us with bullets, at least until he was low on health. Instead of charging us, he ran straight towards a health restore unit on the wall to recharge. Interesting, we thought. Then we blasted him in the back of the head with a shotgun, killing him. The fight was probably a tad easier for us because we'd brought along a few hacked security bots and kept taking cover behind a hacked security turret.

Though we've seen it in trailers, the one thing we didn't get to try out was weapon modding. Shotguns and other armaments can eventually be tricked out with all kinds of unwieldy devices like pulleys and awkward bits of metal, presumably something governed by the engineering tonics. We'll have to wait to see exactly how that works and what kind of benefits modding bestows.

As has been said in just about every preview ever written about this game, it's extremely atmospheric. Splicer enemies jumped around, sprayed sparks from dragging metal hooks across the ground, and donned a variety of festive masks. Moving through the game looks like you just crashed a 1920s New Year's party, as some areas are even littered with conical hats and multicolored streamers. So far it doesn't seem as frightening as System Shock 2, mostly because the contrast of festive costumes and decorations with twisted monstrosities evoked, at least in us, a sense of the bizarre. But not frighteningly bizarre like something from Dario Argento or H.P. Lovecraft, bizarre of a more endearing quality, like if all the characters in Bram Stoker's Dracula wore party hats.

At our session's end, we checked out some of the Achievements built into the game. You get some for hacking a turret, hacking a security bot, fully upgrading weapons, completing sections of the game, and specializing in plasmid use. Then there are some peculiar entries, such as the Wrench King achievement which requires you finish the entire game using the only the wrench and plasmids. There's another that only unlocks after you finish the game without triggering security systems. That sounds really hard, to say the least, especially considering how much firepower you have to throw at Big Daddies, and makes us curious how long the game actually is. Regardless, BioShock is very impressive so far. We can't wait for more.