BioShock [X360]

Wanderlust and Violence Hearing about the open nature of Rapture's levels had us wondering how large these zones really would be. Those expecting some sort of Oblivion experience have been barking up the wrong tree but the levels are definitely large enough to get lost in. Multiple levels with side passages and meandering pathways can make Rapture a confusing place to visit. Thankfully you'll have a map to help navigate the area. Unfortunately, the areas are filled with bad guys.

One of the very first bad guys we found, after following the sound of voices, was a nasty splicer than can teleport around and throw fireballs at will. The disturbing teleport ability allows them to disappear in a splat of blood and reappear only to light you on fire. They're right bastards that aren't exactly easy to kill, but thanks to the Winter Blast plasmid, you can target them and freeze them in place to kill with a few wrench whacks or a shotgun blast. If that's not your thing, you could also use Target Dummy to make the security guns in the area attack him. Or you could simply try to take him down using conventional weapons.

And that's the thing Irrational is trying to get across. This is a first-person shooter, but it's presented in a way that allows you a lot of choice in how you approach hostile situations. One of the ways they're making sure their action title stays in motion is with re-spawning enemies. Their idea is that Rapture is populated with a ton of these splicers simply wandering the corridors looking for more Adam. So once you clear an area, more are going to eventually show up. Not only does it keep the action going and give you the feeling that you're never going to be safe but it also allows players to accumulate more wealth and items to use in the crafting system.

Regardless of the treasures you find, the real pleasure is going to be in the dynamic fights. These things get seriously hairy and change nearly every time you play so you just don't know what you're going to get. "There are some scripted scenes in the game but I knew an AI was going to walk down a flight of stairs and I knew that he could potentially turn hostile to me," explained Irrational's Ken Levine. "So I decided to set a tripwire across the stairs and electrocute him on the way down. And all the sudden this f*****g other splicer with a wrench comes running down the stairs at me cause he came out of nowhere and my really expensive tripwire was going to get wasted on this f*****g wrench guy. So I take out my pistol and miss! Miss! Finally I hit him in the head, he goes down, and limbos underneath the tripwire barely missing it! It was so thrilling because I was setting up a situation where I was exploiting my knowledge of the game and it still didn't work. It was a great lesson the game taught me about what kind of game it really is."

Identify Yourself This randomness and level of choice by the player isn't simply confined to how a single battle is tackled and that's one of the most important things to remember. One of the other systems that helps with the character building are the various machines scattered around the environment. These include genetic banks, vending machines, crafting stations, and weapons upgrade consoles. The largest and probably most important is the genetic bank, which allows you to switch out plasmids since you'll only have a certain number of slots.

As I mentioned before, we developed an affinity for Winter Blast. Not only is it good for setting up the kill for smaller enemies, but it also can immobilize big daddies for escape opportunities or at least to allow a momentary respite from the terrifying attacks they throw at you. Winter Blast also comes in extremely useful for hacking security turrets, cameras, as it slows down the fluid that runs through the Pipe Dreams-like puzzles of the hacking mini-game, which makes hacking much easier than it might have been otherwise. But while Winter Blast certainly was very useful to have around, keeping it in our repertoire of Plasmids meant sacrificing other potentially useful abilities such as Target Dummy, which attracts the ire of any security items in the area to whatever is targeted. The shock plasmid of course deals damage, stuns enemies, and can damage multiple enemies when used in water. Enrage can make killing enemies easy since the enraged enemies will kill each other as well. There are so many fun choices that it becomes really hard to decide which of the plasmids you want to take with you. The same thing goes for tonics like one that allows you to search dead bodies a second time for the chance at more, or different, loot. They're all very useful and you can only equip a certain amount of them at one time.

Identifying who you are in the game world also comes from your choice of preferred weapons. Scattered around the environment are weapons upgrade stations. The tricky thing about these is that you can only use them once which means you'll have to choose which of your weapons you're more interested in using often. Once you've picked which weapons to focus on, it's a little easier to use the various items you find on dead bodies and crates at the crafting stations in order to create items and ammunition. It's all about choice here and it showed in our short time with the game.