If my first impressions review of Psychonauts has taught me anything it's that fans are a bunch of wankers who will not hesitate to stoop to personal attacks and plain old temper tantrums when you have the gall to say you found their favorite game to not be much fun. This may be especially true in the case of a cult classic when the term cult can be applied very literally. Beware the Kool-Aide. So it is with no small amount of timidity that I even attempt to review a game with any amount of popularity. Thank goodness for alcohol and good old American stupidity since it allowed me to download the demo of Bioshock.
I should probably state right up front that my experience with first person shooters is limited to Dooms one and two and my experience with computer RPGs is limited to... right. I played a few of those Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games. I guess those count. So this is largely a all-new experience for me. Not completely new, obviously, but since I haven't been following developments in computer games since the Nintendo Entertainment System was still a viable platform, it will be interesting to see what the last fifteen years of or has gained.
The game starts with may character surviving a plane crash into the ocean and having to swim around flames to get to a small island, enter a submersible bathysphere and venture to the underwater utopia of Rapture. Once arrived, I watch as a man is murdered before my very eyes by some kind of mutant who then attempts to attack me in the bathysphere, but unable to get in, it runs off.
I describe all of this because I want to note that during all of this, the interactivity is negligible. While there were moments where I had to do things, such as swimming to shore, and while I maintained control of the camera, the entirety of this was essentially an opening cinematic.
As the bathysphere descended, I was reminded of the Living Seas exhibit at Disney's EPCOT Center, which is now been retooled into an exhibit with the Finding Nemo characters. But the original exhibit had the pretense of taking you to an underwater facility despite it obviously not going very deep. As play progressed, I was again reminded of amusement park fun houses. After leaving the sphere I was instructed by my radio contact, Atlas, to flush out the mutant without any weapon through dark corridors, listening to the mutant (okay, its called a "splicer") murmur creepy things about, I don't know, killing me. As one point an electric thing on the wall exploded in a shower of sparks. It was obvious this jump scare went off because I had reached an area that caused this thing to trigger.
In fact, many of these things trigger based on your position and they don't advance any if you don't move. At one point, I entered an underwater tunnel (it's all underwater, but OK) and the tail of my airliner crashed into it, causing water to rush in. An adjacent tunnel completely collapses and the airlock to that now destroyed tunnel bulges threateningly.
What I'm trying to convey with all of this description is the artificiality of it all. Play is decidedly linear as you go from one area to another and events are triggered as you move. The nearby tunnel does not collapse until you reach a certain point in your own tunnel and the airlock to the destroyed tunnel does not bulge with water spraying through the seams until you're near it.
The other thing I want to point out is that despite how artificial all of this is, it is incredibly effective. When I was helping to flush out the mutant with no weapon, I was very, very nervous. Upon reflection, I need not have worried as it was obvious that nothing was going to happen to me since I had no weapon. In the flooding tunnel, I rushed through to avoid the rising water. When I replayed it, I stopped to see if the water was actually rising. It was not. Instead of rushing through, I could leisurely strolled through all the carnage without a care as it could not actually hurt me.
It is all illusion much like a amusement park spook house, but illusions can be very effective. This has been somewhat eye-opening into the nature of storytelling in games. Having a well-defined track to follow vs. having to explore a whole city to figure out where to go and what I'm supposed to do is preferable. The linearity can be tough to ignore as it becomes obvious that it is an illusion, but the trade off is that it's not as easy to be bored with a clear goal of where to go and what to do.
Of course, this being only the demo, it is possible and probably likely that at some point I would get to some large "hub" area of Rapture with several paths branching off from it with side quests to complete and whatnot. Or at least I assume so. I could be wrong on that point. But I am seriously considering purchasing the full game to find out.
I should probably state right up front that my experience with first person shooters is limited to Dooms one and two and my experience with computer RPGs is limited to... right. I played a few of those Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games. I guess those count. So this is largely a all-new experience for me. Not completely new, obviously, but since I haven't been following developments in computer games since the Nintendo Entertainment System was still a viable platform, it will be interesting to see what the last fifteen years of or has gained.
The game starts with may character surviving a plane crash into the ocean and having to swim around flames to get to a small island, enter a submersible bathysphere and venture to the underwater utopia of Rapture. Once arrived, I watch as a man is murdered before my very eyes by some kind of mutant who then attempts to attack me in the bathysphere, but unable to get in, it runs off.
I describe all of this because I want to note that during all of this, the interactivity is negligible. While there were moments where I had to do things, such as swimming to shore, and while I maintained control of the camera, the entirety of this was essentially an opening cinematic.
As the bathysphere descended, I was reminded of the Living Seas exhibit at Disney's EPCOT Center, which is now been retooled into an exhibit with the Finding Nemo characters. But the original exhibit had the pretense of taking you to an underwater facility despite it obviously not going very deep. As play progressed, I was again reminded of amusement park fun houses. After leaving the sphere I was instructed by my radio contact, Atlas, to flush out the mutant without any weapon through dark corridors, listening to the mutant (okay, its called a "splicer") murmur creepy things about, I don't know, killing me. As one point an electric thing on the wall exploded in a shower of sparks. It was obvious this jump scare went off because I had reached an area that caused this thing to trigger.
In fact, many of these things trigger based on your position and they don't advance any if you don't move. At one point, I entered an underwater tunnel (it's all underwater, but OK) and the tail of my airliner crashed into it, causing water to rush in. An adjacent tunnel completely collapses and the airlock to that now destroyed tunnel bulges threateningly.
What I'm trying to convey with all of this description is the artificiality of it all. Play is decidedly linear as you go from one area to another and events are triggered as you move. The nearby tunnel does not collapse until you reach a certain point in your own tunnel and the airlock to the destroyed tunnel does not bulge with water spraying through the seams until you're near it.
The other thing I want to point out is that despite how artificial all of this is, it is incredibly effective. When I was helping to flush out the mutant with no weapon, I was very, very nervous. Upon reflection, I need not have worried as it was obvious that nothing was going to happen to me since I had no weapon. In the flooding tunnel, I rushed through to avoid the rising water. When I replayed it, I stopped to see if the water was actually rising. It was not. Instead of rushing through, I could leisurely strolled through all the carnage without a care as it could not actually hurt me.
It is all illusion much like a amusement park spook house, but illusions can be very effective. This has been somewhat eye-opening into the nature of storytelling in games. Having a well-defined track to follow vs. having to explore a whole city to figure out where to go and what I'm supposed to do is preferable. The linearity can be tough to ignore as it becomes obvious that it is an illusion, but the trade off is that it's not as easy to be bored with a clear goal of where to go and what to do.
Of course, this being only the demo, it is possible and probably likely that at some point I would get to some large "hub" area of Rapture with several paths branching off from it with side quests to complete and whatnot. Or at least I assume so. I could be wrong on that point. But I am seriously considering purchasing the full game to find out.
