BioShock Review

Introduction

Rapture sits at the bottom of the Atlantic, a city built by industrialist Andrew Ryan to escape government, religion, and "petty morality." By the time your plane crashes into the ocean above it in 1960, that dream has already drowned. BioShock, released on August 21, 2007 by Irrational Games (then operating as 2K Boston) with 2K Australia, took the bones of System Shock 2's immersive-sim design and wrapped them around one of gaming's most quoted openings: a bathysphere ride down into a city lit by neon and leaking seawater. Eighteen years on, it still reads as the moment the first-person shooter grew a conscience.

Welcome to Rapture

The genius of Rapture is that none of its story arrives as a cutscene lecture. Audio diaries scattered through the Medical Pavilion, Arcadia, and Fort Frolic let the player assemble Ryan's fall from idealist to tyrant in fragments, overheard rather than explained. Splicers, Rapture's gene-addicted remnants, shuffle through hallways muttering half-remembered lives while Art Deco murals peel off the walls behind them. The environmental storytelling here set a template the entire industry copied for the next decade, and few have matched the density of detail packed into a single flooded hallway.

• Audio diaries: Over 120 recordings voice Rapture's residents and scientists, turning exploration into forensic archaeology rather than a side quest checklist.
• Art direction: Unreal Engine 2.5 renders Rapture's neon-and-brass aesthetic with water effects and dynamic lighting that still sell the illusion of a city actively drowning around you.
• Sound design: Garry Schyman's score leans on 1940s big band records bleeding through tinny radios, a deliberate anachronism that makes the setting feel haunted rather than futuristic.

Plasmids, Weapons, and Resource Management

Combat splits down two tracks that the game forces you to juggle simultaneously: a right hand holding a wrench, shotgun, or chemical thrower, and a left hand wired with Plasmids, gene-spliced powers injected straight into the bloodstream. Electro Bolt stuns enemies and shorts out security bots. Incinerate! sets Splicers and oil slicks alight. Telekinesis lets you fling exploding barrels or yank weapons out of enemy hands mid-fight. The real tension isn't the shooting itself but the economy underneath it: ADAM, the genetic currency that buys new Plasmids and Tonics, is finite, and every upgrade decision locks out another.

• Plasmid variety: Ten base Plasmids, from Electro Bolt to Insect Swarm, each interacting with the environment (water conducts electricity, oil ignites) rather than existing in isolation.
• Tonic layering: Passive Tonics like Armored Shell or Sportboost stack into build-crafting territory well before "build diversity" became an industry buzz phrase.
• Hacking minigame: A pipe-connection puzzle governs turrets, cameras, and vending machines, rewarding patience over brute force.

Big Daddies, Little Sisters, and the Harvest/Rescue Choice

No encounter defines BioShock's reputation like the Big Daddy. These lumbering divers in brass-riveted suits exist purely to protect the Little Sisters harvesting ADAM from corpses, and taking one down takes more than a few shotgun blasts. The fight demands traps, environmental hazards, and every Plasmid in your arsenal, and losing is common on a first attempt. What happens after the Big Daddy falls matters more: harvest the Little Sister for a large, immediate ADAM payout, or rescue her and receive less now in exchange for bonus ADAM gifts later and a different ending slide. It's a mechanical choice dressed as a moral one, and the game never scolds you for picking either path, which is exactly why it still provokes debate.

A Story That Redefined the Twist

"Would you kindly" became one of gaming's most dissected phrases for good reason. Midway through the campaign, BioShock reveals that every order given to you by Atlas has been compliance with a hidden trigger phrase, turning the entire preceding campaign into an indictment of linear game design itself. Ken Levine's script uses the shooter's own conventions, the invisible contract where players follow mission markers without question, as the weapon of its twist. Andrew Ryan's final confrontation, delivered entirely through forced action rather than a choice, remains one of the few moments a game has made its mechanics the argument rather than just the delivery system for one.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Rapture's art direction: A fully realized underwater city whose Art Deco decay sells a political allegory without a single line of dialogue spelling it out.
• Plasmid and hacking systems: Combat built around environmental combos and resource scarcity, not just aim and trigger discipline.
• The Would You Kindly twist: A narrative reveal that recontextualizes everything preceding it and indicts the genre's own conventions.
• Big Daddy encounters: Set-piece fights that demand preparation and improvisation rather than reflex alone.

Cons:

• Combat ceiling: Later-game Plasmid and weapon combinations can trivialize encounters once Electro Bolt plus melee becomes the default solution to everything.
• Hacking repetition: The pipe puzzle, charming at first, wears thin by the fortieth security camera.
• Pacing dip in Fort Frolic's aftermath: The campaign's final act leans harder on combat arenas than the exploration-driven pacing that defines the first two-thirds.

Conclusion

BioShock didn't just borrow System Shock 2's DNA, it proved that a shooter could carry a thesis and still deliver on the genre's core promise of visceral, improvisational combat. Rapture remains one of gaming's most completely imagined failed utopias, and the Would You Kindly twist still lands even on a second playthrough, once you know exactly where the knife is going in. Few games from 2007 have aged this little.