‘Shock and Awe

I don’t know if it’s too soon to call BioShock a hit, but it’s definitely a success. I’m not going to be writing a longer review than my Washington Post blurb, so I wanted to put my thoughts on this Xbox 360 game out there.



Before the game came out, I was sitting on the fence as to whether to attend the launch party in Boston. Then, I played it. (I’d played in a demo session two weeks prior, but everything’s different when you don’t have watchful PR and developer eyes taking in your reactions.) After logging some alone time with it, I had to, as Mr. Scott Jones put it, “be in the same room as the people who made this game.”

The one thing I’ve been repeating in conversations about it BioShock is that it’s like Orson Welles made a video game. The design direction channels an Art Deco aesthetic that feels period-perfect and the setting and lighting create a portentous mood that permeates every frame of the action.





The curious thing about BioShock is that its innovations don’t necessarily come from gameplay. Control-wise, there isn’t a lot to separate it from other first-person offerings. And the overarching play dynamics (ethical decisions, mix-and-match strategies and multi-level inventory systems) have been done elsewhere, too. To me, BioShock’s big victory comes in delivering a story in a breathlessly taut way. The audio recordings that you’ll find scattered throughout Rapture form a connect-the-dots narrative, compelling you to explore the environment to find out how this bright, shiny city full of promise crumbled to pieces.

The excellent voice acting in BioShock reminds me of a 1940s radio play and I’d daresay it rivals the performances from the God of War franchise. Part of BioShock’s emotional impact comes from the fact that the player’s fighting for his life in a failed utopia. The splicers who menace you were probably well-heeled snobs when Rapture was in its infancy and now they’re scrounging just to get by.

All of this is to say that it’s story, not exponentially more powerful plasmids or artillery, is what’s driving me to finish this gameUnfortunately, that’s not often the case in video games. (And no, I haven’t finished. A brother’s trying to savor Ken Levine’s script like a fine wine. Red wine, of course.) BioShock draws on universal themes like man’s obligation to his fellows, whether societies can thrive without new cultural infusions and moral consequences of unchecked ambition. Hell, when was the last time a game riffed on pre-WWII era American isolationism? . The primacy of the story is one of the reasons that I’m glad Irrational didn’t shoehorn any kind of multiplayer into the title.

I may re-visit these thoughts once I finish BioShock (don’t hold your breath) but I already know that I’ll be looking at the rest of the high-profile games coming out this year like they’ve got a little more to prove.


“You call that a porterhouse?,” indeed.