Wasn’t sure if I’d like this or not cause I haven’t been crazy on the other immersive sims i’ve played. Early on I wasn’t really feeling it much, but as I got further I started enjoying it a lot more. Rapture is one of my favorite gaming locations and Bioshock excels at atmosphere, art design, and its environment. I stopped often just to look around or out of the glass windows to soak in everything. I really enjoyed its horror aspects and how everything was in chaos in Rapture at the time of the events of the game. The little sister and big daddy designs are iconic and I enjoyed fighting them and their mechanics. In terms of gameplay I wasn’t crazy about the shooting personally. The hacking got old extremely quick as well and the photography aspect was also really underbaked. The plasmids were a lot of fun to mess around with, but I didn’t really use a huge variety of them. What Bioshock lacks some in gameplay though it makes up for in its art design and other aspects I mentioned previously. It really is one of the coolest games out there in terms of style. I’m glad I finally got around to it since it’s one of those games people are surprised when you say you haven’t played. Excited to checkout the rest of the series

Would've been better if it were Doom 3 instead. Rapture has a really fun amount of character and charm as a setting, and every time somebody is speaking it's a good time. Too bad the environmental storytelling is trying to be deathly serious most of the time, because it comes across rather poorly while everything else reads like a caricature. Real tone issues going on with all that stuff. Given the nature of the big twist and the entire commentary on the nature of play, games, and skinner boxes I am lead to believe it's meant to be taken more seriously. Unfortunately nothing about the writing and set up of player expression can really reach that ambition, so it all falls flat while feeling a bit silly and pretentious.

The gameplay and level design also reflect a bit of a "bit off more they can chew" problem. Not willing to commit to having strong gunplay at risk of it being a corridor shooter, while also not fully committing to being a SS2 repeat just leaves everything stuck in a middle ground where nothing feels great. Guns feel floaty and inaccurate, and enemies are bullet sponges later in the game. Plasmids help tear through enemies, but they are surprisingly limited in use outside of giant puddles on the ground for you to light up. Hacking is a tedious minigame made worse by it always being the correct choice to just hack everything. If you simply hack everything, Plasmid stun everything, then start blasting, then every problem in the game will be easily solved.

This all comes to a head in Fort Frolic, which should be my favorite level. Sander Cohen is hilarious, dark, and creates spooky, evocative set pieces. I have to take pictures of the corpses of specific people I murder as an art piece! What could go wrong? Well, the targets are just generic splicers with big health bars and maybe one gimmick thrown on top all tossed around like 4 medium sized rooms. There's an attempt at making these mini setpieces and boss fights, but it's all just some chore to be doing while I wait to see what batshit Sander will throw at me next. That's Bioshock's loop in a nutshell. The lack of cohesion between all these elements sands off any real impact that could be had with scenes like this, which is basically the entire game.

I don't hate it, but I do wish there had been a stronger commitment to the bit without all the pretense. The level design is already practically a corridor shooter lite, and maybe it would have been better to embrace that design instead. A "dumber" and less ambitious Bioshock that knew better what it wanted to say and stuck to trying to execute within those bounds is a thing I am wanting after this one.

BioShock is still ahead of its time. Hosting one of the most interesting worlds in fiction, filled with terrifying characters and attractions, complimented with top of its class gameplay and storytelling, I can't think of a game more influential to game design in the late 2000's.

BioShock tells the story of the underwater "utopia" of Rapture during its own apocalypse caused by the hubris of founder Andrew Ryan. Ryan's obsession with objectivism led him to hypocrisy in his own philosophy, and that led to a civil war with businessman Frank Fontaine which destroyed Rapture after Fontaine was martyred. Your character is Jack Wynand, a silent strong type who finds himself buried at sea under the rubble of Rapture. Jack finds the everyman Atlas and the two must work together to work through Rapture and kill Ryan.

The characters you meet in this game, both the rare ally and numerous enemies, are engaging and masterfully written. This is because of director Ken Levine's desire to adapt the good parts of Ayn Rand's book "The Fountainhead." that being the dialogue and the holier than thou performances of the characters. It works so well for a video game, Bioshock and its sequels are so quotable, probably the most of the medium.

Writing aside, the game itself is still mind blowing. The balance between powers and gunplay wasn't enough for Irrational Games, they wanted the combat to be deeper. The exploration is so deep and offers new ways to upgrade Jack and learn about the deceased and barely living of Rapture through one of the few good uses of Audio Logs in gaming. The game is emergent, asking you questions constantly, like would you want to kill the boss for more upgrade mats, and if you do, do you want to take it slow with traps and illusions, or bumrush the Big Daddy with a shotgun and a freeze blast. It's constantly fun and never falls off in its nine hour run.

BioShock is just divine, and it happens to be one of the rare series where the games just constantly get better. I highly recommend all of them.

A perfect blend of intrigue and chaos with an unforgettable setting that only gets more anxiety-inducing as you go. The narrative is genuinely one of the best I've seen in a game with an amazing plot twist to boot. As my first survival-esque game I was a fan of how your gameplay progression was interwoven seamlessly with the environment and story as you explored more, and I never really felt unprepared or overprepared for anything while the combat remained challenging until the end. I can see myself becoming a huge fan of the genre.

Shooting: 6.5/10
Was fun, especially the sections where you got attacked by like 12 people at once, but I think the ammo limitations hurt the experience more than they helped, especially with how oddly tanky some of the regular human enemies were. I ended up cheating money epically.

Aesthetics: 9/10
Nice artdeco style, remaster's graphics look solid, lots of atmosphere, good theme

Story: 7.5/10
I'm biased because I heard "would you kindly" years ago so I already knew atlas was going to betray me, some parts didn't really make any sense to me, but other than that was okay. Rapture was also interesting as a concept and I want to know more about what happened.

Characters: 9/10
All well written and very well voice acted, interesting enough to make me want to learn more about them and actually listen to the audio tapes.
Final verdict, good game

just finished the good ending
pretty good game
the endings were so muh
but the fact that u turn into a big daddy at the end was amazing
i hope the 2nd one is better

Legendary game from a legendary year in gaming. Not much to fault it for, has a pretty good story with a classic twist, memorable characters, wide range of weapons and abilities for different playstyles, an amazing collection of music in the soundtrack that fits the time period the game takes place in, and a system that takes player choice into account (affecting the ending). Only things I can really criticize are the combat system feeling a little clunky having to switch entirely between plasmids and guns, the hacking system took a bit too much time away from the main action, and the game was not too hard even on the higher difficulty settings. Alternate game modes were not too crazy, but added some more content to keep me invested in the game.

This game still holds up. Unsurprisingly, though, since it comes from the mind of Ken Levine, one of the most influential game designers in the industry. Irrational Games aimed from the start to make a spiritual successor to System Shock 2 and provided not only one of the best immersive sims, but one of the best games ever made.

Bioshock is one of the rare instances where a great idea is brought to life with beautiful execution. Game design, story and art direction all work together to make a game that utilizes the full potential of the medium.

The game's story made a huge impact in the video game industry as a whole. It tackles the idea of "ludonarrative dissonance" head on, a term that is very commonly used today in game design, but was coined after the impact of Bioshock's infamous plot twist.

Like other immersive sims, the story is told without sacrificing player agency. Meaning, it is mostly presented through player triggers, keeping cutscenes to a minimum.

The gameplay loop is also very enjoyable, even though the gunplay feels a little bit dated now. It's a shooter first and an RPG second. You acquire powers called Plasmids that work situationally with the environment, which makes for a very creative combat experience. I still prefer this toned down version of the combat system rather than the more fast paced and more "spectacular" one from Bioshock Infinite.

This HD remaster is okay. It's mainly boils down to better textures. Unfortunately, the audio seems to be a downgrade from the original version, noticeably compressed and very poorly balanced. There are some mods that seem to fix it, so check the game's PCGamingWiki page for more information. The redeeming part of it, though, is the great behind the scenes interview with Ken, made by Geoff Keighley from Game Awards fame, which I highly recommend to watch.

(This review was first written on Steam -- 19 July, 2023)

Realmente esse aqui é uma obra-prima dos fps de história.
Nem preciso falar da ambientação né?! Rapture é um dos cenários mais marcantes de todos, uma cidade retrofuturista debaixo do mar, onde só gênios vivem já é uma ideia foda, agora faz essa cidade ir pro KRL ter um monte de gente bizarra e poderes e faz simplesmente o melhor cenário de todos.
O jogo consegue ser assustador e faz um sustos bem orgânicos.
A gameplay é um pouco datada pra hoje em dia, mas nada que você não se acostume.
Esse é um jogo com uma atenção aos detalhes espetacular e com uma história de explodir sua cabeça, brincado com os ideais de videogame já marcados na nossa cabeça.
Acho que ele fica um pouco maçante no final, mas nada que atrapalhe a experiência.
Recomendo a todos.

I had a real itch to replay Bioshock and it was definitely scratched, but I'm not sure I'll have that desire again.

The strongest aspects of the game are the dialogue and (some of) the writing, as well as the mechanics of how gameplay works. The core plot is a strong invitation into a world that feels well-realized and there is no end to the iconic lines spoken by the memorable characters. Playing it this time around felt like a really good roller coaster, in that it's not a completely interactive experience but it still does what it can to immerse you in the story it's trying to tell.

Forgiving it the necessary marks of aging, everything still plays out fairly well from end-to-end. The shooting and plasmids feel pretty good and the environments do enough to spice up the gameplay loop, for the most part. After a while, though, the shallow nature of the run-and-gun gameplay wears a bit thin and the shortcomings of this lauded game become more apparent.

Bioshock, I think, has always been a game considered as having a strong opening and a weak ending. That's certainly what I think and what I've heard others describe the game as, but you can really track the rate at which the game itself begins to go downhill. Sure, the gameplay is fun, but only for a little while; in fact, before too long, it begins to become quite rote. Nearly 2 decades later, enough games have improved on the template set out by Bioshock that the original feels like a relic in comparison to them and, unfortunately, doesn't hold the same sway over me when I'm double the age I was when I first played it. The moderate frustration of the remaster freezing on me thrice, losing me hours of game time, is also a bummer.

An important game, no doubt, but one that can't help but wear the ravages of time on its sleeve, much like the creaking halls of Rapture itself.