BioShock Xbox 360

Released on 24/08/2007

• Bioshock Preview

  A blockbuster game in the dead of summer? Shocking!

  Arguably the biggest release on any format this August and the finest summer gaming sizzler in recent memory, Bioshock is packed with promise and prestige. Indeed, developer Irrational Games brings to Bioshock the renown of acclaimed PC shooters System Shock and System Shock 2, making Bioshock a long-awaited spiritual sequel to what old-skool PC players consider two of the most immersive, scary and downright shocking titles ever made.

  Bioshock is billed as the ‘shooter 2.0’, and with good reason. Its gameworld, Rapture, is an undersea utopia-gone-wrong, once the home of humanity’s brightest and best, now a shocking 1960’s dystopian hell lined with biogenetically mutated monstrosities stalking its submerged hallways. Pushing visual and aural boundaries within this chilling setting, ‘evocative’ would be a mild word to describe Bioshock’s phenomenally atmospheric fiction.

  Lumped into the first-person shooter genre because A) It’s viewed in first-person and B) firearms are largely the weapon of choice, Bioshock actually promises so much more than your archetypal run-and-gun game.

  I don't think this is Portland Bill's place

  At its outset, Bioshock sees the player scrambling from the wreckage of their crashed, sinking plane, swimming to an eerie lighthouse and discovering the path to Rapture within. Swiftly following this, a series of jump-inducing set pieces set the pace in its opening sections, coupled with a distinct lack of ammunition and the introduction of terrible bio-altered people-turned-monsters known as Splicers – all combining to imbue the claustrophobic, constant foreboding feeling you’d expect from being trapped in a crumbling undersea city.

  Bioshock’s world of Rapture is a city built on bio-engineering, and Bioshock itself is a game built on the moral choices arising from this real-world political hot potato. A thinking man’s shooter in every sense, Bioshock presents its own genetic gameworld ecology, and offers players the choice of becoming a genetic monstrosity themselves, or ploughing a more crafty route through Rapture’s perilous innards.

  Pushing visual and aural boundaries within this chilling setting, ‘evocative’ would be a mild word to describe Bioshock’s phenomenally atmospheric fiction.

  The cause of Bioshock’s genetic mutations, which include abilities like shooting lightning, freezing enemies and telekinesis, is a bio-altering serum called Adam, housed within hypo needles called Eve – but it’s getting these which will form Bioshock’s most compelling remit.

  Harvesting Adam will mean taking it directly from Little Sisters, freakish young girls whose role in Rapture seems to be to horde the dangerous genetic material – and getting to them will mean going through their bio-engineered guardians, the Big Daddies. Hulking, diving-suit-wearing protectors, Bioshock’s Big Daddies will destroy anything coming within a few feet of their allotted Little Sister – including you.

  You’ll need to use your wits, whatever ammo you can scrounge, and your already-existing bio-engineered powers to defeat both Bioshock’s Big Daddies and deadly Splicers – and often, a combination of all three. Indeed, as more skills open up throughout Bioshock, you’ll be able to hack computers, upgrade your weapons, even direct Big Daddies and Splicers to fight each other with some extraordinarily open-ended gameplay possibilities, in a quest to get to the creepy Little Sisters.

  Barely human?

  Doing so, however, presents Bioshock’s big dilemma, thanks to two mysterious, conflicting influences. Contacted by an enigmatic Irish man named Atlas, and by Rapture’s own architect, Andrew Ryan, players will be given an ultimatum; save the Little Sister, as Ryan requests, for very little Adam, or very graphically strip away her entire Adam supply, sending shrieks of genuine terror around Rapture as the defenceless, dread-filled infant screams her last. She’s barely human anyway, reasons Atlas – and you need the Adam for yourself.

  But what if he’s wrong? What if, deep down, the bio-altered Little Sisters are still human? And wouldn’t Adam make you less human too? Moreover, who is Atlas? What’s his agenda? And why does Ryan think saving the Little Sisters could benefit you? The answers to these questions and more await in Bioshock’s epic, immaculate, mesmerising underwater August adventure.

  Preview by: Mark Scott
  Preview Published: 01.08.07

  Published: 01/08/2007

• Bioshock Review

  It's all about Choice...

  You don't have much choice during the opening minutes, to be fair. The eerie lighthouse is only a minute's swim away, and the fiery wreckage of the plane you were travelling in is slowly sliding beneath the waves around you. And so you stumble upon the incredible city of Rapture, an art deco-styled undersea utopia, created as the platform from which mankind's greatest would have shaped humanity's glorious future. Would have, if everything hadn't gone a little bit wrong. Stumbling in to Bioshock's world gone mad, you soon find yourself aiding, and aided by, the voice of a man called Atlas, who communicates with you through a shortwave radio. Atlas introduces you to some of the backstory - genetic experimentation gone wrong, a populace gone mad with power - and to your first taste of the genetic material known as Adam in the form of a plasmid power-up.

  I'm covered in bees!

  Plasmids - genetic superpowers acquired throughout the game - form a large part of your arsenal in Bioshock (supplementing the usual shooter complement of pistol, shotgun, machine gun, rocket launcher, etc…), and are an absolute riot to boot, as you shoot electric bolts, ice or wind from your fingertips, or incinerate with the click of a finger. Your choice. My personal favourite was bees. I saved them for the enemies that really wound me up. Firing a fistful of bees into an assailant's face isn't the quickest way to kill it. But it is very, very funny.

  Plasmids - genetic superpowers acquired throughout the game - form a large part of your arsenal in Bioshock.

  Enemies mostly come in the form of the terrifying Splicers, former Rapture residents gone crazy over the very powers you're toying with. And occasionally, the already-iconic form of a Big Daddy. These monstrous, diving-suited horrors stomp around the complex protecting Little Sisters, scary genetically-altered girls who scavenge Adam from corpses. No hopscotch for these moppets. You need their Adam to increase your abilities and progress, you're told they're not human anymore anyway and you're given a choice - Harvest them, obtaining a massive boost of Adam, but killing them in the process, or Rescue them, obtaining half the Adam, a "Thank You" and the vague promise of a gift from one of Rapture's last remaining human inhabitants. Your choice.

  A wealth of possibilities

  Each area provides a wealth of possibilities for progression with Bioshock presenting itself as a series of stunning set pieces, each with a thousand random ways they can play out, and each begging you to add a little human creativity into the mix. Creativity…or perversity. In this way, Bioshock also delivers a step forward for so-called "emergent gameplay". Rapture, its contents and its inhabitants (mechanical as well as organic) are so alive - and the effects they and you can have on your surroundings so varied, that half the time you'll be trying new ideas out to see if they work as you'd imagine they would ("Yes, I can set that random corpse on fire an use my telekinesis plasmid to blast it into those explosive gas canisters and take out that Big Daddy.") and the other half you'll be agog as things you didn't forsee unfold around you.

  It's hard to elaborate quite how real Rapture feels - how complete, how detailed, how defiantly imaginative and yet utterly believable.

  Thus the inventive combat and the real-feeling physics provide an incredible "sandbox" experience, where experimentation just for its own sake can be endlessly rewarding, but where Bioshock goes from an amazing tech demo to the legendary game it will be remembered as is with its story, it's look, sound and feel - its overall aesthetic. It's hard to elaborate quite how real Rapture feels - how complete, how detailed, how defiantly imaginative and yet utterly believable. Graphically there's nothing close around at the moment, the sound design team need a medal and the writers and actors who tell their shocking and twist-laden tale (which hinges around, you guessed it, the concept of Choice) do so with a deft talent that Hollywood blockbusters rarely match.

  Look, just play the most enthralling, imaginative and thoughtful masterpiece of 2007, or don't. Hey, it's your choice.

  GAME's Verdict

  

  • Bioshock displays boundary-bothering graphical and sonic grunt.
  • Fire or Ice? Rescue or Harvest? It's all about the choices.
  • Incredible story brings Rapture and its denizens to life convincingly.

  

  • At around 25 hours first time it's longer than most games but doesn't feel like enough time in Rapture's amazing world.

  Review by: Jonny Austin
  Review Published: 29.08.07

  Published: 21/08/2007

• Hopes for Bioshock movie sinking fast

  
  Pirates of the Caribbean director Gore Verbinski has been talking to film site ComingSoon, explaining why pre-production on his planned Bioshock movie has ground to a shuddering halt.

  
  According to Verbinski, the film's potential R rating is the biggest stumbling block for investors, the helmer failing to secure the $160million he apparently needs to recreate Rapture in cinematic form.

  
  "I couldn't really get past anybody that would spend the money that it would take to do it and keep an R rating," he sighed. "I wasn't really interested in pursuing a PG-13 version. I just wanted to really, really make it a movie where, four days later, you're still shivering."
  "It's a movie that has to be really, really scary," Verbinski continued, "but you also have to create a whole underwater world, so the price tag is high. We just didn't have any takers on an R-rated movie with that price tag."

  
  If a large-pocketed Hollywood bigshot dug deep enough to fund the film, Verbinski reckons Rapture would look best in 3D. "I'd like to go into that world wearing a pair of glasses, I think in general, gaming is perfect for 3D. Anything where you're the protagonist. The kid in The Shining on the big wheel, going around corridors - that's what 3D is perfect for. To make people feel on edge."

  
  A Bioshock game in 3D? Now that would be worth investing in. Let's hope Ken Levine, currently working on Bioshock: Infinite, is listening.

• BioShock Infinite promises songbirds and time travel

  BioShock Infinite promises songbirds and time travel

  Ever since Irrational games first unveiled BioShock Infinite, wee been itching to hear more about it, and now CVG has spilled a ton of new details regarding the super-smart action game, after attending a pre-E3 demo session.

  It seems that wee in for a worthy successor to BioShock in every way. Set in the floating city of Columbia, youe cast as Booker Dewitt, who been sent to rescue a mysterious girl named Elizabeth.

  Elizabeth is pursued throughout the game by an enormous creature known as the Songbird, and youe bound to end up in conflict with him before too long. "Songbird is a bit like a jealous, possessive ex-husband," said Ken Levine, the game creator. He also went on to demonstrate some of Liz supernatural powers, which see her manipulating iftsin the world, allowing for a section in which she transports herself to a city street in the 1980s. Weird.

  Liz powers are for more than just tourism, though: during a later gun battle, she transports cover into the world for you to hide behind, and apparently later zaps a weapons crate into existence.

  Beyond a listing suggesting the game will be hitting stores in 2012, there no date for BioShock Infinite yet. Wel keep you updated on that and any news on which platforms it aimed for when we hear more at E3.

  Googly Eyes latest addition to E3 Kinect line-up?

  According to Eurogamer, next month E3 will be a great show for Kinect owners. It looks like Microsoft is planning to unveil at least 10 new Kinect titles, not counting sequels. The latest addition to the line-up?

• Batman helps to inspire Bioshock Infinite

  When we finally get our grubby mitts on Bioshock Infinite in 2012, you can thank a certain caped crusader for some of the game's structure. That's because Ken Levine, head honcho of developer Irrational Games and Bioshock creator, has admitted that 2009 blockbuster hit Batman: Arkham Asylum tickled his creative reflexes and made him reconsider some of the choices he made in the original game.

  Talking to Eurogamer, the man responsible for seminal PC game System Shock confessed that he was impressed with the way Arkham Asylum changed things around whenever the story took the player back through a previously explored location.

  ne of the things that's great about Arkham Asylum is that it's similarly structured to BioShock in some ways but also one of their great innovations is when you come back through an area they establish an entirely different narrative he said.

  "I think we're very much inspired by that. In BioShock 1 we just had respawning when you came back through an area, so I think when we put you back through an area we want to do it in a way that feels different and meaningful."

  A true Bioshock sequel with a Metroid-style gameworld that evolves as you move through it? Next year can't come soon enough.
  

• New Year Revolutions: The games of 2012 that we want to play now

  New Year Revolutions: The games of 2012 that we want to play now

  Towards the end of last year, we saw veritable avalanche of amazing games roll over us, leaving us swamped but happy with top-notch titles such as Modern Warfare 3, Batman: Arkham City, Skyrim, Super Mario Land 3D, Assassin's Creed Revelations, Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Saints Row The Third and, oh, you get the idea.

  Surely that's more than enough new games to leave even the greediest gamer feeling stuffed and satisfied? Well, yes, but don't pretend you can't hear that little voice whispering in the back of your mind. What's next? it says.

  Here's the answer: our guide to the big games of 2012 that we can't wait to play.

  GTA V (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)

  The genre-busting open-world crime caper makes its long-awaited return, with an all-new tale set in the pseudo-L.A. of Los Santos. Details are limited to one cryptic trailer, but where Rockstar is concerned it's safe to set expectations high.
  

  Mass Effect 3 (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)

  Bioware brings its grand space opera to a cataclysmic finale, as the world-devouring Reapers declare open war on Earth. The game adds optional multiplayer modes, as well as Kinect voice features for Xbox 360.
  

  Halo 4 (Xbox 360)

  Who seriously thought that Halo 3 would be the last we saw of Master Chief? He's back for the start of a brand new trilogy, which will find the Spartan super soldier confronting his own destiny as well as an ancient evil poised to destroy the universe. No pressure then.
  

  Bioshock Infinite (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)

  Swapping the bottom of the ocean for the top of the world, this continuation of the smartest sci-fi shooter in recent memory casts you as a Pinkerton agent in 1912, trying to escape a dystopian city in the clouds. Expect gorgeous views and gruelling terror in equal measure.
  

  Borderlands 2 (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)

  Return to Pandora for another round of co-operative role-playing mayhem. The game promises more dynamic quests which will alter the path of the story, as well as smarter enemies and more independent non-player characters. Bring it.
  

  Hitman: Absolution (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)

  It's been five years since Agent 47 last graced our joypads in Blood Money, and his latest adventure will take full advantage of the updates in technology since. Expect to be able to set up more elaborate assassinations, as well some form of multiplayer.
  

  Max Payne 3 (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)

  Rockstar's other big game for 2012 finds the dual-wielding anti-hero cop disgraced and working as a bodyguard in Brazil. Of course, it all kicks off when the family he's guarding are targeted by gangsters, and slow-motion shooty-diving is the only way to settle the score.
  

  The Last Guardian (PS3)

  The latest game from Ico and Shadow of the Colossus creator Fumito Ueda follows a young boy attempting to escape from a grim castle with some help from his friend, a giant griffin-creature called Trico. Action, puzzles and beautiful loveliness ensue.
  

  Tomb Raider (Xbox 360, PS3, PC)

  After drifting out of the spotlight, the first lady of gaming returns with this series reboot which follows a more vulnerable teenage Lara Croft, as she grows into the confident adventurer we all know and love.
  

  PlayStation Vita

  Sony's incredibly powerful handheld drops in February, bringing next-gen muscle to the portable gaming market. With 3G and Wifi-enabled models available - and boasting exclusive Uncharted, Wipeout and Call of Duty games - it's the console to watch in 2012.
  
  

• Bioshock Infinite to party like its 1999

  Bioshock Infinite to party like its 1999

  Gamers who like it tough will be clapping like seals at the news that Bioshock Infinite, the follow-up to the critically acclaimed 2007 smash hit, will be getting what developer Irrational Games has called 1999 Mode.

  That's the year Irrational's cult action-RPG System Shock 2 was released, a major influence on the original Bioshock. Now, players who want a more challenging experience will be able to play Bioshock Infinite as if it was designed back in those less forgiving times. Upgrade decisions will be irreversible, and it will be impossible to backtrack and work around the consequences of your actions.

  I'm an old school gamer, explained Irrational boss and Bioshock creator Ken Levine. We wanted to make sure we were taking into account the play styles of gamers like me. So we went straight to the horse's mouth by asking them, on our website, a series of questions about how they play our games. 94.6 percent of respondents indicated that upgrade choices enhanced their BioShock gameplay experience; however, 56.8 percent indicated that being required to make permanent decisions about their character would have made the game even better. In BioShock Infinite, gamers will have to sweat out the results of their actions. In addition, 1999 Mode will demand that players pick specialisations, and focus on them.

  BioShock Infinite swaps the undersea city of Rapture for Columbia, a floating city in the sky, but retains the same sharp political commentary and nerve-wracking horror feel. It's due for release on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC later this year.

• BioShock Infinite to include challenging 1999 Mode

  Hardcore gamers will welcome news that the upcoming BioShock Infinite will include a new mode that brings a new level of old-school challenge to the experience.

  Dubbed 1999 Mode, the new difficulty setting has been incorporated based on fan feedback and harks back to a more punishing era of game design, in which player choices and tactics are more likely to have permanent consequences.

  Gamers will really need to think about any decisions they make for their characters in 1999 Mode, both in terms of narrative development and customisation specialisations, as they will not be able to reverse them later.

  The mode will also feature much more demanding weapon, power and health management elements, while respawning will be much less frequent, meaning players could be confronted with the dreaded Game Over screen if they are not careful enough.

  Irrational Games' creative director Ken Levine said: "I'm an old school gamer. We wanted to make sure we were taking into account the play styles of gamers like me."

  BioShock Infinite is due for release on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC this year and is developed by the same team behind the multi-award-winning original BioShock.
  

  Published: 23/01/2012

• Time magazine picks the 100 best games ever

  Respected American journal, Time, has ventured into digital waters to list what it considers to be the top hundred video games ever made. The result is a suitably eclectic mix, presented in chronological order stretching from the 1970s all the way up to the 2010s.

  All the retro arcade classics you'd expect are in there - Space Invaders, Frogger, Pac-Man and more - while Nintendo's core franchises dominate the 1980s as consoles made their way into US homes. Mario and Zelda are among the only games to appear in more than one guise. The original Super Mario Bros and Mario 64 both make the grade, as does the original Metroid and its 2002 first-person sequel Metroid Prime.

  Resident Evil and Tomb Raider join the list in the 1990s, and are still going strong today. Resident Evil 6 launched recently, while Lara Croft is being relaunched in 2013.

  More recognisable names also pop up as the list draws closer to 2012. Bioshock, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Guitar Hero, Wii Sports, Portal, Gears of War and The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion are all held up as examples of classic modern gaming.

  Just two games from the last few years have been deemed worthy of a place. Mass Effect 3 and Batman: Arkham City are the lucky pair. Notable by their absence are current big hitters such as Assassin's Creed, Borderlands and Uncharted.

  Is Time placing too much importance on the past? Would you pick any of these for your top 100?

  Published: 16/11/2012