Under the sea

First of all I want to say that this post is a spoiler although I won’t tell too much about the game because I haven’t played it until the end. After this, it’s time to talk about one of the best videogames I’ve ever seen (maybe after finishing it, it will be the best one); Bioshock. It’s a first-person shooter game which was released on 2007 and, since then, it has been highly rated, receiving very good reviews from the specialized critic and also from the players. It really deserves that.

The plot is, at first sight, very simple and original: you are the only survivor of a plane crash, in the middle of the ocean, and beyond the wreckage you find the entrance of an enormous city built under the sea: Rapture. But, after reaching it, you realize that something goes wrong. The perfect utopia has turned into a nightmare, citizens have driven mad after using science to become stronger and there have happened many incidents that will be unveiled throughout the game. Horrible stories that never stop surprising the player, when you think you have seen everything there is a new objective or an unexpected turn.

The objective is much more than to explore the city wiping out splicers (your enemies, Rapture’s inhabitants).The story revolves around two kinds of characters: little sisters and big daddies (you can see them in the picture). Young and fragile, little sisters move throughout the city collecting ADAM, a very valued substance, from dead people. You may think that to get their ADAM would be as easy as taking candy from a baby, but the problem is that they are always protected by a big daddy. If you approach too much a little sister, you’ll have to face a big daddy. And that’s the mission of the main character, to beat them and then, to decide what to do with little sisters. There are two options: to save them or to kill them. Each one will have different consequences, leading to a good or a bad end.

Apart from the meticulously detailed settings of the city and the characters, the game immerses you in the underwater world because of the way of telling the stories. There are many audio recordings spread over the game and made by people of the city who explain what happened before reaching the current situation. There’s always a feeling of being in an alive place, with music from the 30s, the 40s and the 50s, hearing voices of splicers (they don’t emit sounds like typical zombies but they have very realistic conversations) and, of course, little sister’s words. They are always talking with their big daddy (daddies never speak), who they call “Mr. B” or “Mr. Bubbles”. Here there are some of their quotes:

Don’t be a slow poke Mr. Bubbles! Angels don’t wait for slow pokes…

Scabby on my knee! Scabby on my knee! Scabby on my knee!

Ready for dream time now Mr.Bubbles

The sequel of the game is called Bioshock 2: Sea of Dreams and its expected release date is on the last quarter of the year. I still have to finish the first one, but I believe that it will also be a must have game.