4.5/5 ★ – Valkyro's review of BioShock™ Remastered.

The original BioShock and its sequel, as well as the “immersive sim” genre as a whole, are something I’ve unfortunately missed out on over the years. The closest I’ve gotten is that I actually played a lot of BioShock Infinite back when it came out. But the original game is one that’s so highly regarded amongst the industry that I decided it was time to experience it via the remaster. I can absolutely see why many regard this game as a masterpiece. Especially for the era in which it came out, BioShock’s approaches to design, narrative, and worldbuilding are pretty unique in comparison to its AAA FPS peers. I can imagine that this title was a mind-opening experience for many casual gamers in 2007 who were enticed by the premise/cover, but weren’t prepared for the *depth* that’s provided here. As a player in 2022, there are several aspects that don’t hold up super well, but I think overall those things are outweighed by what the game gets right. The gameplay loop is quite addicting, it combines the things I like about various first person RPGs with a more linear FPS based focus. Additionally, the resource management (as well as the atmosphere) remind me of survival horror games, but the loop of resource depletion/gain happens much faster in BioShock than in something like Resident Evil. The actual shooting/aiming/combat mechanics are what haven’t aged terribly well here. For a game that was released the same year as Halo 3 and Call of Duty 4, the gunplay is pretty subpar due to bad damage feedback and stiff animations. It took me quite a while to even realize that you can ADS in this game, which ended up being mostly pointless because of how janky that animation is (you can’t continue firing while aiming in/out and sometimes the gun model doesn’t even center properly). Other factors bring down the combat like having to manually switch between “equipping” your left and right hand. I suppose that the idea here was to encourage more methodical combat by not allowing players to simultaneously spray plasmids and their gun, but it just ends up being unnecessarily tedious due to how fast-paced the combat can be. It resulted in things like the Telekinesis plasmid feeling too cumbersome to utilize mid-fight. However, I think the real intended strength of BioShock’s gameplay is the variety of playstyle options available. There is a vast array of weapons, tonics, plasmids, paths, hackable items, optional areas, consumables, and upgrades available to the player. Because it’s not a full-on RPG or anything, you also don’t really get locked into “builds” and the game offers you plenty of opportunities to switch things up. Even though it’s kind of easy to die in this game, the Vita-Chamber system makes it not so punishing, encouraging accessible experimentation. In my playthrough I went from conserving ammo by leaning into combining melee/plasmids/environmental damage, to an all-out guns blazing playstyle, to a stealthy crossbow precision approach. This kind of encouragement for repeat playthroughs is why this genre is so beloved. I do think there is a bit of mechanical “fluff” shoved into the experience though. While there may be a lot of options and elements to the sandbox, it’s not perfectly balanced – not everything feels as necessary or useful as it could. For me, the obvious primary plasmid choice was always Electro Bolt, as it was good against everything while most other plasmids had more specific use cases. For this reason, I really liked the section later in the game where you are forced to use random plasmids, as it made me experience the game in new ways I wouldn’t have otherwise opted into. There was also the element of each weapon having 3 ammo types, which didn’t add a lot of depth and instead led to a lot of extra tedious reloading. I also found that being unable to pick individual consumables out of containers was literally just silly, especially when it was usually unclear what effects different items would have. One area of the mechanics I have a few more thoughts on is hacking. Hacking is weird because it really does feel like there's a lot of RNG involved, yet it’s very satisfying to succeed in executing a difficult hack. While it took some getting used to, I began to enjoy it especially in regards to hacking turrets/bots to assist me in battle. That being said, the shops specifically didn't generally make me feel rewarded for hacking them, so I drifted away from even bothering. I ended up WANTING to hack things because I think it's a cool concept, but it more often than not would become blatantly unfair, repeatedly boxing me into paths that had no solution. The labeled "difficulty" seemed to be meaningless, as I would run into hacks that would apparently be the hardest possible difficulty, but were exponentially easier than hacks labeled with a middling difficulty, which would be legitimately impossible on a random basis without appropriate engineering tonics equipped. Then, by the end of the game, I had so many hacking tonics on that it made every hack feel trivial. If you're going to have hacks that are so tough that they basically require a hacker build to execute them, at least make it consistent. Something I will commend this system for is usually managing to provide JUST enough of the different pipe shapes I needed in the moment. Even though the game was more than happy to "lock" you out of completing a hack due to short circuit/alarm placement, I rarely (twice) ran into a situation where there were no correct pieces left, even when I took some weird paths. Enemy variety in BioShock is pretty decent. There’s multiple different kinds of Splicers with their own unique behaviors and optimal ways to combat them. Although, in the heat of the moment a lot of them look pretty indistinct due to a lack of visibility and having similar silhouettes for their models. I often wouldn’t know what kind of Splicer I was facing unless I took a picture of them with the camera (a weird unnecessary mechanic). The exception to this, of course, are the Big Daddies. I loved the addition of these iconic, menacing minibosses. They always forced me to change my strategy to how I was planning on making my way through a space, culminating in a tense encounter. The other important aspect to these guys is that they will often be accompanied by a Little Sister, a genetically altered child who you get to choose to Harvest or Rescue after killing their Big Daddy protector. This is intended to be a sort of moral dilemma for the player, you can harvest her to immediately get ADAM, which is used for important upgrades. However, it seemed like the obvious choice here was to rescue them because you still receive ADAM for it, you just get it later. I was able to get pretty much every upgrade I wanted by exclusively rescuing the Little Sisters. It also seemed pretty clear to me that I would probably be rewarded in some way towards the end of the game for not opting to brutally drain the life force from a bunch of children. This is where I also have to vent about the time I killed a Big Daddy and the Little Sister despawned, meaning I couldn’t rescue her, which was frustrating because that was the only one I missed in the entire game… that was lame. I’ve definitely had a lot of feedback regarding the gameplay, but the parts of this game I admire most are the aesthetic treatments. The world/atmosphere of Rapture is great and honestly a lot creepier than I expected. The visual adherence to the setting does a lot to tie the gameplay and narrative together. The UI, architecture, weaponry, technology, fashion, interactables, etc. all enhance the world. The retrofuturistic style exhibited here is a unique one and they fully committed to it, nothing feels anachronistic. Aside from some recurring visibility issues and occasionally distracting VFX, it really is an enjoyable game to look at despite its age. The audio of course is massively important to establishing an atmosphere. The palette of sounds that make up Rapture are wonderfully distinct. The main menu piano sounds, the unique ambience of being in an underwater structure, the hollow “roars” of the Big Daddy, the ramblings of the Splicers, and almost every element of the UI sound design work to establish the world. It might genuinely be some of my favorite sonic worldbuilding I’ve heard, even if it can be a little extra at times (horror stingers when saving/loading? really?). There are a lot of issues with the technical audio implementation, though. Occlusion is something that seems to be nonexistent, meaning that enemies who might be above/below the player with 3 walls between can sound as if they are right next to them. Panning is also off, with footsteps from the player being stereo in a way where it often sounds like enemies are sneaking up next to you while you’re walking. The weapon reloads also have shifting left/right panning throughout the animation which is very odd. These issues seemed to artificially inflate the tension and made it more difficult to take the immersion seriously. The music is great, both the licensed songs and Garry Schyman's score do a lot in establishing that early/mid 20th century vibe. The expressive strings and piano are used to great effect in evoking mystery, tension, somberness, and horror all while retaining a sort of classical "proper" and "dignified" aura. The frenetic melodic pieces such as the one that plays during the player's introduction to Rapture, as well as the character theme for Sander Cohen are unforgettable tone setters. Schyman's use of musique concrete and dissonant tone clusters are also smart ways of achieving an avant-garde soundscape in the more intense, twisted moments while remaining faithful to the narrative setting. Plot-wise this game is pretty strong, with the writing being a large part of why it’s remembered so fondly. There’s a lot more political and philosophical nuance explored than I would have expected from a shooter in 2007. I don’t think I would have been able to fully appreciate it at the age I was when it came out. The premise of exploring a superficially cool, but also blatantly failed dystopian society as a potential “endpoint” of individualist/objectivist capitalism is one that holds up as considerably interesting today. The lo-fi “audio drama” style of storytelling cleverly plays to BioShock’s strengths, as opposed to having an overabundance of cutscenes, which wouldn’t have aged nearly as well. The early plot beats with the strong characterizations of Andrew Ryan and Atlas are super memorable. I feel that there was a good slow burn up to the confrontation with the former, allowing for ample time to explore Rapture and its side stories. The “twist” was awesome and surprising, especially considering that this far predated the modern wave of “meta analysis” type games. Unfortunately this is where the story peaks for me, half of the game builds to a commentary about unquestionably following orders and then just kinda… continues on as normal. I didn’t find Fontaine super interesting as an antagonist, despite the well executed buildup to his reveal in the audio diaries (even though there are definitely some plot holes with his intricate deception plan). The Atlas persona was honestly more interesting to me, but then he turned into a sort of generic evil gangster type (maybe it was the accent/acting?). His lore was engaging with the whole uprising that led to the downfall of Rapture, but when he was actually speaking he didn’t feel super compelling. In my opinion, they should have leaned more into the philosophical/political subtextual differences between Ryan and Fontaine during the actual “monologuing at the player” sections. When it came to the game wrapping up, I did like the process and concept of becoming a Big Daddy, where you could tackle the objectives in any order. Once it was over, though, I felt like I was more hampered by it rather than feeling like a badass. Maybe that was intentional and meant to be thought provoking, I don’t know. The climax of the game being an escort mission with limited peripheral vision while punishing exploration, followed by a lackluster bossfight also didn’t leave the best taste in my mouth. The ending as a whole felt like it snuck up on me and was just a bit anticlimactic. I’m guess I’m glad that I assumed that I would get a “good ending” for not harvesting any Little Sisters, because I looked up the alternate ending and it honestly seemed pretty stupid. All in all, the majority of the story and levels were enjoyable and I’ll remember the best parts over the subpar finale. When it comes to the “remastered” aspect of this game, I can’t really evaluate it in comparison to the original since I didn’t play it, so in regards to technical issues I’m not sure which version bears blame. The game functioned reasonably smoothly the majority of the time, I did experience two random game crashes, which were annoying if only because of how many unskippable logos you have to sit through upon booting up the game. There were also some dialog bugs where subtitles would linger or audio logs would randomly play without being prompted. The way lighting is handled seems to also be a bit weird, as some ugly looking “outlines” around people/objects can be seen if the brightness is turned too high. I also had several instances in which “unmissable” story achievements just didn’t unlock, and I had to revert to a save to unlock them. Finally, I noticed that Xbox Game DVR recording/screenshotting was disabled on the developer side for this game, which I find shady (only other time I’ve seen this is during closed technical tests for unreleased games). The additional content included was appreciated. The museum showing off early concepts and cut content is a super cool idea that I wish more games would use. I also surprisingly really enjoyed the additional challenge missions, which had me realize a puzzle-focused game in the BioShock universe could have a lot of potential. For all its flaws, this is a game that is and should be remembered for its successes, as it broke a lot of new ground. I’m interested to see how much got iterated on over time as I make my way through this series.