Digging Through My Steam Backlog: Bioshock Remastered

After the magical world of Spyro I decided I needed things to get dark, so I decided to get into Bioshock Remastered. Now I had played Bioshock on the Xbox 360 as an easter gift from my parents, because my parents were awesome like that. But that was fourteen years ago in 2008, when I was 12. I was also young and stupid as a child, so how does it hold up now that I'm older and slightly less dumb than usual?

Well first up is the actual Remaster job which was fine. I know some bemoaned the lack of graphical options but it's a remaster of a game from 2007, it can probably run on a toaster. Ran like butter for me at least so I have nothing but praise for this Remaster, which boosts the frame rate beyond the original 30fps. Now I didn't notice any big graphical changes, but I last played Bioshock in 2008 so I'm not a good position to judge. Frankly I much prefer Bioshock Infinite to Bioshock even if it is a sloppier game, but I'll get into that one day, for now, our feature presentation.

Bioshock focuses on a man known only as Jack who in 1960 winds up in a plane crash outside a lighthouse and winds up taking refuge in said lighthouse. There Jack finds a sphere that takes him to an underwater city called Rapture, a city built on Ayn Rand philosophy. Jack is then locked in this tribute to Ayn Rand to see how it worked out, which as it turns out is very poorly. Now it's up to Jack, guided by an Irishman known only as Atlas, to evade the various robots, genespliced junkies, and terrifying Big Daddies in an attempt to escape Rapture.

Now, Bioshock is largely carried by its excellent story and world building, giving you a sense of how truly depraved Rapture became before it fell. You can be robbed if the other guy has enough money to bribe the automated security system, doctors are allowed freedom to turn patients into depraved art pieces, and drug addiction is a daily fact of life. But all of it is wrapped in a cheery 1950's style package that feels Lynchian; you know it's a nightmarish hellscape even back when it was gilded, but you're the only one left who seems to know so.

But story can't go very far if the gameplay isn't fun and luckily Bioshock's first person shooter combat is very fun. The guns themselves are unspectacular, they do the job but except the chemical launcher are all forgettable. However, those drugs (ADAM) I mentioned give you super-powers, here called plasmids and seeing as how dealing with the withdrawal is better than dying, you'll be drugging yourself up just like the rest of the population.

Ignoring the irony behind that however, it becomes clear quickly that Plasmids are the combats bread and butter. Allowing you to tackle foes with much wider variety than just "shoot gun good". Changing your plasmid based on environment is the key to success in Bioshock, using lightning on pools, fire on oil slicks, stunning foes to weaken them so you can shoot them. That said hitting robots with lightning to stun them for a hack is broken and breaks the games difficulty. I don't mind the hacking by the way, I'm weird like that.

There's also a pretty good upgrade system with both finding gun upgrade stations and stations to upgrade your plasmids. It's with the plasmid upgrades however that my main problem with the game in general kicks in, the Little Sisters. I previously mentioned the Big Daddies as part of the enemy lineup, but Big Daddies serve the purpose in Rapture of protecting Little Sisters, mutated girls who run around harvesting ADAM off corpses. Kill a Big Daddy and you can either cleanse a Little Sister for a small amount of ADAM or kill them for a large ADAM pool. 

This however affects how characters respond to you and the ending which is my biggest gripe. Outside of morality there's no real reason to spare Little Sisters, I did it anyway because I'm the kind of guy who finds GTA distasteful. But compare that to a game like Undertale which changes the actual game and Bioshock feels lacking by comparision. I did highlight how to fix this system which means it can be better, but as it stands this morality system doesn't work.

The other problem is smaller but the final third just kind of runs out of juice if I'm honest. But getting into why is a bit of a spoiler; and even though Bioshock is almost 15 I'm not spoiling it. Because in the end these complaints are fairly minor gripes and Bioshock is still a classic. So, would you kindly play this game?