Bioshock is a series that has introduced thousands of non-gamers to gaming over the past 10 years. This cinematic gaming experience showed a lot of people that video games were capable of telling a compelling and exciting story without sacrificing any functionality of the game while also doing something that had never really been done before. Enter Rapture, an underwater city with all the beauty and allure of any world-class city without any of the undesirable elements. No poor, no sick, no war, no big brother, a utopia if you will. Helmed by the fictional mish-mash of Ayn Rand and Nietzsche, Rapture is the most wonderful and safest city on the planet.
However, whenever man claims to have achieved something perfect, there is always a tale of how everything came crumbling down. Bioshock isn’t exactly the story of the crumbling utopia, the protagonist reaches the remarkable city after it’s downfall, during its darkest days. It is upon entering Rapture, that we begin to learn the tale of how society crumbled in this utopia, and we begin to discover some of the horrors that have begun to rule Rapture in the absence of society.
Bioshock Remastered: A cinematic experience
There aren’t many games that capture the cinematic experience in video games better than Bioshock does. From the music, to the look of Rapture to the story of the city itself, Bioshock gets it all right. This isn’t a new game either, Bioshock came out in 2007, almost ten years ago. I’m surprised no movie was ever made of the franchise, it would lend itself well to that medium. Bioshock 2 picks up where the first game left off and allows you to take control of the spooky Big Daddies that were making life a living hell in Bioshock 1. Bioshock Infinite is the most recent entry in the series but takes place in a different fictional universe than the one Bioshock 1 and 2 exist in.
It’s hard to categorize Bioshock into a genre. The game takes heavy inspiration from the “steam punk” genre, but it almost certainly attempts to recreate some elements of other game genres such as Survival Horror. For the uninitiated, there are certainly a few scenes that may seem disturbing, but to most video game veterans it’s not going to come off as overly scary or anything like that.
Bioshock Visuals
A recent resurgence in popularity for Bioshock is due to the release of Bioshock Remastered. Bioshock remastered sets out to just improve most of the aging elements of Bioshock, particularly focusing on visuals. However, the release hasn’t been received incredibly well and it seems like the general consensus is that the remastered version has just as many if not more issues than the original release did (particularly the PC port doesn’t work well). Regardless of a poor release or not, Bioshock will still hold a dear place in many a gamer’s heart. While not the first game to do a lot of the things it gets praised for, it’s one of the best games ever created and deserves at least one play through!
