These genetic modifications add different kinds of attacks, but also enhance various physical, engineering, and combat skills. As you progress, you pick up Plasmids and Genetic Tonics, which can be loaded into a finite number of slots on your character. The combat elements are handled elegantly, with many ways to approach each enemy. The story of Rapture’s collapse emerges piecemeal through messages and recordings collected in the course of exploration-a technique used to great effect in the original System Shock that works even better here.įrom a pure gameplay perspective, Bioshock can be called a first-person shooter, but that would sell it short. As you’d expect from such a libertarian wonderland unfettered by morality or restraint, it doesn’t take long for Rapture to descend into utter chaos, leaving it overrun by genetic mutants as various factions fight for power. Called Rapture, this city is the work of a megalomaniacal visionary named Andrew Ryan, a radical Objectivist millionaire who seeks to create an anarcho-capitalist utopia: Ayn Rand via Charles Foster Kane. Inside, a bathysphere takes you into a city of wonder on the bottom of the Atlantic.

As the sole survivor, you swim through the wreckage, only to encounter a strange kind of lighthouse rising out of the deep.

Several of System Shock’s core elements have been carried forth into a new and even better game.īioshock is set in 1960, and begins with a plane crashing into the middle of the ocean. Irrational Games, staffed by some of the original System Shock team, has called Bioshock a “spiritual heir” to that classic, and it’s easy to see why.

System Shock is one of the landmarks in PC gaming history: a deep, first-person game that offers a vivid world and narrative, then lets you progress through combat, stealth, puzzles, or any combination of the three. It only took a few hours with Bioshock to know that couldn’t last. Until this heir to System Shock showed up, Lord of the Rings Online was leading the pack. Sometimes a spoiler comes along just as we’re compiling the Electronic Games 100, dethrones our intended Electronic Game of the Year, and sucks up all of our time so that we miss deadlines.

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