BioShock

Worse things do happen at sea.

- Philippa Warr

Ken Levine’s slightly overlong adventure about killing a man who wants to live the libertarian geneticist dream of playing office minigolf at the bottom of the ocean (or something like that) holds up surprisingly well to a contemporary visit. I mean, the whole thing falls into the bin by the time you fight an Ayn Rand book cover and then sit through a Hallmark commercial or a vague nuclear threat, but still.

This is a reinstall, but only in the most technical sense. I have indeed previously installed the game, but it led with an injection scene. That meant I quit instantly while trying not to throw up. Several years later and I’m marginally better at stomaching on-screen injections, so I have returned to Rapture to see what all the fuss is about.

The opening segment has you descending to Rapture in a bathysphere. It’s a cinematic-style showpiece which wants you to luxuriate in the Art Deco skyscrapers and the neon lights which encapsulate the vim of early 20th century capitalism and consumerism. I can’t think of another game which looks like BioShock—and given gaming’s love of aping what’s influential, that’s surprising.

It’s the art style which carried me through to the end of the game, actually. I’ve gone back several times to ‘classics’ of PC gaming which I missed when they were first released. Each time I’ve played enough to get a sense of what they are, but tend to drop out once that’s accomplished, whether it’s because of clunky controls, dated graphics, a save system we’ve improved on a hundredfold since, or a propensity for tedious boss fights. Sometimes it’s just that without the context of its release—when it was first or new or interesting—it’s just not very good.

BREAKAWAY