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Quite a few guns, but bullets are even fewer… As expected, ammunition is a major issue in Bioshock. Although not as critical as in Resident Evil, it still seems to ‘limit’ the player quite significantly. Granted, there are various types of ammo to shoot Anti-personnel, armor piercing and electric shock ones to name a few that shine by their absence. In other words, ammo conservation is top priority in Bioshock and it can be frustrating at times. Although there are a few vending machines that the player can buy ammunition, they are rather expensive with respect to the available funds and limited. Although some bullets can be acquired by enemy corpses they are too little, too few to make a difference. It is not uncommon to loot just a couple of bullets from an enemy on a regular basis. Once more, artificial limits manage to take away a lot from Bioshock’s weapons… Mini-games in an FPS! That’s right. Besides the typical shooting-and-avoiding-to-get-shot affair, Bioshock is abundant with a number of mini-games. Remember the vending machincs that we’ve mentioned? Well these can be ‘hacked’ in order to have cheaper and more varied wares for the player to choose from. Once the player chooses to ‘hack’ a machine, the interface turns into a puzzle-game, reminiscent of 80’s coin-ops. Basically, there is a fluid running from point A to point B and you have to re-arrange a set of pipes to achieve proper flow. Of course, there is a time limit, not to mention traps all over the square setting such as activating the room’s alarm or even overloading the machine, gifting the player with a hefty does of damage. Although it’s possible to ‘upgrade’ your hacking prowess by means of plasmids, it is still a rather challenging affair. In addition, although such mini-games seem refreshing at the start, they tend to get repetitive and chore tasks after a while. Not a bad idea, but still limited –again-. So, is descending to Rapture worth it? Unfortunately it isn’t. The game feels like a set of features pasted together while limiting the player’s options ‘just because’ doesn’t look like a good idea. Getting past all the hype, Bioshock is a very limiting game that depends on its artificial difficulty to keep the player interested. Enemies have a rather jerky and quirky behavior that with the limited amount of bullets and plasmid recharges make the game more difficult than it should be. As for bosses, expect to get frustrated because of their illogical and heavy-hitting behavior. Furthermore, limited upgrades not only to plasmids but weapons as well does manage to take away a lot. Whether these design decisions were made with immersion and atmosphere in mind, they manage to limit the game quite considerably. To summarize, Bioshock can be characterized best as ‘artificially limited for no apparent reason’. Crazy George
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Bioshock 
