Bioshock has been one of the most anticipated titles for some time now, as it has always seemed right within grabbing distance, and yet the release date took ever so long to get here. Finally the game is out, and it's time to find out if this first person shooter set in an underwater utopia gone awry has been worth the wait or not. Is the game like the many rooms of Rapture – fool of promise and beauty, and yet filled with cracks and leaky pipes?

THE STORY SO FAR
The story of the game is easily the best part of the whole game. You play as a young man, flying across the sea with your family, when all of a sudden your plane goes down in the middle of the ocean. Thankfully for you, you survive, and manage to swim to a very nearby metallic structure in the middle of the ocean. Welcome to Rapture! Rapture is/was an underwater city full of potential, a safe haven where artists and scientist could come together to work on inventions for the betterment of society, and not have to work about with the government taking control.

However, something went horribly wrong, as the place is in complete disarray, with underwater walkways starting to crack and moan, and the whole place is very derelict. Besides being in desperate need of a decorator, crazy men and women roam the corridors, brandishing everything from machine guns and grenades to scythes. Oh, and let us not forget the Big Daddies, huge monstrosities of metal tasked with protecting the Little Sisters, sweet little girls who suck something called ADAM out of the dead.

The story unfolds through three ways, though two are used more than the other. Most of the story unfolds through radio chatter, namely you interacting with several different individuals, particularly Atlas – a man who wants to get out of Rapture and save his wife and daughter who are trapped – and Andrew Ryan – the man who created Rapture and let it go to hell. There are also some very interesting diary entries which you can pick-up, which play like audio recordings. Though you'll get the overall idea of the story if you never listen to any of the diaries, you'll not have fleshed out the story to its full potential. The diaries actually provide some of the most heartbreaking stories of the game, such as an old couple who committed suicide together on their bed when things started to go wrong, or the deceased woman who got pregnant with the wrong man. The story will also unfold right before your eyes, such as meeting people and hearing them speak right when you're looking at them, and generally bits and pieces of audio that happens all-around.

It was easy to jump into your narrative, though perhaps the most interesting story is that of Rapture itself and its downfall. From beginning to end, the sole reason I kept driving forward was to see how this story unfolded, as the game plays like a giant, interactive novel, which is ultimately the game's greatest fault. I never played for the gameplay, as there were a few mechanics that took enjoyment and satisfaction out of the game. The best first person shooters are generally those where combat actually matters, and you really have to duck and weave, conserve ammo, and know when to take the fight to the enemy and when to go on the defensive. Usually, death is the ultimate motivator, but death isn't a factor here, which we'll get into in just a second.

GAMEPLAY
Bioshock is strictly a single-player adventure, which is a good thing since the story of it was what drove us on, and not in any way the combat. Seeing early demos and previews of the game, you're told how advanced it is and how you can tackle any problem from a number of different ways. Hack cameras and stationary guns to turn on your enemies and not you; lay traps for unsuspecting Splicers; use a combo of your plasmids and weapons to take the fight. In theory, it sounds great, but overall combat doesn't matter. To hack cameras and turrets you have to play a boring minigame over and over, and even once you've finally hacked it, the turrets don't do a good job of focusing on enemies and actually killing them. You'll get a bunch of cool plasmids to use like electro shots to shock things, the ability to set things on fire, freeze things, set bees on people, etc. However, one zap of any ability and you lose some much-needed EVE, and EVE isn't easy to come by in Rapture. You'll also get all sorts of weaponry like pistols, shotguns, grenade launchers, and crossbows – the problem, however, is that enemies are quick (meaning you'll miss a bunch of shots) and it takes a lot of bullets to take them down, plus it's hard to find some ammo.

There are a ton of plasmids and special enhancement slots, but I used perhaps three plasmids my whole time through the game, and half the enhancements seemed to serve no purpose whatsoever. The weapons were also used very infrequently, as it was tiring to have to click on every body, every desk, and click on every single nook and cranny to find scattered goods I needed to either replenish ammo, find money to buy stuff from vending machines, or either get the items needed to build my own equipment.

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