BioShock stands out as one of the best Action/Shooter titles in recent memory.
95
Verdict
94%
Steam
—
IGDB
Verdict score based on confidence-adjusted Steam reviews?
Very Positive on Steam (94% positive from 32K reviews)
Compelling narrative and story
Outstanding soundtrack
No significant drawbacks reported
BioShock is a 2007 first-person shooter video game developed by 2K Boston and 2K Australia, and published by 2K. The first game in the BioShock series, it was released for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 platforms in August 2007; a PlayStation 3 port by Irrational, 2K Marin, 2K Australia and Digital Extremes was released in October 2008. The game follows player character Jack, who discovers the underwater city of Rapture, built by business magnate Andrew Ryan to be an isolated utopia. The discovery of ADAM, a genetic material which grants superhuman powers, initiated the city's turbulent decline. Jack attempts to escape Rapture, fighting its mutated and mechanical denizens, while engaging with the few sane survivors left and learning of the city's past. The player can defeat foes in several ways by using weapons, utilizing plasmids that give unique powers, and by turning Rapture's defenses against them through hacking.
Runs well on modern hardware.
Last updated 18d ago
At first it was the art style that drew me in, but after actually playing it, I realized its appeal goes far beyond that. On top of its distinctive Art Deco aesthetic and countless imaginative ideas, BioShock tells an incredibly engaging story. Through the main campaign and the audio diaries scattered all over Rapture (and honestly, I love that they're fragmented audio logs instead of dumping walls of text in your face like so many other games do), you gradually piece together a massive and meticulously crafted dystopian world. Of course, BioShock is far more than just a pretty face. If it were nothing more than a mindless shooter with good art and story, I probably would've dropped it long before the credits rolled. Instead, the game innovatively introduces Plasmids, granting players a wide range of supernatural abilities and encouraging creative combinations of powers and conventional weapons. Add hacking, crafting, and other mechanics into the mix, and the amount of tactical freedom is honestly impressive. Even after 14 hours, it still feels like there's more to experiment with. On top of that, BioShock represents immersive sim design at its finest. You can see its DNA in countless immersive sims that came after it, including personal favorites like Dishonored and Prey. It's a shame that the genre has gradually faded as modern games have become increasingly streamlined and disposable. I don't know if we'll ever see another immersive sim as bold and memorable as BioShock, but I certainly hope we do. [h3]10/10[/h3]
PLlaying this in 2026 over RDR2 and Cyber Punk. Many wont get it. Its not all about graphics
The game worked fine (occasional crashes but restarting the game resolved them) until I got to Fort Frolic. Once I got to taking elevator to Sander Cohen, I attempted to save the game which resulted in a game crash. Since then the game started to crash after only a few seconds of playing it (just moving around or traveling to a different map or using any vending machine or saving game or loading game - absolutely anything can crash the game now). Even the old saved games started to crash. Many many many attempts to resolve it produced no solution or even progress toward solution. Horrible... UPDATE: installed Windows updates, upgraded GPU drivers, rebooted, stopped saving the game in the open areas of Fort Frolic (where the light shines from above). The game still crashes every 2-3 minutes, but at least one can make some progress.
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Data sourced from RAWG, Steam, IGDB, CheapShark, Wikipedia, HLTB, and GX Corner. Sources: rawg, steam, igdb, wikipedia.
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