BioShock: Shocking Development Company: 2K Games BioShock takes you into the deepest fathoms in order to throw you into a twisted and intriguing plot of survival and discovery. Your character's introduction to the world of BioShock is going to be a pretty tried-and-true way of getting you into an unusual environment where you need to explore and learn in order to survive. When your plane crashes in the middle of the ocean, your only hope is to swim to a nearby tower jutting out from the water. Once there, you are taken into a rickety old elevator that takes you tens of fathoms underwater. During this ride, you are also introduced, via a short video, to what this unusual place is. Rapture is an underwater city that looks like Gotham City, just submerged, built decades ago by a man who wanted to allow science to grow without the restrictions of ethics and government interference. But it seems something has gone horribly wrong because there seem to be parts of Rapture that are flooded and strange creatures running around. Now, in order to survive, you need to find out what has happened to this underwater science utopia, and figure out a way to get back to the surface and get rescued. That's BioShock's story setup in a nutshell. Here are some of the cooler mechanics that the demo I got to try out showed me. The most prominent features in this game are its weapons and enemies. There are two types of weapons: standard run-of-the-mill FPS handheld weapons, and Plasmids. The standard ones are what you have come to expect, a monkey wrench, guns, etc., but the Plasmids are where things get interesting. Since Rapture is a scientific haven with the ability to perform less honorable testing, they have been able to make some rather startling advancements in the field of genetics. These vials of glowing liquid (I only got to play with the blue stuff), can be injected into your character and used to attack enemies. The Plasmid that I was introduced to allows you to shoot electricity from your hands. I found that this weapon did all of the little things I would want an electrical attack to do. If two enemies are close together, the attack chains and bounces back and forth between them. If the enemy is in water, they are pretty much killed (after a bit of standing and shaking, of course). If you are in the water when you attack, you die immediately. The demo that I played also showed how effective using both types of weapons are. You can unleash your electrical Plasmid against an enemy to stun him/her/it and immediately (and quite easily) switch to the wrench and whack it once for a kill (instead of the three or four swipes it might take if they are running around hitting back). BioShock's enemies also come in a bit of variety that makes them disturbing and interesting at the same time. There are three types. I only got to fight one, but I did get introduced to the other two while playing my demo. The main enemies of the game, the grunts if you will, are called Splicers. These are humans whose DNA has been altered beyond repair. These enemies are wild, fast and vicious, oh and they know how to use weapons. I found myself in a constant run-and-gun (or run-and-shock) whenever one (or two, or three) of these guys came into a room. The other types of enemies are Rapture's security system (consisting of alarms, locked doors and flying guns) and the Big Daddy/Little Sister pair. Big Daddy is a large clunky beast (that looks like a diver's suit born of Silent Hill) who will do anything to protect the Little Sister while she does some work extracting liquid from "angels" (that's what she calls dead people). From what I've been able to gather, these three types of baddies have a very shaky relationship. They tend to leave each other alone, but if something forces them to run into each other, it might give a certain player some reprieve and a chance to get away. Developer Irrational Games (creators of the classic breakthrough FPS, System Shock) have pulled out all the stops and are going to deliver a truly spooky and spectacular title in BioShock. Between the mixed harsh and soft lighting (not to mention that same lighting's flickering) and the oppressive underwater gloom coming from the windows, this game is just eerie. I felt like everything around me was out to get me and at any moment, something was going to charge out at me from the shadows, and sometimes it did just that. Expect to see BioShock hit the shelves this August with an ESRB rating of M. This promises to be a very unique experience, as we have come to expect from this particular dev house. -J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer Related Links: Official BioShock Home Page Irrational Games Home Page Irrational Games on GameVortex