Bio Shock - Reception

Reception

BioShock has received wide critical acclaim: mainstream press reviews have praised the immersive qualities of the game and its political dimension. The Boston Globe described it as "a beautiful, brutal, and disquieting computer game ... one of the best in years," and compared the game to Whittaker Chambers' 1957 riposte to Atlas Shrugged, Big Sister Is Watching You. Wired also mentioned the Ayn Rand connection (a partial anagram of Andrew Ryan) in a report on the game which featured a brief interview with Levine. The Chicago Sun-Times review said "I never once thought anyone would be able to create an engaging and entertaining video game around the fiction and philosophy of Ayn Rand, but that is essentially what 2K Games has done ... the rare, mature video game that succeeds in making you think while you play".

The Los Angeles Times review concluded, "Sure, it's fun to play, looks spectacular and is easy to control. But it also does something no other game has done to date: It really makes you feel." The New York Times reviewer described it as: "intelligent, gorgeous, occasionally frightening" and added, "Anchored by its provocative, morality-based story line, sumptuous art direction and superb voice acting, BioShock can also hold its head high among the best games ever made."

At GameRankings, BioShock holds an average review score of 94.95% for the Xbox 360, making it the fourth highest rated Xbox 360 game released to date, behind The Orange Box, Grand Theft Auto IV, and Mass Effect 2. In the PC ratings it achieved 94.44%, making it the fifth highest rated PC game released to date, behind The Orange Box, Portal 2, Half-Life 2 and Mass Effect 2, and the 21st highest ranked game of all time. Also, BioShock has a rating of 96 on Metacritic, making it their Best Xbox 360 Game of 2007. GameSpy praised BioShock's "inescapable atmosphere," and Official Xbox Magazine lauded its "inconceivably great plot" and "stunning soundtrack and audio effects." The gameplay and combat system have been praised for being smooth and open-ended, and elements of the graphics, such as the water, were praised for their quality. It has been noted that the combination of the game's elements "straddles so many entertainment art forms so expertly that it's the best demonstration yet how flexible this medium can be. It's no longer just another shooter wrapped up in a pretty game engine, but a story that exists and unfolds inside the most convincing and elaborate and artistic game world ever conceived."

Reviewers did highlight a few negative issues in BioShock, however. The recovery system involving "Vita-Chambers," which revive a defeated player at half life, but do not alter the enemies' health, makes it possible to wear down enemies through sheer perseverance, and was criticised as one of the biggest flaws in the gameplay. IGN noted that both the controls and graphics of the Xbox 360 version are inferior to those of the PC version, in that switching between weapons or plasmids is easier using the PC's mouse than the 360's radial menu, as well as the graphics being slightly better with higher resolutions. The game has been touted as a hybrid first-person shooter role-playing game, but two reviewers found advances from comparable games lacking, both in the protagonist and in the challenges he faces. Some reviewers also found the combat behavior of the splicers lacking in diversity (and their A.I. behavior not very well done), and the moral choice too much "black and white" to be really interesting. Some reviewers and essayists such as Jonathan Blow also found that the "moral choice" the game offered to the player (saving or harvesting the little sisters) was flawed because it had no real impact on the game, which ultimately leads the player to think that the sisters were just mechanics of no real importance.