Bioshock Remastered Review

Would you kindly cast your mind back to 2007? Bioshock, at the time of its original release, was a revolution in game artistry. It was perhaps the first game to seriously make the argument for videogames as an art form. The setting of Rapture was a fascinating study in its dystopian vision mixed with iconic sci-fi 50’s flavour, and the premise explored themes such as genetic modification, free will, and objectivism that are still strongly relevant 11 years later. 

 

The game's aesthetics are still spectacular and affecting, even today. Source: in-game screenshot

11 years on and two sequels later, does the original Bioshock hold up? This question is especially relevant as now the idea of videogames as art has taken root, particularly in the indie scene, and where 11 years of advancement in technology takes us to more fantastic and graphically-astounding places than ever before. With the remastered edition of Bioshock, I took the plunge to explore the ruined city of Rapture with fresh eyes. 

The first thing to note on Bioshock Remastered is, of course, the graphics. While the remaster offers a fresh coat of paint to offer higher resolutions and frame rates, the fact of the matter is that the game doesn’t look a world apart from its original state by any means. Bioshock does benefit, however, from the finer attention to detail, especially in the twisted facial expressions of the Splicers. However, as a remaster goes, the graphical overhaul has achieved very little more than the minimum to meet modern standards.

 

The first look at Rapture is still a breathtaking sight. Source: in-game screenshot

This is arguably because Bioshock was a stellar-looking game to begin with. Yes, it is a last-gen games and yes, this does occasionally show in the odd muddy texture or in some of the detail of level backdrops. But the aesthetic of Rapture as a location is so good that the game is still a marvel to look at. Each pocket of the city is fleshed-out and lived-in and you get a sense of authenticity from the run-down bars all the way to the optimistically-built, abandoned farmer’s markets. Rapture still feels and looks like it was once a living, breathing city and this is in no small part because the artistic direction of the game was spot-on. Rapture is to gaming what Gotham City is to comic books; a realised and authentic vision of an exaggerated and tragically-beautiful, ruined city. 

The main annoyance with Bioshock graphically is in the vision-altering effects. While it does make sense and adds to the game’s authentic feel that getting soaked by water will make your vision alter appropriately, or that drinking three bottles of vodka instantaneously would cause blurry vision (and probably a severe hangover and liver poisoning), but the execution of the vision-impairing effects is more of an annoyance than anything else; perhaps they last just a few seconds too long, but I often found that I avoided waterfalls with more fear than I avoided the enemy’s iconic Big Daddies.

Other than those small niggles, and the fact that as a remaster the improvements to the graphics feel insignificant, visually Bioshock is a joy to behold; from its bright neon lights to the grimy reality of underwater dystopian life, every part of Bioshock’s aesthetic is authentic, atmospheric and artistic in all the right ways.

 

The locations are authentically built to look ruined, and are powerful visual clues as to Rapture's downfall. Source: in-game screenshot.

In terms of the sound design, Bioshock presents excellence in some areas; particularly as fitting music plays while you take in an important visual spectacle, or when a hidden enemy whispers sinister threats at you from out of sight, or the spine-chilling moan of a Big Daddy. The result is that the sound leaves you feeling totally immersed in Bioshock’s setting; you truly feel as if you are in an underwater city and the atmosphere is as oppressive as you would expect.

The main issues here, however, are in the volume settings. As one of the most important aspects of the story, it is such a shame that the audio diaries wind up constantly drowned out by the cacophony of chaos going on as the player fights off waves of enemies; I ended up turning every other audio slider down to the minimum setting and the voice turned all the way up, just so I could listen in. This is a shame, because the voice acting performances are stellar and emotive, giving the player a real sense of what it was like to live and die in Rapture. Another issue is with the variety of the voice clips being played; too often, you will hear the same line being uttered by Little Sisters and Splicers over, and over again.

The gameplay of Bioshock is impressive and is perfectly in tune with the story. For those unfamiliar with Bioshock’s formula; the game mixes FPS gameplay with RPG-style progression in the form of plasmids: abilities the player can use either in combat or in puzzle-solving, such as the ability to cast fire or lightning at enemies, pick up objects with telekinesis, or even hypnotise Big Daddies to make mincemeat of anyone in the player’s way. Plasmid use is dictated by the EVE bar, which is implemented as a mana system, showing the player how many plasmid uses they have left. On top of this, the game borrows from survival horror in that ammo must be carefully conserved lest the player end up under-equipped for tough encounters. The result is an engaging, complex game that rewards clever use of abilities. Instead of just being levels, Bioshock’s maps become sandboxes for players to experiment with different strategies for dispatching enemies. There are many ways to make it through a level; by hacking security cameras and turrets to kill enemies for you, by enraging splicers to kill each other, or just blast through as an unstoppable, genetically-enhanced killing machine. Because of this, gameplay is largely emergent and always has the potential to surprise. 

 

The game is atmospheric and often-terrifying, especially with its enemies. Source: in-game screenshot

There are a few of the gameplay elements, however, that have aged poorly; hacking, for instance, quickly becomes tedious with its take on Pipe Mania gameplay. Often, I preferred just to destroy cameras and turrets, just because I was so fatigued from hacking, rather than for any strategic reason. Also, the use of the camera to research enemies for greater damage and bonuses becomes an annoyance that leaves little strategic value. 

It is in Bioshock’s story, however, where it truly shines. The narrative is powerful and asks many probing questions of the player; about free will, objectivism and morality. The story of Rapture is a tragic tale told through implication and in-game voice recordings that are acted emotionally and authentically. The result is that players feel immersed and affected by the plights of Rapture’s denizens and are drawn deeper into the world. The narrative of the player, however, is without question excellent, with plenty of surprising twists and turns and allowing for multiple interpretations on the many characters they meet. 

 

Little Sisters may be an eponymous part of Bioshock, but the choice they represent is one of the stories' weaker aspects. Source: in-game screenshot

The one area where the storytelling falters, however, is in the moral binary choice that Little Sisters present to the player. They can either be brutally murdered for more in-game currency to buy plasmids, or saved for only slightly less. The result is an unaffecting no-brainer of a choice, because the consequences of choosing to save the Little Sisters is tiny, leaving little reason for the ‘evil’ decision. This is the school of the Fallout morality system, where not being an evil monster suddenly makes one an angelic hero worthy of worship. It is ironic that in a game where many probing areas of debate are explored in their many shades of grey, such an obvious binary decision becomes the central morality choice that the player makes in the game. 

 

Even from the beginning, Bioshock's atmosphere and story is masterfully-executed. Source: in-game screenshot.

In the end, Bioshock is still an excellent game, whether you are playing it remastered or not. The narrative is still a masterclass in world and character building and Rapture is one of the most accomplished settings ever in a videogame. That Bioshock presents a campaign that is over 10 hours, most of which is a deep and non-linear FPS experience, is particularly encouraging in a world with lootboxes and multiplayer shooters that offer tired variations of deathmatches. The value prospect of the remastered edition of Bioshock, as well as its status as still one of the most artistically-powerful and engaging games ever created (unusual for a AAA videogame), makes it one of the most important must-play titles of modern gaming. Bioshock is a title I would recommend to almost any gamer, as it shows the true potential of a high-production value FPS made with excellence in mind.

Is Dark Souls the Pokémon of modern gaming?

The phrase ‘just like Dark Souls’ is a cliché, dull phrase that has been bandied about far too often. Gamers will rightfully groan when they hear these terms, as Dark Souls gets compared to increasingly unrelated and nonsensical games such as Crash Bandicoot and Cuphead. 

 

Is there more between Dark Souls and Pokemon than we think? Source: in-game screenshot

However, artistically, Dark Souls means and reveals a lot, and its effect on different players is profound. As a cultural phenomenon, Dark Souls is a game more than worthy of examination; in fact, its tropes parallel many other games including, unusually and controversially, Pokémon Red and Blue for the original Game Boy.

It may seem ludicrous at first to suggest this, but the original versions of Pokémon have a lot more in common thematically and design-wise with Dark Souls than one would think. There are many tropes in common between the two that are executed in an eerily-similar way. 

One of the most striking parallels between Pokémon and Dark Souls is in the way the open world is administered to the player. In Dark Souls, players begin with relatively few places to go in Lordran, but there are also areas where low-level, first-time players aren’t recommended to visit (the graveyard and catacombs). Additionally, free form exploration in Dark Souls is gated organically and appropriately by the game’s design and pacing. Shortcuts soon begin to open and allow easy traversal across the world, in interesting ways that reveal a kind of elegance in the map design. This gives the world of Dark Souls an authentic, memorable feel. On the same note, Kanto in Pokémon Red and Blue does many things similarly; free form exploration is allowed and designed into the game, where there is an elegance to the design guiding the player along, where shortcuts across Saffron City, and between Vermillion City begin to criss-cross the player along the world’s geography engagingly, lending the world more of a natural feel rather than a series of levels to be overcome. The way in which Cinnabar Island can be accessed from Pallet Town, the beginning area of the game, is executed with an applaudable design. 

Instead of being a linear progression, exploration and geography in both Pokémon and Dark Souls are handled as both a storytelling medium and a player reward, and the result is that both maps are authentic and offer their own exposition into the logic of the worlds in which players of both games reside. 

Not only this, but the way in which the game mechanics are designed between the two titles are also similar; in Dark Souls, if you keep getting back up after each death, and getting as far as you can into each area, and if you keep levelling up when you can, eventually the player will gain enough skill to beat the area, or they will level up high enough to fight through with less difficulty; theoretically, the game rewards persistence in its design. Although there is a penalty in how players will lose their souls if they don’t retrieve them from the spot where they died last, they will never lose the level-ups that they have already gained. In the same way, this kind of persistence exists in Pokémon, though with the easier design of the game it’s seen to less of an extent. Players may be punished after a loss in that they lose half of their in-game money, their Pokémon never become weaker throughout the game; keep getting up and eventually you will prevail. 

In many gameplay tropes, in their designs and mechanics, Dark Souls and Pokémon seem to parallel; the open-world design, gated progression barriers, shortcuts and geography, and in the very way that persistence pays off. Indeed, both being based on RPG designs, both will have many tropes in common in more obvious ways than this as well, ways that I would rightfully be mocked for pointing out as they are such simple and obvious tropes as part of RPG gameplay to begin with. However, I think one of the most important comparison points between the two games is in how their stories’ theming and styles seem to exist in parallel to one another. 

Okay, it’s clear from the outset that the games are vastly different in their style and execution; one offering a brutal, violent world where swords clash and people get driven to insanity by their failures, and the other offering a more child-friendly experience where people are much more co-operative, cute creatures play with children and you get given money if your cute creature beats others in competitive battle.

However, it is in how both stories found meaning in their player base that the parallels become clearer; how in both games, player growth seems to be one of the central points driving the game forward. Just as Dark Souls is a different experience for the first playthrough, so is Pokémon.

As Pokémon is a coming-of-age tale about becoming independent and celebrating the joy of doing so, Dark Souls presents a tale of learning the harsh realities of living, but also celebrating one’s persistence despite this lesson. That the latter game came out at the same time many of those who experienced Pokémon Red and Blue as children were starting out on their adult lives is all too fitting with this parallel. The lessons that Dark Souls teaches are particularly applicable to the same generation of gamers which Pokémon was aimed at years before. 

I speak about how the theming of Pokémon applied well to its main audience in another post, but I also find it fitting that both tales are equally relatable to their audience’s lives at the times they were played. At its centre, Dark Souls presents a harsh, punishing reality, where it can often be difficult to continue and where one’s ultimate purpose in all of this is shrouded in mystery. Moreover, it throws brutal, punishing challenge into the mix, testing even the most patient of players. The risk of losing all your souls and the crushing feeling that erodes at your patience and sanity is ever-present in the game’s system. But beyond this, Dark Souls is a game that celebrates players’ persistence and rewards those who keep getting back up. This is even mentioned in an oft-quoted critical review by Michael Thomsen of The Slate, which stated that:  

“There is real beauty in Dark Souls. It reveals that life is more suffering than pleasure, more failure than success, and that even the momentary relief of achievement is wiped away by new levels of difficulty. It is also a testament to our persistence in the face of that suffering, and it offers the comfort of a community of other players all stuck in the same hellish quagmire. Those are good qualities. That is art. And you can get all of that from the first five hours of Dark Souls. The remaining 90 or so offer nothing but an increasingly nonsensical variation on that experience.”

At the time of Dark Souls’ release, this all coincided with a generation of gamers entering adulthood, and finding it a harsh wake-up call to life, where many feel increasingly purposeless and depressed in a world increasingly indifferent to their struggles, and where many feel their souls being crushed by the hard reality of modern living. But, much as Pokémon related a coming-of-age tale that celebrated the time when gamers were gaining their first tastes of independence, so too does Dark Souls present a tale that resonates with its audience’s lifestyles, and celebrates continued perseverance in the harsh, punishing reality of the world and fittingly reveals such persistence’s reward. 

Is Dark Souls the Pokémon of modern gaming? Of course, I wrote this question in jest, as a tongue-in-cheek prod to videogames media headlines that present any moderately-challenging game as a Souls-like. As such, the answer to this question is a lot more complicated. But look at the parallels in both games; in their game design and in how this presents a loop such that obstacles can always be overcome with repeated effort, to their narratives that are fitting and resonating stories for their audiences. Looking at this with an analytical eye, it is hard to outright deny that there is some merit in comparing Dark Souls and Pokémon, and in how their experiences parallel one another.