The sound is also worthy of mention as the team at Irrational Games worked hard to enhance the atmosphere in a variety of ways. First, there is the voice acting. There is the Australian working class voice of Atlas that emphasizes his plain speaking personality, the confidence and stubbornness, almost aggression, in the tone of Andrew Ryan, and the madness that laces the words of the splicers as they scuffle around the city. “I did no harm!” a splicer surgeon cries as he hurls fireballs toward you. “All I wanted was some company!” another one yells as he lunges at you with a wrench. It shows the tragedy of their lives; they were average people once and now their all the same: insane killers who would kill you as much as look at you.
The ruin of the city is emphasized by the 1960s era music that you can hear pumped through the speakers of the city. There are few things more surreal then walking around in a ruined apartment filled with rubble and the occasional corpse listening to “Papa Loves Mambo.” There are also the audio recordings you find on voice recorders around the city that tell you more of the story of the downfall of Rapture and the downfall of its citizens. You can listen to Dr. Steinnman’s slow decline into madness that turned him from a doctor into nothing more than a crazed butcher who killed people for the flaws he saw in everyone, or the fragility of Ryan’s mistress, Diane McLintock, as she tries to adjust to the post war Rapture world. The voice acting in all these cases was amazing and brought you deeper into the story.
There are a few things about the game, though, that lessen the impact in a marginal way. The first is the Vita Chamber. You see these chambers all around Rapture, and they activate as you approach. What they do, as you soon find out, is act as your safety net. Whenever you die you’re summoned back to a Vita Chamber with most of your health restored and some Eve. This seems to undercut a lot of the game’s potential because, as you can never really die, there would seem to be no point in trying to dodge attacks. Well, the Vita Chamber isn’t 100% perfect in itself. These are often placed far from an objective so if you die while fighting a Big Daddy, for instance, you could have to hike clear across the level to find him and his Little Sister again and they may not even be in the same spot where you last fought them. So, while the Vita Chamber is a big safety net, it’s still worthwhile to try to keep yourself alive. The game also had some clipping errors that lead to events like shooting a splicer in a bathroom stall and having his head poking out of the narrow gap on the side of the stall or shooting a splicer in a doorway and having the automatic door just slide through him instead of hitting his body and bouncing off. Small things again, but they are there.
But, all in all, Bioshock is one of the greatest games that have ever been produced. The story, the huge decaying city, the personalities of the people you see, hear, and listen to... all of it combines together to create a masterpiece of gaming. Now, would you kindly go out and buy a copy?
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