Adam powers

Even more important are the powers that you accumulate as you gain access to Adam yourself. You have only a few available slots in your character's inventory at first but soon you will be able to fire electric bolts and flames from your hands to take out enemies. As we played through the first portion of the game at the event, it became clear that BioShock may be a shooter at its center but the combo of modified weapons and powers will be able to shape your character into something that will be different for everyone that plays it. It also expands how the game could eventually be replayed if you finish BioShock with a different set of weapons and abilities (and yes, there will be no multiplayer mode in BioShock).

Creature AI has always been one of the toughest things game developers have had to deal with in single player action games. Half-Life and its sequel were solid examples of enemies that seemed to think on their own and Bungie's Halo games also had solid AI. Playing through BioShock we realized that we could add Irrational's game to the short list of well programmed enemies. One great example is one of the last battle scenes we played where we had to tackle a particularly tough Splicer enemy. We weakened him enough to almost kill him when he tried to get away and get health back from a health kit. We finally figured out that the room we were in was partly flooded so when he went to get his health we got to a safe place and used our electro-bolt power to electrify the water, killing the enemy before he could get to the health kit.

We have already talked about the art style of the game but we want to go into a little more detail as we have never really seen a game like this take full use of a developer's art team. It helps that BioShock's graphical basis is Epic Games' Unreal Engine 3 which is a good place to start. However, the game's levels are rich with detail as BioShock gives the player a sense of truly being in a world that was created by humans but which took a weird turn along the way. 1940's style billboards adorn the walls and the fact that you are underwater gives all the locations a sense of being closed in with water dripping everywhere. You never get a sense that you have played this level before in some other game. This is not a standard corridor shooter by any means. Mention must also be made of the game's sound. In addition to having spooking 1940's style music playing in the environment from time to time you also get some spooky sounds coming from the creatures themselves.