Power Glove Love

Bioshock, the number one game in the first-person-shooter-about-a-guy-who-crash-lands-into-a-crumbling-underwater-utopia genre, has come and gone. Since Josh won’t shut the fuck up about me writing something, I guess I’m here to give my opinion about it.

To put it simply, it’s rad. Totally rad. The game’s unified art direction, brilliant storytelling and unique combat really make it interesting. I’m just going to assume everyone reading this has played it by now and won’t go “THESE ARE PLASMIDS THE STORY IS TOLD MAINLY THROUGH RADIO MESSAGES BLAH BLAH BLAH WHATEVER.” So if you haven’t played it yet, you can do two things at this juncture: a) fuck off, and b) go buy it and play it you lazy sonofabitch.

Since I am such a brilliant guy who writes words together into sentences, the first thing I usually look for in my interactive entertainment is how good the guys at the other place are at writing words together into sentences. And the guys at Irrational are pretty good at that. The story really captivated me and kept me involved up until the twist. Oh lord, the twist. Sure, it was kind of predictable. WOW, ATLAS IS FONTAINE! DIDN’T SEE THAT COMING AT ALL! But the second part of that twist, the “would you kindly” part, is brilliant. BRILLIANT. It is a wonderfully conceived and executed criticism on your standard FPS, where you always have a disembodied voice going GO OVER HERE AND SHOOT THOSE ASSHOLES. JUST DO IT. I SAID SO. …ASSHOLE. I loved it.

Unfortunately the game sort of fizzles away after the twist. It’s as if Irrational’s writers spent all their time ironing everything up to the big plot twist out, then went OH SHIT WE HAVE TO WRITE AN ENDING. The remainder of the game is just Fontaine saying some ominous things and cackling maniacally while you run around shooting Splicers. And the final boss is a fucking pussy. Scratch that. He is a bucket of floppy vaginas. He runs around the arena throwing kittens and bouquets of roses at you until he gets verklempt and has to take a nap. Then you get a two minute ending, one of which is really fucking lame and the other just kind of fucking lame. I am convinced there is a secret third ending where Jack (the main character’s name, you ignorant fucks) dies of AIDS from using so many dirty hypodermic needles found in trash cans. I mean, seriously. That shit’s gross.

Aside from a yawn inducing climax, Bioshock is worth the buy. Go get it if you haven’t already.