Your journey pits you against surgeon J.S. Rapture was a city that boasted the world’s greatest and most creative minds of the 20th century, so how on Earth does a city get from a promising utopia to a nightmarish dystopia? The game’s cast of characters helps usher in that horror. However, that wasn’t the only trick Irrational had for total player immersion. It truly was a game where its immersion still wins over generations of gamers. 15 years on, it’s an art style that has aged like a fine wine, during its opening moments, that reveal shot of Rapture’s exterior still looks beautiful, while its interior still looks like it has been lived in. In a gaming world where murky brown shooters were becoming the norm, BioShock came out the gate with a cartoon steampunk art style that juxtaposed its horror storytelling. The balance of scaring the player and engaging the player to fight was a balancing act that would have most developers scratching their heads in current times, but Irrational made it look easy. Though Rapture’s atmosphere was foreboding, you didn’t really have a lot of time to think about that, as you blast surveillance droids and splicers into pieces with an assortment of weapons and plasmids.

Each corridor, each room had a sense of fight or flight - you never felt truly safe. Fast-paced action horror titles such as Doom or Quake already existed, but BioShock gave the genre a fresh coat of paint for younger audiences by using modern shooter mechanics, which back then was truly something unique and mechanics we take for granted today. While there were other titles such as Fatal Frame or Eternal Darkness flying the flag high, the mechanics and overall style were becoming increasingly dated by 2007.īioShock’s killer charm lies in the fact that it takes existing styles of play and gives us a unique, uncompromising, and ruthless horror game. Dead Space was a year away, Silent Hill was lost in a fog of its own creation, and Resident Evil was creating QTEs involving boulders. The genre needed BioShock, as horror games were somewhat in a lull in 2007. That is only the first half hour of Ken Levine’s horror odyssey that dragged the horror genre itself kicking and screaming into the seventh generation of consoles.

Your only hope of escaping this deep abyss is your faceless companion, Atlas, and a walkie-talkie, as he asks you kindly to help liberate Rapture from its insane leader. As you’re taken down the deep watery depths of the city and the doors to your bathysphere open, you find that it’s too good to be true.Īs the crazed locals (or “splicers”) greet the game’s protagonist, Jack, you barely have enough time to fathom the horror of this deep water prison before you hear the heavy stomps of the Big Daddy and the demonic, shrill voice of a Little Sister. To create and mould the essences of life to their perfect image. A city where inventors, creators and eccentric minds could gather and avoid the oppressive, tyrannical chains of conventional global politics. 15 years ago, the gaming world wasn’t quite ready for BioShock when Andrew Ryan invited us to his underwater vision, Rapture.

Faceless gaming