No Gods Or Kings. Only Man.

No Gods or Kings. Only Man. This is the motto of Rapture, the city built by Andrew Ryan and quite possibly one of my favorite video game environments of all time.  This is the city where you start the amazing adventure that is the BioShock series. I think it’s safe to assume most of you reading this are seasoned gamers and have played these games but if you haven’t, you’re doing yourself a great disservice.

Irrational Games has taken their creative concept and turned it into a work of art. The gameplay itself in the BioShock series isn’t mind blowing or out of this world: it’s simple but difficult. Simple in the sense that it’s your basic point and shoot FPS game but difficult in that you’re left with limited resources (lack of money to purchase ammo and upgrades) which makes defeating the tougher foes near impossible to do at times. The combination of dual wielding weapons and plasmids gives you a nice variety of ways to destroy your enemies. Plasmids also allow you to take advantage of your surrounding environment. For example; the Electro Bolt plasmid from the original BioShock gives you the ability to damage multiple enemies if they’re standing in water. Campeau explains what I’m talking about in his last post.  The gameplay isn’t what draws you into these games; it’s the gaming experience as a whole. The music, the art-deco themed rooms and the old school classy vibe these games give you is just remarkable. The series provides the player with all the anticipation and anxiety you get from a horror genre without actually scaring you (aside from maybe a handful of confrontations).The shadowy landscapes and eerie music choices make for a very nerve wracking atmosphere. For those of you who follow Adam on Twitch and have seen him stream gameplay of Outlast with me screaming like a child in the background, you can guess I don’t do well with terror.

I’ll warn you now, if you haven’t played either of BioShock Infinite’s "Burial At Sea" DLCs, tread lightly: my analysis will be covering the ending to Episode One and various gameplay elements in Episode Two  

I recently got the chance to dive back into Rapture when I downloaded “Burial at Sea Episode Two”. I had a lot of trouble with the first episode because the whole thing felt really rushed through development. There were tons of glitches and random hints were frequently popping up for no reason. This was not the case with the second episode. The first episode had me stuck at the end of a chapter because of a glitch that wouldn’t prompt Elizabeth to crawl through a vent to unlock a door for me. I had to restart the whole chapter and it finally worked. The ending of the first episode was pretty mind blowing, which is pretty par for the course when it comes to anything in the Infinite series. 

*SPOILERS*. Booker DeWitt/Comstock gets impaled by a Big Daddy while he’s trying to save a Little Sister named Sally. I’m pretty sure she’s supposed to be his daughter but all of these alternate universes kind of skewed my understanding of the story lines a little. *SPOILERS*.

I wasn’t a huge fan of this short and hurried DLC, but I was happy to be back in Rapture. Episode Two was infinitely better though. It took me maybe 3 hours to get through to first one but the second one felt almost like a whole extra game;  I got at least 6-7 hours out of the second episode. I’m normally not the type to buy DLC but my brother bought me the season pass for my birthday last year and I’m pretty happy he did.

In Episode Two you get to assume the role of Elizabeth. She is much weaker than any other playable character from the series and the whole episode turns into a stealth game because you’re not strong enough to take on hordes of splicers. Typically, I’m not a stealth-mode enthusiast but BioShock made it work for me. My main issue with stealth games is always sitting there and waiting for your enemies to come to you so you can knock them out from behind. In Episode Two, you have the ability to take out enemies without having to wait to sneak up on them because of a crossbow that holds multiple ammo types like tranquilizer darts, noisemakers and knockout gas. When you encounter a larger group of enemies you can pull them all to a certain location, using the noisemaker ammo, and knock them out with the gas bolts. You also get a bunch of regular weapons (hand cannon, shotgun, radar range, etc.) but ammo is pretty scarce.

If you really want to enjoy this DLC I highly recommend you replay the first BioShock. The whole episode is spent figuring out how the revolution in Rapture originally happened, how they bonded Big Daddies to the Little Sisters, and how Elizabeth is a key part to the whole thing. It revisits all the old characters from the first game and I found myself forgetting who they were since I originally played BioShock back in 2008. After the game was over I had to look up different fan explanations to figure out what the hell I just witnessed. The whole thing is just one mind twisting wrap-up that goes all the way back to before the first game.

Unfortunately for us BioShock fans Irrational Games is shutting down and we may never see another one of these fantastic games again. I hope you enjoyed my pseudo-review of the series and if you haven’t played these games, you’re missing out and it’s time for you to visit Rapture.

"I am Andrew Ryan, and I am here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? 'No,' says the man in Washington, 'it belongs to the poor.' 'No,' says the man in the Vatican, 'it belongs to God.' 'No,' says the man in Moscow, 'it belongs to everyone.' I rejected those answers. Instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture. A city where the artist would not fear the censor. Where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality. Where the great would not be constrained by the small. And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well."

―Andrew Ryan

Later Days.