One interesting and useful twist added to BioShock that I really liked, is the Research Camera. Obtained during the Neptune’s Bounty mission, using the Research Camera allows you to gain vital information on the subjects photographed that can be used to your advantage. The camera assigns a rating depending on what you photograph and how. You get higher ratings for multiple subject and action shots; lower ratings if you’ve already photographed the same subject, and a penalty if the subject is dead when you snap the picture.

Photographing Splicers, Big Daddies and security devices will unlock vulnerabilities that you can use against them. Knowing that Spider and Houdini Splicers  can be taken down a lot faster and more effectively with Anti-personnel rounds rather than standard rounds, or that Big Daddies are more vulnerable to Armor-piercing rounds, not only helps you to conserve precious ammo, but can save you fewer trips to the Vita-Chamber. You can even unlock special Plasmids and Gene Tonics that you won’t find lying around Rapture!

Inspired by and sharing some of the first-person shooter, RPG traits of the Sci-Fi cult classic System Shock 2, BioShock isn’t so much about terror and horror as it is about personal survival and the moral dilemma of placing your survival above someone else’s—someone who was, at the onset more vulnerable than you and is really a victim of the situation.

That’s not to say that BioShock doesn’t have its share of hair-raising or unforgettable moments that send chills down your spine. Early in the game, you witness a cut-scene of a Big Daddy defending a Little Sister against a Splicer who tried to attack and kill her for her ADAM. It was downright scary how something so big, grotesque and awkward-looking could move so fast. The Big Daddy shakes the floor with each step, and was on the Splicer before he could burn through the six shots in his revolver—which may as well have been shooting spit-balls rather than hollow-points at the huge man-creature. It drives its drill-arm into the Splicer’s gut as it nearly puts him through the wall. Then it slams the Splicer head first through the thick, wire reinforced safety glass of the window where you are viewing the whole nightmare before stomping off behind the little sister like a huge, malevolent watch dog.

While rummaging through a ransacked and water-logged dentist’s office in Rapture’s Medical Pavilion, I heard someone while my back was turned. When I spun around with the Tommy Gun ready to open up on them, there was no one there. I thought I heard a laugh, and then someone turned on one of the pipes, filling the room with steam. I couldn’t see a thing.

I braced myself for an attack as the steam cleared. The body of a female Splicer that wasn’t there before, was sprawled across the reclining chair for patients. Knowing that Splicers often “play-dead” and then attack when you walk by, thinking that they’re just another corpse, I fired a few bursts into her head. Turns out she really was just a corpse. But she sure as hell didn’t get in that chair by herself.

I continued searching the office, doing a quick 360 to make sure that I wasn’t being snuck up on. On a desk was a Gene Tonic vial and some other useful items No sooner than I approached the desk, someone laughed and turned on the steam again. Instinctively, I did a quick reload of the Tommy Gun and turned. The steam took a bit longer to clear. When it did, I found myself standing literally face to face with a Splicer who was once a doctor—inhumanly crazy eyes; filthy, blood-stained smock and rubber gloves; a mask that barely hid his disfigured face, one of those goofy, oversized magnifying glass headbands, Gestapo boots—and one nasty-looking knife. He screamed, I think. Maybe it was me. I almost broke the button on my mouse unloading the Tommy Gun into him.

Gamers that have been patiently waiting for titles that are finally optimized for multiple core processors without having to set processor affinities, resort to .INI or registry tweaks and the like to deal with “issues (performance and otherwise),” will be pleased to know that BioShock is been optimized for dual-core processors. If you’re still using a single core processor whether it’s AMD or Intel, it needs to be at least 2.5GHz or better to get what 2K Games describes as “reasonable” performance.

Owners of older video cards that lack Pixel Shader 3.0 support probably won’t want to hear this, but like many of the latest and most anticipated upcoming games that are pushing the envelope on visuals, BioShock requires a Shader 3.0 (or higher) video card. The sun is setting on Shader 2.0 and 1.1 so do yourself a favor: upgrade your video card. If you’re going to play BioShock with all the visuals pushed as high as they will go at resolutions of 1680 x 1050 or higher, your video card should have at least 512MB of RAM. It goes without saying that you should download the latest drivers for your video and sound card. You should particularly be on the lookout for beta drivers that specifically offer improved “compatibility” for BioShock (check the driver’s release notes).

Unfortunately, BioShock doesn’t have in-game support for anti-aliasing. Although most of the game is dark, jaggies will become noticeable in more brightly-lit areas and really ruin the look of the game. Owners of AMD/ATI Radeon X1900 and X2900 series cards, and GeForce 8000 series cards should have no trouble forcing anti-aliasing through their driver control panels. BioShock natively supports widescreen LCD resolutions—though there was initially an issue with how the FOV (Field of View) was implemented. Fortunately, Racer_S over at ToCA EDIT 3.0, who is well-known for his elegantly simple utilities that enable widescreen support in games that don’t have it, stepped up and solved the problem with this little utility for BioShock (which now works under DirectX 10).

BioShock supports both Windows XP (with Service Pack 2) and Windows Vista, which offers some additional DirectX 10 eye candy—dynamic water ripples, soft particle edges and crisper shadow edges—although as you can see from the screenshots, with the right video card you’ll hardly be dissatisfied with the way the game looks under XP and DirectX 9 with all the visuals maxed out. The game doesn’t have Tray n’ Play support under Windows Vista, which is the ability to play BioShock shortly after the DVD is inserted in the into the disc drive, while the game installs itself to the hard drive in the background. Since BioShock is single-player only PC and Xbox 360 gamers won’t be playing BioShock against one another via Microsoft’s LIVE services any time soon. And since there’s no Windows LIVE support, you can’t earn Achievement Points playing BioShock as you could with Halo 2 for Windows Vista’s single and multiplayer campaigns.

What BioShock does have that gamers could definitely do without is product activation with a technology known as SecuROM. When BioShock was launched last month, there was justifiably a big brouhaha over 2K’s activation servers getting overwhelmed—resulting in a lot of people not being able to activate and play the game they paid for. Then there was controversy over the two activations and “Yer Out!” limit (which has since been raised to five activations). You can check out the stir the SecuROM issue has caused over on the 2K Forums here. With all the bad publicity, lost customers and sales resulting from these draconian, anti-consumer technologies, you’d think someone at 2K and all these other companies jumping on the DRM bandwagon would get a clue…

Normally relying on recorded diaries to piece together the plot of a game can be risky and ineffective if the player doesn’t find all of the “pieces to the puzzle” while exploring the game’s levels, as information can be missed that can leave more questions than answers. Fortunately the recordings left behind by Rapture’s citizens that can clue the player in to the main elements of the plot are located in conspicuous places where they are unlikely to be missed. All the others that you may happen to come upon simply add additional “color” to BioShock’s already fascinating and compelling story. Thanks to the excellent voice acting behind these recordings, it’s difficult not to feel something—good or bad—about the people who left them behind as well as Rapture’s few surviving characters who have managed to hold on to their humanity. Ryan’s harangues, threats and vicious taunts as you defeat every obstacle he throws in your path as you fight your way closer to him, are particularly good.

The authentic, period music is excellent, as is the music that sets the mood for different scenarios in the game. It’s ironic that games are criticized for not being “art” or having any redeeming artistic value. Thanks to games like BioShock (and iTunes), an entire generation are discovering classic artists like Bobby Darrin (Bobby performs “Beyond the Sea” in the BioShock TV commercial, and on one of the jukeboxes in Fort Frolic).

BioShock will take you 15-20 hours to complete, which may seem like a long time compared to single-player campaigns in most games which also have multiplayer content. But you’ll be surprised how quickly those 15-20 hours go once you start playing the game and really getting into it. It would be impossible for you to find and take advantage of all the Plasmids, Gene Tonics and experiment with their use in just one run-through of the game, so there definitely is some replay value for those who want to try different methods and tactics in dealing with enemies and problem solving. The only effect that BioShock’s three difficulty levels have are the amount of damage that you and the game’s enemies can dish out and take—with the scales tipped towards your foes.

Choosing whether to harvest or help the Little Sisters, or a combination of both, doesn’t really effect events in the game in a major way—though it will elicit certain favorable or unfavorable responses from Dr. Bridget Tenenbaum—the creator of the Little Sisters and one of Rapture’s few surviving scientists that hasn’t mutated into a Splicer. And it will determine the cut-scene movie you’ll see once you’ve finished the game. The final, epic “boss” battle between you and a surprise enemy that you “won’t see coming” until you’ve completed three quarters of the game (while learning a few startling things about our hero Jack), will end the same, regardless.

I think BioShock should have and would have been even more powerful and edge-of-your-seat frightening, if more work had gone into the appearance of some of the characters. Obviously, the most menacing and intimidating foes in the game are the Big Daddies. The way dust rises from the floor and shakes with each step like a small earthquake when they walk. Their inhuman, whale-like moans. The way their helmet lights suddenly glow bright red when they’re angry, and the terrifying speed and agility they’re capable of in spite of their size. Although I absolutely dreaded having to take them on—even with upgraded firepower and Plasmids—fighting them was the most satisfying and thrilling.

Splicers, on the other hand, who were more than effective as crazed, dangerous adversaries, were neither scary or intimidating as they should have been—not even the ones most deformed from excessive Plasmid and Gene Tonic use. BioShock’s Splicers look more comical than frightening or macabre, including the ones who hide their faces under the New Year’s costume masks. The blood they spill that looked more like shiny, purple milk, didn’t help matters. Though I suppose you could say that Plasmid and Gene Tonic abuse might have been responsible for that. Even the Little Sisters when rescued and returned to normal look a bit too much like they belong in a Saturday-morning cartoon. Had these characters been made to look more human, they would have had a much more dramatic and emotional impact on the player. Interestingly enough, Sander Cohen—lunatic avant-garde artist and musician of Rapture’s Fort Frolic (who also enjoys mummifying corpses in Plaster of Paris and turning them into statues in his spare time), was the most convincing and creepy-looking Adam-inflicted character of them all.

The Vita-Chambers are bound to have their fans and detractors. On one hand, they remove a lot of the frustration many experience with games that drag you through a “Die-Reload-Die-Reload” ritual with enemies that have excessively high hit-points, over-powered weapons, and respawn everywhere but the kitchen sink in the name of creating a “challenge.” On the other hand, combined with the ability to save and reload games wherever and whenever you want, the Vita-Chambers run the risk of making BioShock a bit too easy, reducing some of the game’s fear and tension you can experience knowing that one false step or over-confidence can have severe consequences. Until AI routines in games are improved to the point where they can provide a reasonable challenge for gamers at all skill levels without making them feel unrealistically overwhelmed, I’d rather see a game err on the side of being a little too easy than being ridiculously hard.

One issue I encountered was after killing a Splicer. As they lie dead, one part of their body—a hand, leg or foot—would always move back and forth like a windshield wiper. If this was intentional on 2K’s part to be comical, then it worked, as more than a few dead Splicers looked like they were lying there waving “bye-bye” to me after busting a few caps in them. Whether it was on purpose, or more likely, a bug in BioShock’s physics engine, it turned into a distraction after awhile. I also found it a bit unrealistic and annoying that BioShock’s enemies could always find you, no matter how much of an effort you made to remain stealthy or hidden out of sight.

Creative’s Sound Blaster X-Fi is recommended as the sound card of choice by 2K for BioShock. But even with the latest Windows XP drivers for my X-Fi card, I still experienced an issue with the game’s randomly dropping out once in awhile. Finally, the Saved Game menu doesn’t have a button or key that allows you to delete some of your older saved games, leaving you with quite a long list of saves to scroll through.

In spite of being weighed-down by SecuROM, and a few minor issues, BioShock is edgy, imaginative, exciting and visually stunning with an intriguing storyline that will keep you hooked and playing to the end, with a near-perfect balance of action and strategy. No gamer looking for a breath of fresh air among the recent crop of “me-too” first-person shooters should miss it.