What's This Game All About?
Ventrue to the bottom of the ocean for this remaster of a classic. The game looks as beautiful as ever and trudging through the art-deco world of Rapture is just as daunting. With critical acclaim, countless accolades, an outstanding script coupled with distinguished characters, BioShock delivers one of the most memorable gaming experiences on record.
From the opening scene, you can tell you’re in for something special. As you descend into the depths of Rapture, the player has no idea of what is to come. The dream of an advanced utopia is now riddled with dark corruption and murder, and it is this setting that plays host to one of the best narratives available.
Even nearly 15 years later, this game serves as a beacon for all other games. No game is perfect in the way it delivers its overall experience, but BioShock comes close. It combines all aspects of a narrative-driven game and mixes it with an intense, intricate FPS combat style that delivers in every aspect.
After surviving a plane crash in the middle of the ocean, you begin your descent into Rapture, the dream become a reality of Andrew Ryan. Ryan has as much ambition as he does misguided enthusiasm, and whilst he constantly spills rhetoric propaganda, you can’t help but sympathise with him. Here is a man who values his vision above all things good and right, who has made an impossible dream a reality. As he says, it wasn’t impossible to build Rapture at the bottom of the sea, it was impossible the build it anywhere else. It was his baby, and nothing was going to stop him. He believes that his crimes were merely a means to an end and that his goal has justified all else that took place. Unfortunately for him, Rapture is an immense failure. The goal of the game is to make sense of what happened and how. This is where the beauty of BioShock comes to life. Andrew Ryan will go down in history as one of the greatest antagonists in modern gaming.
The ambiance of Rapture is unlike any other setting that I can recall. The blurriness between good and evil lurks at every turn. The moving soundtrack coupled with the incredible voice acting, and BioShock speaks to you. A masterpiece.
BioShock Trophies
Hunting the BioShock trophies was a mixed experience. You have the option of one or two playthroughs. One playthrough means you have to play on Survivor mode, whilst if you choose two playthroughs you can cruise through the story on an easier setting before setting yourself up for a survivor playthrough.
To start, there are 5 missable when going for the BioShock trophies. None are particularly difficult if you take note of them. First of all, make sure to grab all of the audio diaries in Welcome to Rapture, and Rapture Control Room before leaving each area, as you cannot return. Secondly, do not kill Sander Cohen after completing his masterpiece in Fort Frolic, or you will be locked out of three trophies. Additionally, if you are going for a single playthrough, make sure you save each little sister you encounter by hitting the triangle button. If you harvest any, you will miss out on a trophy. After finishing the game, you can return to a previous save and harvest any little sisters you missed to gain maximum ADAM for the required tonics.
The hardest difficulty, Survivor mode, is quite punishing. I didn’t manage my resources properly, so that made it all that much harder. To be honest, the first half of the game is very difficult. You are underpowered and the enemies are literal bullet sponges. Add to that that ammo is scarce, and money is hard to come by, I regularly found myself out of ammo/eve, backed into a corner, against a group of enemies that would kill me in 2-3 hits. Also, remember to disable Vita-Chambers if you are playing on survivor mode. With that in mind, make sure you save regularly; something I forgot to do. With no Vita-Chambers active, you only autosave when you enter a new area, so dieing anywhere in the level will revert to your previous save. This was an absolute pain in the ass! We’re so spoilt these days by autosaving, that even towards the end of the game I was forgetting to save, and having to replay the last 15-20 minutes before I died. Additionally, if you save with low health and now first-aid kits, you’re also in trouble when you die, as you do not regain any health.
I would also highly recommend running with the electro bolt or winter blast plasmid at all times. This helps you to disable the turrets quickly. There is around a 3-second window from when you come into their vision until they unload on you, so you have a bit of time. Once you freeze/electrocute them, run up and hack them. This makes them friendly, and they will attack enemies for you. Very helpful. The same premise exists with security cameras, except you don’t necessarily need to disable them first, you just need to get close to them and stay out of their vision. Again, these will act as friendlies and call in reinforcement bots to attack enemies. The number of times I got slammed by a turret when I was trying to electrocute it, was insane. These things are crazy strong, so I ended up trying to get to them immediately when they came in sight. Often though, I would turn a corner in the middle of a fight with a Splicer and just start getting peppered in the back by one of these turrets. Also, don’t get me started on the rocket launching ones. They one-shot you or at least do 80% health, so unless you are at max health you just get wiped off the map. Imagine forgetting to save for the last half an hour, then rounding a corner and getting shot in the back by an RPG launching turret that you didn’t see. Fun.
So, I ended up slogging through a lot of the stages painfully slow, searching every corner. I didn’t use a guide for the audio diaries as I didn’t want to ruin the magic of experiencing Rapture for the first time. For your first playthrough, I would try to avoid a guide, it makes the game that much better. What I found helpful and quite enjoyable, was to just explore every area that I could find. Finding a little crawl-vent off to the side of a room, trudging through a tight tunnel to find some rare loot and an audio diary, was a great feeling. Whilst we’re on the topic of audio diaries, I would highly recommend listening to every one. The lore surrounding this game and many of its characters go far beyond the main storyline. You’ll find audio diaries on dead bodies that explain just how they got there, and there may even be a few in the area that explains events leading up to the brutal slaying of a person that you will never meet. They also expand on all of the main characters as well, and I don’t think I would’ve felt such an attachment to the game if I didn’t listen to them. So do yourself a favour, and hold X when you pick one up!
In terms of collecting them all, at the end of each area, I just went through a list of diaries available in that level, and compare it to the ones that I’d collected. Any that were missing, I would simply follow a guide and pick them up; usually, it took no more than 5 minutes. If you are exploring thoroughly you’ll likely only be missing 2 or 3 maximum. I found this guide to be amazingly helpful as it has a description for each one, and an image location for many of them.
Importantly take photos of every enemy you can. The research Ph.D. is one of the most grindy of the BioShock trophies. It requires you to max out all possible research, meaning you have to get to level 5 for all enemies. This includes little sisters. Make sure to take photos of them before engaging with a big daddy. If you save/harvest them all and haven’t maxed out the photo tree, this one is missable as well, so be very careful. The research Ph.D. Bioshock trophy also includes turrets, cameras, security bots. So, before you hack them, make sure you snap 2 or 3 photos. This was one of the last trophies I got, but only because I completely forgot about that nitro splicers; I thought I had already finished their tree, but I hadn’t. Otherwise, you should be able to get the trophy around two-thirds of the way through
Photos come in grades of A, B, or C, so I found myself having to get up close and personal with many of the enemies to get an A grade. Additionally, you get a bonus for action shots or getting multiple enemies in the same photo, so try to aim for those when you can. I didn’t have too many issues with this trophy, but it can be a bit grindy. Just remember to take photos of everything you can, ideally before you kill them. Take 2 or 3, until the prompt says score too low. Happy snapping!
Tonic collector is another semi-grindy trophy. It requires you to collect or invent 58 total tonics. I didn’t have too much trouble with this, as I found all of the tonics in the environment naturally (due to my heavy exploration). If you do this, you’ll be fine. Otherwise, a guide may help. You also need to purchase tonics with ADAM at the Gatherers Garden. I left this until pretty late, but some of them are only available in certain levels, so you may need to travel around a bit.
Another tough one is the weapon specialist trophy. You need to find every weapon upgrade station in the game for this one. I think this was the second last trophy that I got, as I had missed 3 or 4 of them, despite my extensive exploring. It was a bit grindy as I didn’t know exactly which ones I was missing, so I had to return to most of the locations. You will likely miss a couple, and I found this video guide to be extremely helpful in cleaning up this trophy.
The final boss fight is quite tough. He moves quickly and packs a punch when connecting with his attacks. There are also security bots and splicers present, so watch out for those. Importantly, you should max out all of your ammo and purchase as many health kits and EVE hypos as you can afford. I can’t stress this enough. The game autosaves right before the fight, so if you haven’t saved for a while you are stuck with what you have. I had the bare minimum and only one first aid kit. You don’t want to know how long this fight took me. If you have enough resources, you should be fine, though.
After you defeat the final boss, that is the end of the game. So, if you need to clean up some other trophies, make sure you have a recent save file (besides the autosave). Save regularly throughout and you should be fine here.
PsnProfiles suggests a 15-hour platinum, but I think mine would have been closer to 20 hours. I died a ridiculous amount of times that I (tongue in cheek) referred to the game as an FPS Dark Souls to a friend of mine. Maybe I’m not as good at some FPS as I thought, or perhaps it is very punishing on the max difficulty. Let’s go with the latter, shall we?
BioShock Trophies complete. Platinum obtained.
Trophy Hunting Trophy Facts
Trophies Available – 48 bronze, 2 SIlver, 3 Gold, 1 Platinum
Time to Platinum – 15-20 hours
Platinum Difficulty – 5/10
Number of Missable Trophies – 5
Hardest Trophy – I Chose Impossible (Complete the game on survivor difficulty, without using a Vita-Chamber)
Number of Playthroughs – 1
Fun Factor – 9.5/10
Read my trophy hunting previous review here – Bloodborne Trophies – Platinum Obsession Review