We sat down with Irrational Games' creative director
Ken Levine to play some of the upcoming "genetically enhanced" first person shooter
'BioShock'. We left thoroughly impressed. If we had it our way, we'd still be sitting in that dark office playing through the first level. For those waiting for this game as obsessively as we are, there are some potential spoilers below, so read at your own discretion.
'BioShock' takes places in
Rapture, a city hidden beneath the ocean. What started as a utopia has turned into an underwater nightmare filled with "
Big Daddies,"
splicers (very angry mutated people), corpses and
little girls who loot dead people for DNA. No, we're not making this up.
Levine showed us some of
Arcadia, one of the game's later levels in which you are trying to reverse the effects of a tree-killing substance released by the underworld's madman leader. The level is complete chaos -- splicers (the bad guys) are trying to bust down your doors while you're being hounded by your guide to save the trees that supply oxygen to the underwater world.
We were given a chance to play around with some of the game's cooler hacked weapons (you can make your own weapons by combining powers or adding things on to normal ones). Our favorites (names not confirmed) included:
- Bolt traps: These are like clotheslines that you can place across corridors or doorways and wait for a splicer to walk through, sending her or him into electroshock spasms.
- Tornadoes: You can places these just about anywhere. These mini storms send enemies flying to the ceiling, stunning them, or, if you happen to place an explosive on the ceiling above the tornado, into a gruesome body parts fireworks display.
- Enrage stones: These stones glow red and can be thrown at Big Daddies to turn them into temporary allies. For about 15 seconds, an enraged Big Daddie will fire off hundreds of rounds at anyone trying to do you harm.
This game has all the ingredients for a potentially massive hit -- beautiful graphics, forgiving learning curve, simple controls, and about a million ways to make waste of your enemies with hacked weapons and traps. August 21 is the game's release date, and it can't come soon enough. Mature audiences only, though -- sorry, kids.
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