BioShock PS3 Preview

Eurogamer goes hands-on with the PlayStation 3 port of 2K Games’ BioShock.

The early sequences of BioShock play out rather like a survival-horror game – a mood that ultimately shifts sideways into suspense and action, retaining its capacity to startle – as your apparent guardian Atlas gets to know you over a short-wave radio and guides you through your first encounters with the stars of the show: the murderous, broken-headed splicers; the gene-harvesting Little Sisters and their protectors, the metal diving suit-clad Big Daddies; your mixed arsenal of genetic modifications and old-school projectile weaponry; and the biggest star of all, Rapture itself.

DualShock3 and Sixaxis lend themselves perfectly to the controls – with an initial sensitivity to the dual-stick FPS controls that we haven’t felt the need to tweak, although you can, and vibration for the DS3 – and allow you to switch between plasmid gene attacks like electro-shock and the standard wrench, pistol, shotgun, crossbow and so on. As your range of plasmid attacks grows, the fun is in deciding how to approach a given situation or, if caught short, how to improvise your way past enemies without sustaining too much damage, and being thrown back to the nearest Vita-Chamber – Rapture’s respawn points. There are many different ammo-types, and traps to master, and the different sections of Rapture diversify in tone, foe, layout and pace to force you down tactical avenues you haven’t considered.