Friday, March 6, 2009

Mr Bubbles' secret

So I'm playing Bioshock again, and returning to a game is something I almost never do. They're like films: the expectation, the rush, the discovery – all that only exists for the first time. I like the journey over any sense of achievement. But. I've been working on a feature about the sequel and that's meant doing loads of research on the original, getting me all interested again.

Even second time around it's still massively impressive. Not because it's the most amazing game I've ever played, there are loads of incredible games I've never gone back to. The thing that makes it impressive is that it's utterly distinctive and different from just about everything else out there. 

You usually have two choices in games: American (chunky angry men with guns) or Japanese (skinny boys on a quest). This is neither of those, and that's why it's so important. No homicidal aliens, scowling bald soldiers or roaring spaceships. Instead you get Jean-Pierre Jeunet's sense of colour with Rapture looking like a left over set from City Of Lost Children. You get golden age RKO cinema with sharply tailored 40s suits, brylcreem and flickering celluloid. Even the mutated, dehumanised Splicers reek of 80s horror movies, all lumpy latex misshapen faces and slasher movie hooks.

It doesn't shine because it's bright but because it's a totally different colour. Even Fallout, which does a great job with it's fifties theme is basically the same old story in a new coat and combing its hair a new way. For all the style it's still predictable: good vs evil, save the good, kill the bad. In Bioshock everything is a question or a contradiction. The Big Daddies and Little Sisters mirroring a combination of wrath and fragility found in everything from Leon to Beauty And The Beast. Their relationship a story in its own right. Then there are the Splicers who for all their disfigurement and malice are essentially addicts, hooked on the mutating substance Adam. You've only got to listen to their anguished cries to realise these are tormented souls in purgatory. Their tattered finery covering their bodies like scars that'll never heal. Okay, they're angry souls who want to smash your face off with a pipe, admittedly, but as motivations go it's deeper than usual.

The moment that affected me the most, though, is when you discover the orphanage where the Little Sisters are 'born'. Snoop around enough and you find a morgue. Look a little closer and you realise the autopsy tables are smaller than usual. Almost as if they were meant for a child. Then you see ghost, (a reoccurring device in the game to fill in back story). It's a Little Sister. She cries, “No! I don' wanna!” and runs off into a little cupboard before disappearing. Follow her, to take a closer look, and you'll discover piles of little dresses, neatly stacked on the floor. The implication is too horrible to dwell on. Find me another game where a room full of clothes can make me feel nauseous and then maybe Bioshock will have some company..

2 comments:

  1. Man, I cannot sub for shit. Six odd passes now and I'm still finding mistakes.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Right, that's it. I'm besotted with the look of Bioshock. I'm fascinated by the dystopia and the Ayn Rand-referencing. And if it's this good, I'm just going to have to play it. On stupid fat-handed baby difficulty.

    ReplyDelete