The demo for upcoming horror-game BioShock was released to Xbox Live Marketplace today. I haven’t really paid attention to the game, looked like a standard first-person shooter with some interesting environments, but I wanted to try the demo. I’m glad to say I was positively surprised, the demo starts off with the protagonist crashing on an airplane in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, you swim to the surface and look up at a huge tower in the middle of flaming wreckage. Inside the tower the retro propaganda for the underworld city Rapture starts to appear. It quickly becomes apparent that a man named Ryan created this world to get away from the powers that control the western world. As you descend into the abyss you quickly realize that something isn’t right, a man is killed in front of you by a mutant-like female, and when you step into the departure hall from the elevator, protest signs bearing slogans such as “Ryan doesn’t own us” are seen littered all over the floor. At this point you already feel deeply emerged into the fascinating storyline, throughout the rest of the demo you are guided by a man named Atlas, as well as several tape recordings that explain more about the underworld. Apparently something went wrong at New Year’s Eve in 1959, and the hallways of Rapture are now inhabited by the mutated Splicers, the creepy Little Sisters, and their protectors, the robotic Big Daddies.
The combat is actually quite refreshing; you quickly gain some of the game’s powers, so called Plasmids, that lets you fire electric bolts, and you learn to use combos, for instance, if you stun an enemy with a bolt you can kill them with one hit from a melee weapon. The combat system reminded me of the one in Condemned, with a faster pace (Splicers are fast as hell!). You also learn how to hack security robots and make them your allies, which is done by completing a mini-game by connecting tubes from the start to finish entries, before water runs through. Speaking of water, there’s been a lot of talk about how great the water looks in BioShock and I have to agree, it’s incredible. Especially the scenes with water running down stairs, etc. The game is quite scary as well, although the horror seems to be more sophisticated than the average horror-games out there. It’s a bit more Silent Hill-like, with focus on traumatic and horrific scenery and stories, just as much as enemies jumping out from behind a wall.