2K games are almost set for their newest instalment of Bioshock, named Bioshock Infinite. 2K rocked the gaming world senseless back in 2007, with the first game in the Bioshock franchise. The Bioshock franchise, is a more modernised spin off, from their earlier games Systemshock and sytemshock 2. The developers of Bioshock have said that it is the “spiritual progression of Systemshock”. As well as blowing the socks off gamers worldwide, with their innovative and captivating storyline, their twists and turns, all true to the tradition of Systemshock, they have drawn ideas from those earlier games and added some of their components to Bioshock, Bioshock 2 and more specifically, Bioshock Infinite.

 

Bioshock starts huge, with some beautiful cinematics and sound, and then thrusting you immediately in to play, but, if you are like me, you won’t realise that the cut-scene has finished at first.

 

Set in 1960, the hero of our story, Jack, is enjoying a quiet smoke in the midst of a storm, on a plane bound for nowhere, anywhere. The plane suddenly crashes, leaving you swimming for your life to escape the wreckage and fire of the crash.

 

Soon after this, Jack realises that he is the only survivor of the crash and he must seek shelter from the storm, and so heads down a staircase into the underwater city called Rapture. Rapture was built by entrepreneurial genius and business tycoon Andrew Ryan in the 1940’s has become almost deserted. Andrew’s idea behind Rapture was to create a city for society’s elite to live and work far out from the reaches of government entanglements and oppression.

 

A substance known as ADAM was discovered by scientists, and shortly after they found a way of harvesting ADAM by implanting the sea slugs into the bellies of little girls, called Little Sisters. ADAM was used to re-map the human genetic code by producing plasmids in drink-form that could grant superhuman abilities like tele-kinesis. ADAM was highly addictive, and very volatile to the user’s mind. Users of the substance that couldn’t control their addiction became very unstable and violent and those that became overly addicted to ADAM were called splicers. Hungry for more ADAM they attacked the little sisters in an attempt to harvest the ADAM for themselves. Eager to protect the reserves of this commodity, scientists developed mechanised protectors for the little sisters called Big Daddies. They were humans, genetically bound to armoured-up and weaponised dive suits. Each Big Daddy was assigned a little sister to protect, and protecting them was what they did well.

 

In 1959, the splicers started a civil war in their pursuit of harvesting the little sisters for their ADAM. Non-ADAM users fled and hid within Rapture in order to survive. Rapture became a dystopia, an empty shadow of its former glory. This brings us to where you come in. Jack, the player, must fight his way through Rapture with the assistance of his new friend, Atlas, as his guide. Throwing together your own mix of plasmids, and using customised weapons, you must traverse the vast world of Rapture, constantly hounded by the voice of Andrew Ryan, plagued by visions of a family that seems familiar, and driven by the determination to survive. Faced with betrayals, difficult moral choices and a whole lot of splicers, Jack’s mission is to put a stop to all this.

 

Without spoiling the story, or how it ends for Jack, we find ourselves waking as up 10 years later in Bioshock 2. This time, you are still in Rapture, and you are an Alpha-Series Big Daddy, called Subject Delta. Subject Delta was the fourth Big Daddy to ever be created. You have ‘rebooted’ with no memory of the past, or what has become of the little sister, Eleanor, that you were supposed to protect.

 

You start to scour the underwater city of rapture in search of Eleanor, the beautiful, playful girl that you were paired with many years ago. It soon becomes apparent that Eleanor is actually Sofia Lamb’s daughter. Sofia Lamb is the antagonist in this episode, and she has an army of splicers at her command. She has been busy putting her own plan into motion for Rapture’s future, and you are not part of it.

 

Once again, you embark on a personal mission to reach Sofia Lamb, to stop her plans. This time you have the usual arsenal that the previous Bid Daddies had, that huge drill and the rivet gun prove very valuable against the splicers. In addition, you can use plasmids and tonics to acquire and upgrade Delta’s abilities, very much the same as the first game. This time, however, you can use a plasmid and a weapon at the same time. You will see a few familiar faces as you travel around this part of Rapture, and face similar betrayals and hard hitting enemies in your attempt to stay alive and save the day.

 

Following on from this into the third game of the series, we jump backwards in time to 1912. Our hero this time is former Pinkerton Agent Booker DeWitt. DeWitt is sent on a perilous journey to the floating air city of Columbia. His mission is to rescue a girl named Elizabeth who has been held captive there for over 12 years. DeWitt soon rescues Elizabeth, and together they must escape the ensuing forces that reside in the air city who are hell bent on preserving the essence of pure American.

 

Having only seen trailers and heard rumours about the game, it is difficult to say how the game will play out and what twists and turns are in store for us. However, from actual game play videos that have been released it would appear that you have vastly more space to move around in, which should be ideal for larger combat situations, and not as restrictive as it previously was in Bioshock and Bioshock 2. It is also mentioned that the game has elements of its early predecessor game Systemshock, in that you make decisions that will permanently affect the outcome of the game, so much so that you may force yourself into an unwinnable situation, and may have to restart at an earlier point and rethink your actions. Too often do we see games that allow us to make moral choices, but have little consequence as you are still able to progress. So this may be frustrating to get to grips with, but brilliant in today’s game world.

 

We are very excited to get cracking with it, as I know most of the gamers I join up with are, so there will be more coming from me once I have played it, following its launch on 26/03/13