BioShock (Xbox 360)

As you battle the denizens of Rapture you'll come across security turrets, cameras and bots. The turrets, bots and cameras can be disabled with a quick zap and then hacked. The game presents hacking in a similar fashion to Pipe Dreams and although it can get a bit repetitive and annoying at times, it's still fairly fun if you like puzzles. If you don't like puzzles, Irrational have made sure you can buy out the security or you can auto-hack using a hacking tools (Deus Ex anyone?)

As I said previously there are certain Tonics that help you become a better hacker, they'll slow down the flow speed, they'll give you less overload tiles and so on. Some of them change the difficulty of the hack in question. Most electronic things in Rapture can be hacked, Vending Machines and Ammo Vending Machines included and if you want to get the better items, you'll need to hack them to do it.

You can also invent new items at U-Invent stations, hacking these decreases the item cost in parts and allows you to make more.

The whole feel of the city and the atmosphere of Rapture are echoed in the way it presents this technology. It has a very 1960's and noir taste to it, there's a forlorn decayed corruption to the place that seeps through every floorboard and around every dark corner. To this end Irrational Games have done a very slick job on the graphics, BioShock is a very sharp game that presents the underwater world in a beautifully macabre way. The Animations and model design are superb. As for the water, it's hard to explain...it has some of the most amazing water effects I've seen in a game yet.

Rapture is an Art-Deco Ayn Rand inspired nightmare that's haunted by the psychotic Splicers and patrolled by the Big Daddies, these old-style Diver suit wearing behemoths trundle around the city protecting the Little Sisters, children that were once human but human no longer. Approaching a Little Sister can get you in the worst kind of trouble imaginable thanks to these stalking protectors. I won't say much about the relationship between these two, save that it's explained as you play the game.

Rapture also thrives on Adam, the genetic material that allows you to alter your DNA and upgrade your character from a Gatherer's Garden. You can buy new plasmids, improve old ones and get more slots for your Tonics and powers. It all costs this genetic material and it's found only in the dead. Of course the Little Sisters are the only ones to be able to extract and metabolise it.

You can get Adam by either helping the Little Sisters (after killing a Big Daddy guardian) or by harvesting them. Either choice leads to rewards, the greater amount of Adam being given if you harvest. If you take on the role of a protector/saviour, then you'll be able to get more tangible rewards later on. It depends if you're comfortable with harming the Little Sisters in the first place. It will take you down one of two endings of course.

The level design in Rapture is pretty open (You can visit previous locations from a Bathysphere station); the whole city feels like it's alive. It's not just from the meticulous use of graphics and design to the detailed and highly textured environments, it's down to the fact that the Splicers never leave you alone for more than a few moments and you can clear an area of bad guys, only to find that if you wait around some more will wander in from somewhere else, giving the impression that there are hordes of these wandering psychopaths in the claustrophobic confines of this misbegotten Utopia. It's like Rapture has its own Eco-system where once in a while things will kick off, perhaps a Splicer gets too close to a Big Daddy's charge and there's a confrontation.