The Greatest Gaming Moments – BioShock

Hello one and all and welcome to my inaugural Steemit post, outside of the brief introduction I put up yesterday. In that intro I mentioned that I would probably mostly post about videogames as they have been something that has consumed my life since I was five years old, when I received an Atari 2600 for Christmas. 

In this article, which I’m hoping to make a weekly feature, I’ll be taking a look at some of the most important, visceral and downright entertaining moments in some of history’s greatest games. These will be the moments that made people laugh, cry and just sit back in awe while they witnessed something truly brilliant.

So what better way to start than with one of the best games of the last generation of consoles? BioShock was lauded upon release for creating a sumptuous world that mingled true artistic beauty with shocking violence. It is a complete deconstruction of the philosophy of objectivism and has a story that captivated millions, demonstrating beyond any shadow of a doubt that videogames are capable of producing great narratives.

It also has plenty of amazing moments, so let’s take a look at some of the runners-up before we tackle the best that it has to offer. Oh and it should be pretty obvious that there are some major spoilers ahead.

Honourable Mentions

Entering Rapture­ – From the moment you enter Rapture, the stunningly-realised underwater city where you spend practically the entire game, you know you are in for a treat. That first ride in the bathysphere introduces you to the gorgeous design of the city itself, before terrifying you with an assault that happens while you are completely incapable of defending yourself. The moment encapsulates everything that the game is in the space of a few minutes. 

The Dentist – Who can honestly say that they didn’t sh*t a brick when they saw the dentist? BioShock excels at jump scares and this one really took the cake. After inspecting an innocuous looking gurney, the player turns round to see a splicer standing right in front of them. Most pull the trigger while trying not to jump out of their skins, but the few who maintain their composure find that the dentist will just stand there and…stare. At least until you initiate the fight.

The First Plasmid – Plasmids will play a big part in the game and there are many on offer. However, the unveiling of the first is a watershed moment as it marks the first point in the game where players feel comfortable taking on whatever Rapture has to throw at them. You were capable of defending yourself before you found it, but now you can really take the fight to the splicers.

Whose The Daddy?­ – There are few enemies in gaming lore as sympathetic as the Big Daddies. Confined to a massive shell of armour and doomed to spend their lives protecting the Little Sisters as they collect Adam, they are fairly benign though obviously terrifying to look at. Then somebody gets stupid enough to try and kill a Little Sister. That’s when these brutes roar into action and obliterate anybody stupid enough to get in their way. Your first encounter with one leaves a splicer smashed through a window and a room coated in blood.

Sander Cohen – Every interaction you have with Sander Cohen is glorious. A disturbed individual who tasks you with collecting macabre photos for his gallery, Cohen represents the true apex of Rapture gone wrong. He meets an ignominious end, but the brief time you spend with him is as entertaining as it is disturbing.

The Moment 

While all the honourable mentions are great, there is one moment in BioShock that stands head and shoulders above the rest. Would you kindly read on? Yes, the reveal that Frank Fontaine has been using a trigger phrase to make the player do whatever he wants is a shock to the system that very few even caught hints of, never mind expected.Following it up with having players cave Andrew Ryan’s head in with a golf club, without having any control over their actions, is just the cherry on top of the bloody sundae.

Not only does the game establish that Fontaine/Atlas, and not Ryan, is the true villain of the piece, but it takes the gamer’s natural inclination to do whatever their games tell them to do and throws it right back in their faces. Nothing you have done has helped anything by this point and you are just being manipulated to somebody else’s ends. It’s a narrative choice that reflects exactly what gamers do anyway. We are given instructions and we follow them through, giving no thought to consequences because the game told us to do it. It’s a theme that is rarely explored in gaming and one that had not been deconstructed as fiercely before or since.

It’s a brilliant moment and one that is regularly referred to whenever people speak about the greatest moments in gaming history. Escaping the clutches of Atlas’ control and turning yourself into a weapon to be used against him is almost as satisfying as this moment was shocking.

The Final Word 

There are many more gaming moments that have the capacity to draw players in and leave them astounded, but BioShock stands as one of the most superbly-executed of all time. We’ve started on a strong foot here and I won’t claim that every moment I cover is as revelatory as this one, but hopefully you guys enjoyed reliving it with me and will be back when I unveil another one next week. Would you kindly upvote?   

Image Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BioShock_(series)