As a sur­vival horror shoot­er dev­el­oped by the creat­ors of System Shock 2, Bio­shock uses and im­proves upon many of the narr­at­ive and game­play tech­niques of that fondly remem­bered title. Pers­onal audio logs found through­out the game allow unin­trus­ive char­ac­ter and plot devel­op­ment; the abil­ity to hack sec­ur­ity syst­ems, de­velop psych­ic abil­ities and even see ghosts. All will be fam­il­iar from SS2. But, while Bio­shock may be that game’s spir­it­ual succ­essor, it has re­tained mech­an­ics to engage the player and left the stat­istic-heavy RPG ele­ments behind.

The year is 1960. While flying at night over the mid-Atlant­ic, your plane myst­eri­ously crashes into the sea.