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123-505: The PSP version of Legends received mostly positive reviews, while the DS version received negative reviews according to review aggregator Metacritic . In the game, players will compete in a series of racing modes to unlock returning tracks, cars and events. The following list includes the 9 main types of modes in the game: There are a total of 89 cars to unlock through the various classes – these are Compact, Muscle, Coupe, Sports, and Super. There

246-534: A PlayStation 3 port by Irrational, 2K Marin , 2K Australia and Digital Extremes was released in October 2008. The game follows player character Jack, who discovers the underwater city of Rapture , built by business magnate Andrew Ryan to be an isolated utopia. The discovery of ADAM, a genetic material which grants superhuman powers, initiated the city's turbulent decline. Jack attempts to escape Rapture, fighting its mutated and mechanical denizens, while engaging with

369-401: A Senator . The team collectively agreed that this game was not what they had set out to make, and were having trouble finding a publisher. Levine found that publishers were wary of immersive sims as they did not sell well. They considered ending development, but as news about their efforts to create a spiritual successor to System Shock 2 began to appear in gaming magazines and websites,

492-529: A 100: Tokyo Story ; The Godfather ; Citizen Kane ; Rear Window ; Casablanca ; Boyhood ; Three Colors: Red ; Vertigo ; Fanny and Alexander ; Notorious ; Lawrence of Arabia ; Dekalog ; The Leopard ; and The Conformist . There are five TV show seasons that have received a 99, including Season 4 of Rectify , Season 4 and Season 6 of The Larry Sanders Show , Season 1 of Murder One , and Season 5 of Breaking Bad . The standalone highest-rated album of all time on

615-579: A Nation , Hardbodies , Mother's Day and United Passions . The standalone lowest-rated TV show of all time is The 1/2 Hour News Hour , with a 13. The standalone lowest-rated album of all time is Playing with Fire by Kevin Federline , with a 15. Metacritic has received mixed reviews from website critics, commentators, and columnists. Its efficacy has been analyzed, with conclusions finding it to be generally useful or unreliable and biased. The website won two annual Webby Awards for excellence in

738-400: A Splicer then striking them down with a wrench. Weapons are limited by ammunition that the player collects; many weapons have secondary ammo types that can be used instead for additional benefits, such as bullets that inflict fire damage. Plasmid use consumes a serum called EVE which can be restored using EVE syringes collected by the player or by consuming cigarettes and alcohol. The player has

861-424: A correlation between high metascores and stronger sales" in certain genres. He claimed that an increasing number of businesses and financial analysts use Metacritic as "an early indicator of a game's potential sales and, by extension, the publisher's stock price". However, a 2015 study analyzing over 88 Xbox 360 and 80 PS3 games from 2012 found that Metacritic scores did not impact actual sales. Controversially,

984-497: A defeated player at half-health, but do not alter the enemies' health, makes it possible to wear down enemies through sheer perseverance, and was criticized as one of the most significant flaws in the gameplay. IGN noted that both the controls and graphics of the Xbox 360 version are inferior to those of the PC version, in that switching between weapons or plasmids is easier using the PC's mouse than

1107-399: A feeling of not fitting in, of 'I don't really belong here'. I think Jews are always going to feel a little bit like they don't belong wherever they are. There's always that 'what if we have to flee' mentality." BioShock uses a heavily modified Unreal Engine 2.5 with some of the advanced technologies from Unreal Engine 3. Irrational had previous experience with modifying and expanding on

1230-520: A final budget of about $ 25 million. In a 2016 interview, Levine felt that the game could have used about six more months of development to improve the gun combat system and fix lagging issues that occurred during the final boss fight. Despite the critical success of the title, many of those on the team would leave Irrational to pursue other projects due to late development strife that occurred. In an interview in 2018, Levine had come to recognize that BioShock reflected several Jewish themes, though this

1353-494: A game "where the player gets punished for doing the right thing". They altered this approach where the Little Sisters would be invulnerable until the player had dealt with their Big Daddy, though LeBreton considered this "a massive kludge" into the game's fiction. The idea of creating the Little Sisters and presenting the player with this choice became a critical part of the game's appeal to the broader gaming market, although it

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1476-449: A game's state in the future due to post-release updates and patches as well as most press reviews of games taking place around their launch. For example, the metascore for MediEvil (2019) was mixed mainly due to performance issues that existed around the time of the game's launch. These issues were fixed in post-release patches that made the game run smoothly, which would have led to a higher metascore in its patched state. Another example

1599-654: A general reference for critical reception, and by publishers as a tool of improving their products. Along with other executives, in 2008, John Riccitiello , then CEO of Electronic Arts, showed Wall Street analysts a chart illustrating a downward trend in the average critical ratings of the company's games. He took the ratings seriously and stressed the need for the company to bounce back. Also in 2008, Microsoft used Metacritic averages to delist underperforming Xbox Live Arcade games. Scores are weighted averages . Certain publications are given more significance "because of their stature". Metacritic has said that it will not reveal

1722-453: A greater investment of time and money, gamers are more informed about reviews than are fans of film or music; they want to know "whether that hotly anticipated title is going to deliver". In June 2018, Metacritic established the "Must-See" label for a movie that "achieves a Metascore of 81 or higher and has been reviewed by a minimum of 15 professional critics". In September 2018, it added the "Must-Play" certification for video games attaining

1845-456: A health meter that decreases when they take damage. The player can restore their health with food or medical packs found throughout Rapture. If the player's health is reduced to zero, they will be regenerated at the last Vita-Chamber that they passed with limited amounts of health and EVE. A patch for the game allows the Vita-Chambers to be turned off, requiring players to restart a saved game if

1968-400: A normal life. Ken Levine cites an example of what a cult deprogrammer does: "[There are] people who hired people to [for example] deprogram their daughter who had been in a lesbian relationship. They kidnap her and reprogram her, and it was a really dark person, and that was the [kind of] character that you were." This story would have been more political in nature, with the character hired by

2091-534: A patch had been discussed, a 2K representative stated that the decision to remove the game came from the developer. 2K later clarified that they will be working on resolving the issues with the game's compatibility with the new firmware and will re-release the title once that has been completed. However, by January 2017, 2K officially stated that it will no longer working to support the game's compatibility with newer iOS system. BioShock has received "universal acclaim", according to review aggregator Metacritic , with

2214-430: A percentage score. This can be done either by calculating the score from the rating given or by making a subjective decision based on the review's quality. Before averaging the scores, they are adjusted based on the critic's popularity, reputation, and the number of reviews they have written. The site also includes a summary from each review and links to the original source, using colors like green, yellow, or red to indicate

2337-421: A qualitative assessment of a game. Kotaku also highlighted a practice alleged to be used by some publishers who use Metacritic scores as a way to leverage more favorable terms for the publisher or deny developers bonuses should they not reach a certain score. Doyle countered this by saying "Metacritic has absolutely nothing to do with how the industry uses our numbers... Metacritic has always been about educating

2460-477: A score of 90% or more, and a minimum number of 15 reviews from industry professionals. The standalone highest-rated game of all time on the site is The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time , with a 99. The three games with a 98 are Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 , Grand Theft Auto IV , and Soulcalibur . There are about two dozen 97-rated games with standouts including Red Dead Redemption 2 and Grand Theft Auto V . There are fourteen movies that have received

2583-519: A setting as to be able to pitch the idea to publishers. A 2002 demonstration version was based on the Unreal Engine 2 for the Xbox . This demonstration was primarily set aboard a space station overtaken with genetically mutated monsters; the main character was Carlos Cuello, a "cult deprogrammer "—a person charged with rescuing someone from a cult , and mentally and psychologically readjusting that person to

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2706-443: A significant influence on BioShock , stating there are "all these nods and all these little elements that I think you can see where Resident Evil inspired us". The team were particularly influenced by Resident Evil 4 , including its approach to the environments, combat, and tools, its game design and tactical elements, its "gameplay fuelled storytelling" and inventory system, and its opening village level in terms of how it "handled

2829-452: A single mobile title, and so planned to split the title into three "episodes". Only the first episode was released. Another mobile port was developed by Tridev, known as BioShock 3D , released in 2010. Several parts of the game were reduced to single image graphics and the main gameplay engine had to use low-resolution and low-polygon models due to the limitations of mobile phones at the time of its release. A port to iOS devices done by

2952-527: Is also the Race Special and Heavyweight classes. Some cars can also be unlocked by completing conditions. The cars featured in the game are from Burnout 2 and 3 . The game also has Collector's cars. There are five collector cars for each class, but the player only starts with just one random car for each class. To get the other four, the player has to challenge another player on a Wi-Fi battle mode, betting their collector car against theirs and win their car in

3075-570: Is online games such as Final Fantasy XIV Online and Warframe , which received mixed scores initially but became more well-received following improvements made after launch. BioShock BioShock is a 2007 first-person shooter game developed by 2K Boston (later Irrational Games ) and 2K Australia , and published by 2K . The first game in the BioShock series , it was released for Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 platforms in August 2007;

3198-449: Is saved by Dr. Tenenbaum, who helps remove Fontaine's mental conditioning, including one that would have stopped Jack's heart. Jack pursues Fontaine to his lair, where Fontaine transforms himself into a hulking humanoid creature by injecting himself with a large supply of ADAM. The Little Sisters aid Jack in draining the ADAM from Fontaine's body and eventually kill him. The ending depends on how

3321-553: The BioShock code, according to Kline. Hellquist took the revelation in good humor and tweeted that other Easter eggs should have been added to the game to display: "If you are enjoying this, Paul Hellquist did his job." A critical playtest of the game occurred in January 2007, where initial feedback from the players was mostly negative, including issues of the setting being too dark, having no idea where to go, and distrusting Atlas, who at

3444-432: The BioShock 2 Special Edition. An initial demo of the game was made available in August 2007 for Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows. This demo included cutscenes to introduce the player to Rapture, the game's tutorial section, and its first levels; the demo also included weapons, plasmids, and tonics that would otherwise be introduced later in the full title, as to give the player more of the features that would be found in

3567-506: The CBS Corporation . In 2020, Metacritic and other CNET titles were bought by Red Ventures . In 2022, Red Ventures sold Metacritic and other entertainment websites to Fandom, Inc. Metacritic has been used by businesses to predict future sales. In 2007, Nick Wingfield of The Wall Street Journal wrote that Metacritic "influence[s] the sales of games and the stocks of video game publishers". He explains its influence as coming from

3690-551: The Havok Physics engine that allows for an enhancement of in-game physics , the integration of ragdoll physics , and allows for more lifelike movement by elements of the environment. The Windows version was built to work in both Direct3D 10 (DirectX 10) and DirectX 9, with the DirectX 10 version supporting additional water and particle effects. BioShock contains both licensed music and an original score. The licensed music from

3813-413: The field of view in order to fit widescreen monitors, resulting in less vertical view instead of more horizontal view compared to 4:3 monitors, conflicting with original reports from a developer on how widescreen would have been handled. 2K Games later stated that the choice of the field of view was a design decision made during development. Irrational included an option for "Horizontal FOV Lock" in

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3936-453: The "Guides/Ratings/Reviews" category, in 2010 and 2015. Metacritic has been criticized for converting all scoring systems into a single quantitative percentage-based scale. For example, an "A" score equates to the value of 100, an "F" the value of zero, and a "B−" the value of 67. Joe Dodson, former editor at GameRevolution , criticized Metacritic and similar sites for turning reviews into scores that he found to be too low. Doyle defended

4059-595: The 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s can be heard playing on phonograph throughout Rapture. In total, 30 licensed songs can be heard throughout the game. The original score was composed by Garry Schyman . He composed his pieces to blend with the chosen licensed music as to keep the same feel, while also trying to bring out something that was "eerie, frightening and at times beautiful" to mesh well with Rapture's environments. 2K Games released an orchestral score soundtrack on their official homepage on August 24, 2007. Available in MP3 format,

4182-470: The 2007 BAFTA "Best Game" award. X-Play also selected it as "Game of the Year", "Best Original Soundtrack", "Best Writing/Story", and "Best Art Direction". Game Informer named BioShock its Game of the Year for 2007. At IGN 's "Best of 2007" BioShock was nominated for Game of The Year 2007, and won the award for PC Game of the Year, Best Artistic Design, and Best Use of Sound. GameSpy chose it as

4305-593: The 2K China studio was released on August 27, 2014. The iOS version is content complete and functionally equivalent to the original Xbox 360 and Windows version, featuring either the use of touch-screen virtual gamepad controls or the use of a Bluetooth-enabled controller, and with a graphics engine optimized for iOS devices. The game was later delisted from the App Store in September 2015; the game had become unplayable for many that upgraded to iOS 8.4 on their devices, and while

4428-411: The 360's radial menu, as well as the graphics being slightly better with higher resolutions. The game has been touted as a hybrid first-person shooter , but two reviewers found advances from comparable games lacking, both in the protagonist and in the challenges he faces. Some reviewers also found the combat behavior of the splicers lacking in diversity (and their A.I. behavior not very well done), and

4551-506: The December 2007 patch that allows widescreen users a wider field of view, without cutting anything off the image vertically. BioShock was also criticized for not supporting pixel shader 2.0b video cards (such as the Radeon X800 / X850 ), which were considered high-end graphics cards in 2004–2005, and accounted for about 24% of surveyed hardware collected through Valve 's Steam platform at

4674-557: The Guinness World Records: Gamer's Edition 2008. BioShock is ranked first on Game Informer 's list of The Top 10 Video Game Openings. GamesRadar placed Bioshock as the 12th best game of all time. In 2011 BioShock was awarded the number 1 spot in GameTrailers' "Top 100 Video Game Trailers of All Time", for submerging the viewer into the BioShock universe and its enduring impact. In August 2012, IGN gave it

4797-457: The Little Sisters after defeating their Big Daddy guardian. ADAM is used to purchase plasmids from Gatherer's Garden machines scattered around Rapture. In addition to plasmids, the player can collect and buy tonics that provide passive bonuses, such as increasing Jack's strength, using EVE more efficiently, or making Jack more resistant to damage. The player can only have a limited number of plasmids and tonics active at any time, and can swap between

4920-491: The Little Sisters, Atlas urges him to kill them to harvest their ADAM. Dr. Brigid Tenenbaum intervenes and insists Jack should spare them, providing him with a plasmid that can remove the sea slug from their bodies and free them of their brainwashing. Jack works his way to the bathysphere, but Ryan destroys it before Jack can reach it. Infuriated, Atlas has Jack fight his way through various districts toward Ryan's lair, forcing Jack to contend with Rapture's deranged citizens along

5043-548: The PlayStation 3 version was released on November 13, 2008, to fix some graphical problems and occasions where users experienced a hang and were forced to reset the console. This update also incorporated the "Challenge Room" and " New Game Plus " features. BioShock was bundled with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion as a double pack on PC and Xbox 360 on July 7, 2009. A port to OS X systems was made by Feral Interactive and released in October 2009. In early 2008, IG Fun secured

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5166-486: The PlayStation 3 version. One addition was "Survivor Mode", in which the enemies were made tougher, and Vita-Chambers provided less of a health boost when used, forcing the player to be more creative in approaching foes and to rely more on the less-used plasmids in the game. BioShock also supports Trophies and PlayStation Home. A demo version was released on the PlayStation Store on October 2, 2008. An update for

5289-544: The Unreal Engine in SWAT 4 , and continued this advancement of the engine within BioShock . One significant improvement they added was improved water effects, given the nature of the game's setting, hiring a programmer and artist to focus on the water effects. This graphical enhancement has been lauded by critics, with GameSpot saying: "Whether it's standing water on the floor or sea water rushing in after an explosion, it will blow you away every time you see it." BioShock also uses

5412-471: The Year ", which was ultimately awarded to Nintendogs . Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films , television shows , music albums , video games , and formerly books . For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average ). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc Doyle, and Julie Doyle Roberts in 1999, and was acquired by Fandom, Inc. in 2022. Metacritic turns each review into

5535-472: The activation count to five, and later offer a tool that allowed users to revoke previous activations on their own. Ultimately 2K Games removed the activation limit, though retail versions of the game still required the activation process. Levine admitted that their initial approach to the activation process was malformed, harming their reputation during the launch period. The SecuROM software also caused some virus scanners and malware detector to believe

5658-446: The area following World War II and understood some of the anxiety Jewish people faced. In the 2018 interview, Levine recognized several of the characters, including Andrew Ryan (who was inspired by Ayn Rand who was also Jewish), Sander Cohen, and Brigid Tenenbaum, were written all as Jewish, and all seeking to escape a world they felt they did not fit into by going to Rapture; Levine said: " 'There's literal displacement and then there's

5781-478: The arts and sciences, which included the discovery of "ADAM": a potent gene-altering substance which is created by a species of sea slug on the ocean floor. ADAM led to the creation of "Plasmids", mutagenic serums that grant users super-human powers such as telekinesis and pyrokinesis . To protect and isolate Rapture, Ryan outlawed any contact with the surface world. As Rapture flourished, wealth disparities grew, and criminal Frank Fontaine used his influence over

5904-399: The best games ever made." GameSpy praised BioShock 's "inescapable atmosphere", and Official Xbox Magazine lauded its "inconceivably great plot" and "stunning soundtrack and audio effects". The gameplay and combat system have been praised for being smooth and open-ended, and elements of the graphics, such as the water, were commended for their quality. It has been noted that

6027-477: The best in years", and compared the game to Whittaker Chambers ' 1957 riposte to Atlas Shrugged , "Big Sister Is Watching You". Wired also mentioned the Ayn Rand connection (a partial anagram of Andrew Ryan) in a report on the game which featured a brief interview with Levine. The Chicago Sun-Times review said "I never once thought anyone would be able to create an engaging and entertaining video game around

6150-557: The challenge (the Collector's cars are exclusive for the PSP version). Burnout: Legends received mostly positive reviews for the PSP version, while the DS version received negative reviews, according to video game review aggregator Metacritic . During the 9th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards , the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated Burnout Legends for " Handheld Game of

6273-485: The chaos. In 1960, the protagonist, Jack, is a passenger on a plane that crashes in the Atlantic Ocean . The only survivor, Jack makes his way to a nearby lighthouse; inside is a bathysphere that takes him to Rapture. Jack is contacted via radio by Atlas, who helps guide him through the ruined city. Atlas requests Jack's help in saving his family, who he says are in a docked bathysphere. When Jack first encounters

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6396-441: The character dies. The game provides several options to face challenges. In addition to direct combat, the player can use plasmids to lure enemies into traps or to turn enemies against each other, or employ stealth tactics to avoid detection by hostiles including the security systems and turrets. The player can hack into any of Rapture's automated systems; the hacking process is done via a mini-game similar to Pipe Mania where

6519-486: The combination of the game's elements "straddles so many entertainment art forms so expertly that it's the best demonstration yet how flexible this medium can be. It's no longer just another shooter wrapped up in a pretty game engine, but a story that exists and unfolds inside the most convincing and elaborate and artistic game world ever conceived." Reviewers did highlight a few negative issues in BioShock , however. The recovery system involving "Vita-Chambers", which revive

6642-470: The company's use of Metacritic, with one suggesting that this makes game critics ultimately accountable for deciding the developer's profits and another pointing out that a Metascore of 84 is not significantly lower than 85. The latter also pointed out the impressive sales of five million sold units and US$ 300 million in revenue, and also noted a series of Obsidian's layoffs in 2011 and 2012. The website has also been used by columnists and commentators as

6765-438: The decades, the genetic experiments within the labs had gradually formed themselves into an ecosystem centered on the three groups. This version included many of the gameplay elements that would remain in the final BioShock , themselves influenced by concepts from System Shock 2 . These elements included the use of plasmids and EVE, the need to use stealth or other options to deal with automated security systems, direction through

6888-419: The disenfranchised working class to establish illegal enterprises and obtain power—enough to rival Ryan. With doctors Brigid Tenenbaum and Yi Suchong, Fontaine created his own company dedicated to researching plasmids and gene tonics. As ADAM became addictive and demand skyrocketed, Fontaine secretly mass-produced ADAM through slugs implanted in the stomachs of orphaned girls, nicknamed "Little Sisters". Fontaine

7011-463: The drones, protectors, and harvesters from their original game idea. The Big Daddy concept as the protector class was developed early in the process, but the team had yet to reach a satisfying design for the drones, having used several possible designs including bugs and dogs in wheelchairs. The team wanted to have the player care for the drones in some way and create pathos for these characters. The idea of using little girls came out of brainstorming, but

7134-405: The environment from a non-player character relayed over a radio, and story elements delivered through audio recordings and "ghosts" of deceased characters. The funding provided by 2K Games in 2004 was a "modest budget", according to Levine, and when Irrational was acquired by 2K in 2006, the publisher put in a much larger set of funds to complete the game. While the gameplay with the 2004 reveal

7257-566: The few sane survivors left and learning of the city's past. The player can defeat foes in several ways by using weapons, utilizing plasmids that give unique powers, and by turning Rapture's defenses against them. BioShock ' s concept was developed by Irrational's creative lead, Ken Levine , and incorporates ideas by 20th century dystopian and utopian thinkers such as Ayn Rand , George Orwell , and Aldous Huxley , as well as historical figures such as John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Walt Disney . The game includes role-playing elements, giving

7380-636: The fiction and philosophy of Ayn Rand, but that is essentially what 2K Games has done ... the rare, mature video game that succeeds in making you think while you play". The Los Angeles Times review concluded: "Sure, it's fun to play, looks spectacular and is easy to control. But it also does something no other game has done to date: It really makes you feel." The New York Times reviewer described it as: "intelligent, gorgeous, occasionally frightening" and added: "Anchored by its provocative, morality-based story line, sumptuous art direction and superb voice acting, BioShock can also hold its head high among

7503-446: The field-of-view issues identified by players. (See below ). The patch also added in an option to disable the use of Vita-Chambers, a feature requested by players to make the game more challenging, as well as an achievement to complete the game at its hardest setting without using a Vita-Chamber. In an August 2007 interview, when asked about the possibility of a PlayStation 3 version of BioShock , Ken Levine had stated only that there

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7626-533: The first-person shooter genre. The history of the Rockefeller Center also fed into the story concept; Levine noted how the center had started construction prior to the Great Depression ; when the primary financiers had pulled out, John D. Rockefeller Jr. backed the remaining construction to complete the project himself, as stated by Edge magazine "a great man building an architectural triumph against all

7749-415: The future. The player collects money by exploring Rapture and from the bodies of defeated foes; this money can be used at vending machines to restock on ammunition, health and EVE, and other items; like security cameras, vending machines can be hacked to reduce the costs of items from it. The player will receive rewards in the form of ADAM from completing some tasks, as well as from either saving or killing

7872-454: The game for some users, including occasional freezes, bad framerates , and audio-related issues, though methods to resolve these issues through the console's cache system were outlined by Irrational Games. In December 2007, a common patch was released for both the Xbox 360 and Windows version. The patch included additional content such as new Plasmids, new achievements for the Xbox 360 version, and additional graphics settings to address some of

7995-476: The game receiving an average review score of 96/100 for Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows, and 94/100 for PlayStation 3. As of October 2020 , it is one of the highest-rated games on Metacritic, tied with several other games for the fourth-highest aggregate score. Mainstream press reviews have praised the immersive qualities of the game and its political dimension. The Boston Globe described it as "a beautiful, brutal, and disquieting computer game ... one of

8118-459: The game that asked the reader hypothetical questions such as "Would you kill people, even innocent people, to survive?", later working that phrase into the first script for the game. Numerous tensions within the team and from publisher 2K Games continued during the development process. According to LeBreton, Levine was distrustful of some of the more egotistical newer hires and was often arguing with them to enforce his vision of BioShock . 2K Games

8241-412: The game undiscovered. One such case was an apparent Easter egg found in the remastered version in 2018, where under certain conditions, the player can end up looking at an object with the description "Paul Hellquist did not do his Job". Both Levine and Chris Kline, the game's lead programmer confirmed the message was a cheeky jab at Hellquist left as a debugging message; Kline and Hellquist were developing

8364-508: The game was released on Microsoft Windows , PlayStation 4 , Xbox One , and Nintendo Switch as part of BioShock: The Collection . BioShock takes place in Rapture , a large underwater city planned and constructed in the 1940s by individualist business magnate Andrew Ryan , who wanted to create a utopia for society's elite to flourish outside of government control and "petty morality". This philosophy resulted in remarkable advances in

8487-589: The gamer. We're using product reviews as a tool to help them make the most of their time and money." Metacritic has also been criticized for how it handles banning users and their reviews, with no notice or formal process for appeal. Critics and developers have pointed out that a product can suffer from rating manipulation by users, as by garnering low ratings that purposely damage its reputation or by receiving high ratings from throwaway accounts to make it appear more popular than it actually is. Signal Studios president and creative director Douglas Albright described

8610-491: The grading system, believing that every scale should be converted directly to that of the website, with its lowest possible score being 0 and the highest 100. Further criticism was directed to the website's refusal to publicize how it aggregates scores. According to Doyle, publishers often try to persuade him to exclude reviews they feel are unfair, but he said that once a publication is included, he refuses to omit any of its reviews. A Washington Post review of Uncharted 4

8733-592: The higher cost of buying video games than music or movie tickets. Many executives say that low scores "can hurt the long-term sales potential". Wingfield wrote that Wall Street pays attention to Metacritic and GameRankings because the sites typically post scores before sales data are publicly available, citing the respective rapid rise and fall in company values after BioShock and Spider-Man 3 were released. In an interview with The Guardian , Marc Doyle cited two major publishers that "conducted comprehensive statistical surveys through which they've been able to draw

8856-406: The ideas of Objectivism that Rand primarily outlined in the book Atlas Shrugged , that man should be driven by selfishness and not altruism, and used this to inform the philosophy behind the city of Rapture and Andrew Ryan's work, viewing them as quite ludicrous, and primed to be applied to an antagonist, tied in with his previous observations on Rockefeller and his writings. This was extended to

8979-424: The initial cut scene within the plane and the subsequent plane crash, as this helped to set the time frame, place the player in the role of the character, and alluded to the "would you kindly" line later in the game. Levine likened this approach to the initial aircraft crash at the onset of the television show Lost to quickly establish character and setting. The game was successfully released in August 2007 with

9102-511: The mind control used on Jack was offered by LeBreton, inspired by films like The Manchurian Candidate , as a means to provide a better reason to limit the player's actions as opposed to the traditional use of locked doors to prevent them exploring areas they should not. The team had agreed that Jack's actions would be controlled by a key phrase but struggled with coming up with one that would not reveal Atlas' true nature. Levine happened upon "Would you kindly" after working on marketing materials for

9225-450: The moral choice too much "black and white" to be interesting. Some reviewers and essayists such as Jonathan Blow also opined that the "moral choice" the game offered to the player (saving or harvesting the little sisters) was flawed because, to them, it had no real impact on the game, which ultimately led them to think that the sisters were just mechanics of no real importance. Daniel Friedman for Polygon concurred with Blow, noting that

9348-475: The most nominations of the ceremony with twelve, including notable categories such as "Outstanding Innovation in Gaming", " Action Game of the Year ", and " Overall Game of the Year "; it was ultimately awarded with outstanding achievement in " Art Direction ", " Original Music Composition ", " Sound Design ", and " Story Development ". Guinness World Records awarded the game a record for "Most Popular Xbox Live Demo" in

9471-487: The odds". The history of Rapture and the character of Andrew Ryan is loosely based on Rockefeller's story. He also considered that many of the characters of Rapture were all people who were oppressed once before in their lives and now free of that oppression, have turned around and become the oppressors, a fact he felt resonated throughout human history. At this point in the development, the backdrop of Rapture had been fleshed out, but they had yet to come on how to represent

9594-451: The overall sentiment of the critics. Metacritic won two Webby Awards for excellence as an aggregation website. It is regarded as the foremost online review aggregation site for the video game industry. Criticism of the site has focused on the assessment system, the assignment of scores to reviews that do not include ratings, third-party attempts to influence the scores, and the reported lack of staff oversight for user reviews. Metacritic

9717-552: The player different approaches in engaging enemies such as by stealth , as well as moral choices of saving or killing characters. Additionally, the game borrows concepts from the survival horror genre, notably the Resident Evil series. BioShock is considered a spiritual successor to the System Shock series , on which many of Irrational's team, including Levine, had worked previously. BioShock received universal acclaim and

9840-634: The player interacts with the Little Sisters: BioShock is a first-person shooter with role-playing customization and stealth elements, and is similar to System Shock 2 . The player takes the role of Jack as he is guided through Rapture towards various objectives. The player collects multiple weapons and plasmids as they work their way through enemy forces. The player can switch between one active weapon and one active plasmid at any time, allowing them to find combination attacks that can be effective against certain enemies, such as first shocking

9963-453: The player must connect two points on opposite sides of a grid with a limited set of piping within a fixed amount of time, with failure to complete in time costing health and potentially sounding alarms. Early in the game, the player is given a research camera; by taking photographs of enemies, the player will cumulatively gain knowledge about the individual foes which translates into attack boosts and other benefits when facing that enemy type in

10086-553: The player only loses 10% of the possible ADAM rewards for saving the Little Sisters rather than killing them, and felt that this would have been better instituted as part of the game difficulty mechanic. Former LucasArts developer Clint Hocking wrote a noted essay that claimed that BioShock exhibited " ludonarrative dissonance " between its story and mechanics, as while he saw the story as advocating selflessness in helping others, its gameplay encourages what he views as selfishness by preying on Little Sisters. At E3 2006 , BioShock

10209-399: The playtesters did not like the game at all as they felt no connection to the player-character Jack, and the person overseeing the tests told Levine that the game was likely to be a failure. At this point, BioShock did not have many cutscenes, as Levine was ideologically opposed to them. However, the following day, Levine and the lead group came up with a "cheap" way to correct this, by adding

10332-450: The published game. The Xbox 360 demo was the fastest demo at that time to reach one million downloads on the Xbox Live service. The full game was released for these platforms on August 21, 2007. The first patch for the Xbox 360 version was released about two weeks after release to fix some of the game stability issues players had reported. The patch was found to introduce more problems to

10455-432: The publisher rejected the idea based on the poor performance of the earlier game. Irrational developed other games, including Freedom Force , Tribes: Vengeance , the canceled title Deep Cover , and the completed The Lost which was never released due to legal complications. At this point, Levine wanted to return to a game in the same style as System Shock 2 , a more free-form game with strong narrative. In 2002,

10578-402: The relative weight assigned to each reviewer. Games Editor Marc Doyle was interviewed in 2008 by Keith Stuart of The Guardian to "get a look behind the metascoring process". Stuart wrote: "The Metascore phenomenon, namely Metacritic and GameRankings , have become an enormously important element of online games journalism over the past few years". Doyle said that because video games lead to

10701-446: The released game, which Levine used as a prime example of a "great BioShock space", emphasizing the need for departments to work together. Levine found that the cyberpunk theme had been overplayed considering their initial reject from Electronic Arts for System Shock 3 , leading towards the underwater setting of Rapture. The game's lead level designer was Bill Gardner. He cited Capcom 's survival horror series Resident Evil as

10824-411: The rights to develop and publish a mobile phone version of BioShock . This version was developed as a top-down, two-dimensional platformer that attempted to recreate most of the plot and game elements of the original title; IG Fun worked with Irrational to determine the critical story elements they wanted to keep in the game. IG Fun recognized they would not be able to include the full storyline within

10947-405: The same trigger phrase. Ryan chooses to die by his own will and compels Jack to beat him to death with a golf club. Atlas reveals himself to be Fontaine, having faked his death and used "Atlas" as an alias to hide his identity while providing a heroic figure for the poor to rally behind. With Ryan dead, Fontaine takes control of the city and leaves Jack to be killed by hostile security drones. Jack

11070-523: The sandbox nature of the combat" and in terms of "the environment". The thematic core of BioShock was born when Levine was walking at Rockefeller Center near the GE Building in New York City. He saw the uniqueness of the art deco styling of the building along with imagery around the building such as the statue of Atlas near it, and recognized that these were spaces that had not been experienced in

11193-400: The scope of the project. The environment was considered bland, and there were difficulties by the team's artists to come up with a consistent vision to meet the level designer's goals. A critical junction was a short experiment performed by level designer Jean Paul LeBreton and artist Hoagy de la Plante, setting themselves aside to co-develop a level that became part of the "Tea Garden" area in

11316-553: The score—composed by Garry Schyman—contains 12 of the 22 tracks from the game. The Limited Edition version of the game came with The Rapture EP remixes by Moby and Oscar The Punk. The three remixed tracks on the CD include " Beyond the Sea ", " God Bless the Child " and "Wild Little Sisters"; the original recordings of these songs are in the game. BioShock 's score was released on a vinyl LP with

11439-406: The sisters as they scavenged ADAM from dead bodies. Tensions came to a head on New Year's Eve of 1958 when Atlas ordered an all-out assault on Ryan and his supporters. The conflict turns Rapture into a war-torn crumbling dystopia , resulting in societal collapse, countless deaths, many Splicers becoming disfigured and insane from ADAM abuse, and the few sane survivors barricading themselves away from

11562-469: The site is Ten Freedom Summers by American trumpeter and composer Wadada Leo Smith , with a 99. The standalone lowest-rated game of all time is Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing , with an 8. There are eleven movies that have received a 1: Bio-Dome , 10 Rules for Sleeping Around , Chaos , Inappropriate Comedy , Not Cool , The Singing Forest , The Garbage Pail Kids Movie , Death of

11685-469: The software was malicious. 2K Games assured players that the software installation process did not install any malicious code or rootkit . However, players observed that some of the SecuROM software was not entirely removed on uninstallation of the game. Some of the graphic capabilities of BioShock were criticized by players. The initial release of the game was found to have cut off the top and bottom of

11808-399: The systems to show descriptions of objects to players when looked at, and Hellquist offered to complete all the necessary descriptions in-game; to jokingly help prod Hellquist along, Kline put "Paul Hellquist did not do his Job" as the default message within the executable code. While the code message was changed for the original release, the remastered version likely used a pre-final version of

11931-434: The team had come up with a core gameplay mechanic idea based on three groups of forces; drones that would carry a desirable resource, protectors that would guard the drones, and harvesters that would attempt to take the resource from the drones; these would eventually bear out as the Little Sisters, Big Daddies, and Splicers in the final game, but at the time of the concept, there was no set theme. They began working on creating

12054-470: The team opted to continue development, performing a full revamp. By 2004, 2K Games, a subsidiary of Take-Two Interactive, offered to publish the game primarily based on the drone/protector/harvester concept, giving Irrational the freedom to develop the story and setting. By this point, the story and setting had changed significantly, taking place in an abandoned World War II-era Nazi laboratory that had been recently unearthed by 21st-century scientists. Over

12177-556: The third-best game of the year and gave BioShock the awards for Best Sound, Story, and Art Direction. GameSpot awarded the game for Best Story, while GamePro gave BioShock the Best Story, Xbox 360 and Best Single-Player Shooter awards. BioShock won the "Best Visual Art", "Best Writing", and "Best Audio" awards at the 2008 Game Developers Choice Awards . During the AIAS ' 11th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards , BioShock received

12300-412: The time was voiced in a southern drawl, described as a "lecherous Colonel Sanders". The team took this criticism to heart, revamping several elements during those extra months such as improving the lighting, implementing a quest marker, and using an Irish voice for Atlas to make him sound more trustworthy. During another late-stage playtest with the title "ninety-nine percent" complete according to Levine,

12423-588: The top spot on their list of the Top 25 Modern PC Games, a ranking of the best PC games released since 2006. In November 2012, Time named it one of the 100 greatest video games of all time. In July 2015, the game placed 9th on USgamer 's The 15 Best Games Since 2000 list. The Xbox 360 version was the third best-selling game of August 2007, with 490,900 copies. The Wall Street Journal reported that shares in Take-Two Interactive "soared nearly 20%" in

12546-531: The use of the little girls as drones (now Little Sisters), particularly the question whether the player should try to save the girls or harvest the ADAM for their benefit. 2K Games expressed concern about the initial mechanic of the Little Sisters, where the player would actively prey on the Little Sister, which would have alerted a Big Daddy and set up the fight with the player. This approach did not sit well with Levine, and 2K Games asserted that they would not ship

12669-447: The various plasmids and tonics at certain stations located throughout Rapture. Lead developer Ken Levine had created Irrational Games in 1997 out of former members from Looking Glass Studios . Their first game was System Shock 2 , a sequel to Looking Glass's System Shock , and was met with critical success, though it did not prove a financial one. Levine had attempted to pitch a sequel to System Shock 2 to Electronic Arts , but

12792-422: The war. Jack was smuggled to the surface with false memories of a normal life, waiting to be called back to Rapture when needed. Ryan takes control of Jack's actions by asking, "Would you kindly?"; a phrase that has preceded many of Atlas' commands as a hypnotic trigger, forcing him to follow any orders without question. Jack also realizes he was responsible for the plane crash, having read a letter onboard containing

12915-467: The way, such as the surgical doctor J.S. Steinman and artist and musician Sander Cohen . Jack enters Ryan's office. Ryan reveals the truth of Jack's origins: he is actually Ryan's illegitimate son, sold by Ryan's mistress as an embryo to Fontaine, who had Tenenbaum and Suchong rapidly age Jack into adulthood and turned into an obedient assassin, capable of accessing any of Rapture's systems locked to Ryan's genetic code and thus ensure Fontaine's victory in

13038-440: The website as having no standards. In July 2020, Metacritic added a 36-hour waiting period for user reviews to be posted for video games at launch in an effort to reduce user score review-bombing during that period by users that have not played or barely played the game during a period when most players will not have finished the game. Some have noted that Metacritic scores for modern video games may not be accurately reflective of

13161-426: The website has been used by game publishers as a means of determining whether a game's developer receives additional royalties. One notable example is the 2010 game Fallout: New Vegas , which received an average Metascore of 84, one short of the 85 points required by Bethesda Softworks , the game's publisher. As a result, its developer, Obsidian Entertainment , received no additional bonus. Columnists took issue with

13284-535: The week following overwhelmingly favorable early reviews of the game. Take-Two Interactive announced that by June 5, 2008, over 2.2 million copies of BioShock had been shipped. In a June 10, 2008 interview, Roy Taylor, Nvidia 's VP of Content Business Development, stated that the PC version has sold over one million copies. According to Take-Two Interactive's chairman Strauss Zelnick, the game had sold around 3 million copies by June 2009. By March 2010, BioShock had sold 4 million copies. The initial Windows release

13407-419: Was "no PS3 development going on" at the time; however, on May 28, 2008, 2K Games confirmed that a PlayStation 3 version of the game was in development by 2K Marin , and it was released on October 17, 2008. On July 3, 2008, 2K Games announced a partnership with Digital Extremes and said that the PlayStation 3 version is being developed by 2K Marin, 2K Boston, 2K Australia, and Digital Extremes. Jordan Thomas

13530-512: Was assigned with a rating of 40/100 by Metacritic; this was the only negative review of the game. Readers who disapproved of the review petitioned Metacritic to remove the Post as a trusted source. As a result of its perceived negative influence on the industry, several reviewing sites, including Kotaku and Eurogamer , have dropped numerical reviews that would appear in Metacritic, instead favoring

13653-436: Was concerned with the growing budget for the title, and told Levine to market the title more as a first-person shooter rather than the first-person shooter/role playing game hybrid they set out for. Near the targeted release date, Levine ordered the team into round-the-clock development, creating more strife in the team. Paul Hellquist, the game's lead designer, was often omitted from key design meetings, which he later recounted

13776-421: Was controversial and shocking within the team at first, recognizing that they could easily be killed and make the game more horrific in the style of Night Trap . However, as Levine worked on the story, he started to incorporate the ideas of dystopian and utopian thinkers from the twentieth century, including Ayn Rand , Aldous Huxley , and George Orwell , and considered their ideas "fascinating". He brought in

13899-552: Was criticized by players for several perceived shortcomings. The game was shipped with SecuROM copy protection that required activation from 2K Games' servers over the Internet; the unavailability of these servers was reported as the reason for the cancellation of the game's midnight release in Australia. Players found that the SecuROM limited the number of times the game could be activated to two; user feedback led to 2K Games to increase

14022-490: Was due to his contrary nature to Levine, questioning several of his choices; he used his frustration to put into the design efforts for the Medical Pavilion level that he was in charge of at that time. Near the anticipated completion date, 2K decided to give Irrational another three months to polish up the game, extending the current crunch time the studio was already under. This left some hard-to-discover bugs and issues in

14145-587: Was given several "Games of the Show" awards from various online gaming sites, including GameSpot , IGN , GameSpy and GameTrailers 's Trailer of the Year. BioShock received an award for Best Xbox 360 Game at the 2007 Leipzig Games Convention. After the game's release, the 2007 Spike TV Video Game Awards selected BioShock as Game of the Year , Best Xbox 360 Game , and Best Original Score , and nominated it for four awards: Best Shooter , Best Graphics , Best PC Game , and Best Soundtrack . The game also won

14268-514: Was killed in a shootout with police, and Ryan took the opportunity to seize his assets, including control of the Little Sisters. In the months that followed, a man amongst the poor named Atlas rose up and began a violent revolution against Ryan, with both sides using plasmid-enhanced humans (known as "Splicers") to wage war on one another. To protect the Little Sisters, Ryan created the " Big Daddies ": genetically enhanced humans surgically grafted into gigantic lumbering diving suits designed to escort

14391-415: Was launched in January 2001 by Marc Doyle, his sister Julie Doyle Roberts, and his University of Southern California law classmate Jason Dietz, after two years of developing the site. Rotten Tomatoes was already compiling movie reviews, but Doyle, Roberts, and Dietz saw an opportunity to cover a broader range of media. Metacritic was sold to CNET in 2005. CNET and Metacritic were later acquired by

14514-408: Was met with criticism from some outlets. Levine desired only to have one ending to the game, something that would have left the fate of the characters "much more ambiguous", but publisher pressure directed them to craft multiple endings depending on the choice of harvesting Little Sisters. Levine also noted that "it was never my intention to do two endings for the game. It sort of came very late and it

14637-616: Was not intentional. Levine, who considers himself culturally Jewish but does not follow Judaism , had grown up in New Jersey but spent much of his childhood time with his father who worked in Manhattan's Diamond District and visiting his grandparents in Queens , a neighborhood with a large proportion of Eastern European immigrants. Thus, Levine was exposed to much of the Jewish culture that flourished in

14760-458: Was particularly praised by critics for its narrative, themes, visual design, setting, and gameplay. It is considered to be one of the greatest video games ever made and a demonstration of video games as an art form . BioShock was followed by two sequels, BioShock 2 and BioShock Infinite , released in 2010 and 2013, respectively. Ports of BioShock were released for macOS and mobile following its console releases. A remastered version of

14883-466: Was similar to what resulted in the released version of BioShock , both design and story changed, consistent with what Levine says was then-Irrational Games' guiding principle of putting game design first. These areas were also issued due to some internal strife and lack of communication between the various teams within Irrational, part of the result of having to expand the team from six to sixty members for

15006-423: Was something that was requested by somebody up the food chain from me." Other elements came into the story design. Levine had an interest in "stem cell research and the moral issues that go around [it]". Regarding artistic influences, Levine cited the books Nineteen Eighty-Four and Logan's Run , representing societies that have "really interesting ideas screwed up by the fact that we're people". The idea of

15129-453: Was the director for the PlayStation 3 version. While there were no graphical improvements to the game over the original Xbox 360 version, the PlayStation 3 version offered the widescreen option called "horizontal plus", introduced via a patch on the 360 version, while cutscene videos were of a much higher resolution than in the DVD version. Additional add-on content was also released exclusively for

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