Review by Gianluca “DottorKillex” Arena
In the chaos of re-editions, remasters and high-definition versions of titles from the past (more or less recent) that have so far characterized the life cycle of Xbox One and Playstation 4, you run the risk of making a bundle of all the grass, exchanging for mere commercial transactions some very tempting opportunities to relive magnificent titles.
The most assiduous readers of WelcomeGaming.com will know that we have not always (indeed, almost never) been lenient with the graphically updated versions of old titles, but there are exceptions, and, fortunately, today we are here to tell you about one of these, in the form of Bioshock the Collection, which contains Bioshock, Bioshock 2 and Bioshock Infinite in a single package.
We tried the Xbox One version and we're ready to tell you if the games are worth the candle or not.
Two worlds, three stories
Writing about Rapture and Columbia without sounding overly enthusiastic is not easy: we are talking about two of the most fascinating and best conceived settings not only of the last generation of consoles, but of the whole videogame medium.
The first chapter is the one that, thanks to the novelty factor, has enjoyed the greatest acclaim at the level of critics, audiences, sales, but all three products (some more, some less) offer characters that are difficult to forget, meaningful dialogues, seemingly obvious moral choices, which however leave the player mulling over the screen for several seconds.
Whether you prefer to immerse yourself in the depths of the ocean in the role of an unsuspecting survivor of an airplane crash, in the much more metallic ones of a Big Daddy or fly in the clouds, in a distorted representation of the American dream, the Bioshock The Collection has in I keep for you never banal stories, tormented characters, exchanges of jokes that will remain etched in your mind for a long time.
Obviously, none of the three plots has been touched, proposing the same joints that made an entire generation of players fall in love: if only for the goodness of writing and for the characterization of the respective game worlds, the titles contained in this collection deserve to be played. , and that's saying a lot.
Despite evident points in common between the three gaming experiences, each of the protagonists enjoys such peculiarities as to strongly diversify the player's point of view, subverting his expectations and conditioning his work in a way that is as subtle as it is brilliant.
At the dawn of a generation of consoles that would have definitively cleared customs first-person shooters, attentive however almost exclusively to shootings and pure action, Ken Levine and the guys from Irrational Games gave the world well-rounded characters, tremendously credible motivations, opponents sympathetic and subtle and thorny ethical dilemmas.
The advice, therefore, is to play the titles without losing anything of the plot, with extreme calm, stopping to read and listen as much as possible, just like you would do with a good book or a movie.
Three unforgettable trips
We were not surprised that, after nine and six years, respectively, the first two chapters have not aged in the slightest, maintaining an irresistible charm and taking the player by the hand into a nightmare with well-defined contours.
While Bioshock was hailed as an absolute masterpiece, for the variety of gameplay and the successful mix of shooter and RPG, its direct sequel, developed by 2K Marin without the direct involvement of Ken Levine, raised a few extra eyebrows, although critics agreed in defining it, however, an excellent title.
Today they both let themselves play with gusto, as if time had stopped and Rapture is always there, alive, waiting for us to take another stroll through its dark corridors: in the first chapter the emphasis is on plasmids, on frantic search for the thousand pieces of the narrative puzzle coordinated by Irrational Games, on the eternal dilemma that grips the player every time he captures one of the little girls protected by the Big Daddy.
If, in recent years, you have not stumbled upon hateful spoilers, the numerous twists that the plot has in store will amaze you today as then, leaving you speechless in front of the final titles.
Bioshock 2 leans more towards action, puts the player in the almost invulnerable shoes of a Big Daddy, only to then send the Big Sisters against him, as fast as they are lethal, which will be able to put even the most experienced players to the test.
The plot excites less, some of the personalities do not affect as much as the immortal ones of the prequel, but it is only in the direct comparison with the latter that the second title suffers because, taken by itself, Bioshock 2 is a frenetic, engaging shooter, which leaves a lot of freedom of approach to the player, and with some of the most successful firefights of the entire saga.
Bioshock Infinite is not a title from another console generation, having come out at the last minute of the Xbox 360 and PS3 sunset, incorporating modern ideas and focusing more on action and showmanship, at the expense of RPG elements, considerably thinner than the first two, and of exploratory freedom, sacrificed on the altar of a story that cannot fail to make us think, with an unexpected and bittersweet ending.
On the market there are much more precise and more satisfying pure first-person shooters, as well as deeper and more statistically RPGs, but it is the union of these two genres that makes the fortunes of the titles that bear the name Bioshock .
Light lift but welcome
the strength of this Collection, if it had not yet been understood, is in the goodness of the titles it includes and in the presence of all the DLCs, but, stopping to analyze the technical sector and the work done to make it pleasant at the end of 2016, one remains in any case satisfied, albeit with some reservations.
We specify that the version we tested is the Xbox One one, and therefore our considerations are to be applied only to it, since PC users complain of various kinds of problems that we have only partially encountered.
For all three games the resolution was raised to 1080p, and this necessitated, at least for the first two chapters, a considerable work on the surface textures, on the polygonal modeling and on the lighting system, which would have disfigured if left unchanged. (as a practice for many remastered films seen in recent years ...).
This translates into a decidedly more attractive appearance, a far superior overall sharpness and an even more intense sense of immersion, although the polygonal models and animations betray the age of the products, still aided by an amazing character design today as then. .
As regards the framerate, however, the development tram had specified that the fateful sixty frames would not be ensured at all times and, in fact, especially in the vicinity of the automatic rescues, there are some hiccups: indeed, the drops are never abrupt (only about ten frames are lost at most) and, as mentioned, occur in conjunction with the rescues, therefore in quiet phases of the game, without affecting the furious shootings.
Much less understandable is the fact that even in Bioshock Infinite, released less than three years ago and direct port of the PC version, there are these drops, which we did not remember so important during our first visit to Columbia.
Overall, however, considering that, already at launch, none of the three games set itself as a paradigm of the genre on a technical level, we cannot complain about the work done, also in consideration of the lowered price of the trilogy.
Final comment
The Bioshock Collection has a specific target, that is, those who have lost one or more games of the trilogy, and in case they returned to it, the purchase would be absolutely obligatory, if only for the excellent quality of the individual games.
The play offer is excellent, the refurbishment and remastering work more than discreet, and none of the game mechanics proposed by the three games, even though they have been resumed and copied dozens of times since their publication, are in the slightest accused of the passage of time.
The recommendation is valid, in extreme cases, even if you only missed (like myself) two of the three downloadable contents included in the package, because these too are practically worth the candle alone, perhaps at the first price drop.
If you have already fleshed out the whole saga so far, however, this collection has to offer you only interesting interviews but not enough to justify the purchase.
