Dive! Dive! Dive!
The Irrational team warned us that the first level, which we played to completion, was much more linear than the remainder of the game. It's essentially a several-hour tutorial, and in its "heavily linear" gameplay was some of the most non-linear, intelligent combat we've enjoyed in some time. By the end of the tutorial, we had access to a variety of weapons and ammo types, but more intriguingly we had access to three different active plasmid super powers but only two slots to equip them. Tough decision time, but we retained electrocute, which we'd been using since the first few minutes of the game, and telekinesis. Giving up the other power we'd gained, pyrokinesis, was hard. But choosing between the ability to catch and throw explosives and the ability to do damage yet another way seemed so clear at the time!
So, we proceeded through the level, following the trail of a mad plastic surgeon. One of the most rabid followers of the underwater city's founder, the good Doctor had given up all grip on morals -- or symmetrical standards of beauty. As we found the remains of his victims, some of whose last words were scrawled in their own blood, we grew more and more disturbed. Even after we killed a Little Sister to ensure our own power would be up to snuff, we looked at the trail this evil Doctor had left and felt outraged. Like in the drowning scene earlier, we were completely immersed before we even realized we were sinking in.
Use the Plasmids, Luke!
We finally brought the doctor to justice, albeit haltingly, since we had no pyrokinesis to light the pools of fuel in his ruined operations theater and he was too sharp to step into our electrocuted pools of water (we had to fall back to hacked turrets). But when we did put him down, we felt like we'd done something right, despite all the blood on our hands.
Although the game clearly takes place in the first-person perspective, the smooth inclusion of plasmid powers invigorates the whole experience beyond the rules of what an FPS can be. If BioShock can maintain that level of energy, that level of rewarding and even ground-breaking combat throughout the game, it would already be a game well worth waiting for. But the moral element, the storytelling that happens as quietly or as loudly as you like around you, is so full of promise that even if it falters after the first mission, you'll have gotten plenty of value to justify your purchase.
As explained by Levine, the Little Sisters are unable to be killed in combat. They simply carry too much of the super-power granting Adam for mere combat to fell them. But when you defeat their Big Daddy guardians, you have the choice of either taking a mere pinch of Adam from them or taking all they have to offer. If you take all they have, they'll die -- but you'll have a great deal more Adam to trade in at the convenient boost vending machines. We should make clear that they won't just die: you'll pick up this child (or perhaps monster, merely shaped like a child), and she will wriggle and cry and attempt to get away, and as she shrieks in fear the screen hazes over. When it's done, there's no more Little Sister -- just her extracted Adam. It's an evil, difficult thing to do -- the price of power.
