Just came back from the 2K Games presentation, which I must say was pretty refreshing. One of the most spacious meeting booths at the show, I could actually sit down and relax without being overcrowded with people elbowing their way to the bar with the free drinks.

My tour of 2K Games' products started with BioShock. The demo that was shown here at Leipzig is essentially the same one from the E3, although one of the Irrational guys did say that the code was polished a lot since the American premiere.

Since we've covered BioShock pretty thoroughly in the past, I will try and focus on a few details that caught my eye during the presentation.

But first, a bit of info on the engine. While I was pretty certain that BioShock is running on the Unreal 3 Engine, it turns out that isn't exactly the case. The representative of Irrational Games Australia pointed out that they are using the Vengeance engine (I'm assuming this is a reference to Tribes: Vengeance) for their game, a piece of code Irrational has been working on for the past three years - a combination of Unreal 2 code and I guess Unreal 3 code as well. Bottom line is it looks like Irrational has spent quite a bit of time making the BioShock 3D code pretty much proprietary. This becomes more than evident when you see the water effects, which are essential for this game and its gameplay.

The first thing that caught my eye as the developers started playing the demo level was how well the new AI routines blend into the game world. What do I mean by this? Well, as you may or may not know, BioShock takes place in a devastated underwater settlement, a failed utopia experiment gone horribly wrong. To survive, people are using Adam - a precious resource used for bio modifications. Well, the point of this is that you will encounter many creatures in the world that will simply go about their business. Like the huge guy in the underwater suit and the little girl. They collect Adam to survive - inject long and nasty needles into dead bodies, sucking the Adam out of them and then drinking it. It's pretty scary seeing the little girl drink blood and then cough some of it out as she drinks too much.

But to get back to my point about the AI, the first instinct that FPS players have when they enter a new environment is to shoot. It seriously felt pleasantly novel to just see the Irrational guy go about the level while the collectors are doing their own stuff. It felt very natural - it felt like you are a part of the environment rather than just some guy with a gun shooting everything in sight.

That is the kind of atmosphere that BioShock is going for and it is truly refreshing to see such an approach in a video game. It just feels a lot less railed and a lot less scripted.

Another thing that's worth noting is that all the "monsters" in the game are not really monsters, but humans, either in the early or the later stages of their Adam transformation. The idea here is that humans are much scarier than monsters - at least that's what the Irrational guys seem to think. The Aussie guy was talking how the team was watching "The Shining," when it dawned on them that insane Jack Nicholson is far scarier than any monsters - and you know what, they might be right.

Finally, a word or two about the game's art style. Yes, BioShock has a very moody feel to it, but it's also worth pointing out that it just feels too colorful in certain parts, too cheerful in the selection of colors for a horror game. I fully realize that the developers are aiming to present this environment as a stark contrast to the truly scary parts (which will mostly rely on the psychology of fear, rather than just throwing monsters at you), but from a purely visual standpoint, aesthetically, the level in the demo felt a bit awkward and so did the makeshift weapon that the player was using.

Granted, we've only been shown a glimpse into a single level of the game, so we'll just have to wait and see how things develop. I also asked about the variety of creatures that we'll see in the game, and the answer was somewhat dodgy, not giving any sort of numbers with an explanation that a lot of the creatures that were shown will be further modified by Adam to look even more horrible as the game progresses.

Of course, it's left on the players to decide whether they will take the route of the bio mods as well, so BioShock promises to offer more layers of non-linearity than initially suspected - both in terms of level navigation and how you go about solving problems in the game.

Overall, it looks like the guys that brought us System Shock 2 are definitely on the right track with this one as well.

-- Uros '2Lions' Jojic

Now this weapon looks more promising.

Moody...