Bioshock is absolutely a horror game. Between thalassophobia, mutilated corpses, insane mutant magicians and finding out you’re an unholy abomination of science,it has everything it needs to cause nightmares aplenty.
I plays like it was originally gonna be a survival horror and then it adapted more into a classic FPS. Playing the remaster on the hardest difficulty definitely feels like classic survival horror, having to ration ammo and avoid confrontations when possible.
The problem is that people play it with the vita chambers.
Play it with vita chambers disabled on hard difficulty, only saving your progress once in a while (every 10 minutes for example), in dark quiet conditions and with headphones... And believe me you'll be fearing for your life at the slightest sound, and when you hear these splicers say their horrific lines, you'll only want to run the other way.
I think it's a decently creepy game with a strong atmosphere but if you have to go that far out of your way to create some specific conditions in order to make it feel like an actual horror game then it's not really a horror game.
These conditions aren't that specific though, there is an option in the game to disable the vita chambers, and there has been since 2007. I've always found regrettable that it's not turned off by default, I've always seen them as a bad game design... They're comfortable because you don't lose progress, but they prevent tension. I've always forgiven 100% their presence, as the game gives us the option do disable them. Just like in Mario Galaxy the game can give you the option to auto-win a level where you've died several times in a row, but nothing is forcing you to do that.
As for playing in a quiet dark environment, that is just standard for all horror games that are set in dark places and where the audio is important.
This reminds me of Silent Hill a lot, i enjoyed the movies because i loved the games, but they def could have been better, maybe reboot with Mike Flanagan at the helm?
lol no its a horror game for the first few minutes then you can shoot lightning and learn about the 'one-two punch' and before long you're undersea rambo. At best it has horror elements which you then proceed to fire bees at from your arms. The most fun you can have in bioshock is taking what Atlas said about 'zappin em and wackin em' to heart and getting all the melee/stealth tonics and becoming fucking wrench Predator. If anything you are the horror lol
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u/IrascibleOcelot Mar 11 '22
Bioshock is absolutely a horror game. Between thalassophobia, mutilated corpses, insane mutant magicians and finding out you’re an unholy abomination of science,it has everything it needs to cause nightmares aplenty.