BioShock’s Challenge Rooms Challenge BioShock’s Premise

By Celeste . November 13, 2008 . 11:14am

2K Games throws meat to the lions with the release of their trailer and some new screenshots for BioShock’s PlayStation 3 downloadable content. It comes in the form of ‘challenge rooms’. Interestingly, you can see from the trailer that these challenge rooms have been designed outside of the main game’s narrative, making them more accessible in some resects.

However, it is the game’s ability to dexterously manipulate narrative, gameplay and environmental visuals simultaneously that made BioShock so compelling to play. As an example, you might recall the impact of the plot twist at the hands of Andrew Ryan. It is doubtful that this experience would have had such a substantial effect were the gameplay not so centered on the player character’s inter-reliance on Rapture’s citizens. It will therefore be interesting to see how a team that introduced the concept of ‘harvesting’ little girls replaces emotion-driven gameplay with more mechanical-based missions.

The exploitation of puzzles has been expanded for at least one of the rooms. Indeed, this was a dimension that seemed a little underdeveloped in BioShock, and could therefore prove to be the most appealing element of the challenge rooms.
For the moment though, this is all conjecture, and, quite frankly, I’m willing to give a team that managed to use the notion of the parasite so effectively without ever making reference to anyone in central government the benefit of the doubt. Besides, with BioShock 2 currently in the works, the apparently mechanical-focused gameplay of this DLC might just make for a pleasant interlude between episodes.

This DLC is scheduled for full availability on the PlayStation Network on 20 November 2008, priced at $9.99.

Images courtesy of 2K Games.

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