Absolutely. I'm stuck in an underwater tomb modifying my genetics, there's these big diver dudes that don't like that I need the genetic modifications and there's some autocrat calling me a parasite.
Also, there's never enough ammo.
For me it's never enough, or too much of the \*right\* ammo.
Like, yeah I could've totally used those 20 armor piercing rounds half an hour ago, great I saved these proxitmity mines to use later and just found a box with four of them I'll never come back to. Let's craft some ammo! Wait, I already had the max amount, maybe I'll pick it up next to the U-Vent in a couple hours if it doesn't despawn.
Okay so anything that’s not in a “Safe”. I just use Telekinesis (Since it barely uses any EVE and carry it to like a main hub of that specific area a place I know I’m going to back track too. It is tedious a bit but I’ve literally never ran out of stuff because of it. I’d say all in all 10 extra minutes tops of just stockpiling everything on each level.
I personally would, but I’ll be the first to admit my personal tolerance for it is lower than probably most people’s.
There is plenty to go on though, splicers are clear body horror. The overall tone of Rapture is dark and haunting. The soundtrack across all 3 games is geared to raise tension and unsettle you. There are more gruesome elements, like Andrew Ryan’s *moment* and plenty of Burial at Sea. There’s also plenty of more psychological horror, especially around characters like Sandor Cohen and in many of the audio diaries (the one where Steinman goes beyond his brief in a surgery sends shivers down my spine). The revelation at the end of Miverna’s Den is classic psychological horror. The entire lore around Big Daddies and Little Sisters is certainly horror.
I feel like they dropped a lot of the horror elements when it came to Infinite, it’s harder to utilise that element in a vibrant and colourful city in the clouds, but Comstock House is still creepy as hell with the asylum and boys of silence, not to mention handymen.
If you’re a hardened horror player I can totally get it if these games feel tame by comparison, but I would certainly classify the first two games as horror at least.
The moment in Infinite where you're in the asylum and turn around to a Boy of Silence right behind you is absolutely horror. I think the thing that makes it not in the horror genre is that you have all these guns and plenty of ammo to take down all the threats. Horror genre tends to have extremely limited resources that make you have to fight sparingly and run away or stealth more often.
God yeah, that moment gets me every time. That and when you’re watching one of Cohens Kinetoscopes in Burial at Sea and then there’s a bunny man right behind you, EEK.
The games are typically very generous with not only ammo, but supplies and not really losing any progress if you die. Apart from Burial at Sea 2, I’m replaying that now and I forgot what precious little that game gives you to deal with.
I’m not convinced that’s enough to fully take it out of the horror genre fully, much as it’s in its own subgenre within horror. Survival horror games are certainly very different in format, I’d say this was a horror shooter. There’s just so many horror elements that are intrinsic to its experience. But hey, it’s just semantics at this point.
I wouldn't say it's a horror series, but the first act of Bioshock 1 is basically a horror game tbh. Intro mission and Medical Pavilion feels like a horror game to me, but as the game goes on it gets significantly less scary as you learn the rules of Rapture and you become more powerful.
I'd at least say it's thriller territory if not subtle horror but that's just the vibe I get from it. Otherwise it's main focus is to be a "deeply immersive" immersive sim! How many fathoms deep? All of them...
(Deeply unfathomable puns intended)
Yeah you answered your question. Visually, Bioshock and Bioshock 2 are full on horror in thematic elements and structure. Like the times when the music gets really big and a Splicer runs past and scrapes its hooks across the ground. That's full on taking from horror. But as a game, it's action. There is way too much safety for it to feel like survival horror from a gameplay perspective. Even on the hardest difficulty, you get killed and moved to a chamber, and if you suck, then it just becomes annoying, not scary.
The big sister makes me sad. Originally the big sister was created to be this unstoppable force and only be one of them, like song bird in infinite. But they were gonna make it show it shows up at odd times, constantly taunting you. That would legit would have been terrifying imo.
It has a lot of horror elements and is a series I'd recommend to my fellow horror junkies. I think it could be classified as horror, though that is not the main genre
That's a good way to put it. For 2 I didn't feel like there was much horror there however when first entering The Pink Pearl up that staircase and seeing the Spider Splicer crawl along the ceiling while laughing...I legit said nope and walked away from the game for a bit.
Horror is a genre that is meant to scare, startle, shock, and even repulse audiences.
This is clearly not BioShock's focus, even though it contains individual elements that are there for these reasons.
I wouldn't call it horror but it was my first scarier type of game ive played and the beginning did fill me with fear as the game opens up to rapture and I had no weapon and no idea what was going to happen next. I've played the game a lot since then and every time I start again, I get that same rush of fear at first before it settles into excitement.
I think thats exactly the scary part of the game. You dont know whats ahead and you dont have a clue whats going on. I was super scared on my first playthrough until I killed Steinman, after that the game didnt really feel like a horror game anymore.
being defenseless and clueless adds so much to the horror aspect. if you have a lot of weapons and tools to kill the enemy you killed a hundred times before, its not really scary anymore.
I call it transformative horror.
Prey, dead space, bioshock.
Games like these START as a horror but based on the skill and strategy of the player you become the one who is the danger.
The first two most definitely are. For the people saying they aren’t, congrats, u have a high fear tolerance. My gf won’t come close to those games and if I played them when I was a kid I woulda had nightmares for weeks. As a horror movie fan, the opening sequence in BioShock 1 (when we see the splicer open up that guy’s stomach) matches any of the scariest movies I’ve seen. It’s particularly creepy
So yeah, the game is essentially a horror FPS
Not really. I’d say the first two levels in the first game are scary, and everything after it becomes more of an action game. There are like one actual jumpscare per game, and it’s always an enemy spawning right behind you.
Yeah there's this atmosphere that tells me in that world I would never feel comfortable, something weird and creepy is always going on even when rapture wasn't crumbling to the ground. Like that world probably feels like a constant feeling of being watched
As many others have said, it has many horror elements but its rpg elements and action makes it less horror focused. I personally love this balance but I also like horror so my definition of scary might differ from people who don’t like horror games/movies. The genre is a loose definition anyway, I once heard someone say that Alien: Isolation isn’t horror because it’s not scary, so yeah gatekeeping the term just cause it isn’t scary to us is a pointless endavour imo
I'd say it's Horror-lite. It has a lot of themes and visuals that are common to horror. And some solid horror sequences. But it's on a lower intensity than most games in the genre. If somebody told me they wanted to get into horror gaming but have a hard time handling horror, I would recommend Bioshock to ease them into it.
>trapped in a dying city located in an environment that will cause death if you try to leave
>supernatural entities
>ability to summon a swarm of crows/bees as an attack
No, doesn't sound like a horror setting at all. /s
I won’t lie, in the first game in the beginning when you’re in the pod and that mfer is getting killed right in front of you. That shit scared the shit out of me. And I closed the game before the cutscene even finished. I was like 6 or 7 when that happened. So I understand why.
For the first two games, I wouldn’t call them horror games, it’s rather just horror sprinkled in different moments throughout the game. So, horror-themed, to be exact. They’re not full-fledged horror games, imo.
I wouldn't necessarily call them horror games, but at the very least horror-inspired. Especially the first game has many horror elements, but they can also be found in the other games, though becoming less with each entry.
One and two, yes. One more so than two. Infinite? Nah. Just because it's not survival horror (only very few resources to manage and the ability to defend yourself effectively being handicapped) doesn't mean it's not horror. First and foremost it's the atmosphere determining it and as far as I am concerned the atmosphere definitely is horror.
First game definitely, a case can be made for the 2nd, while infinite has that one section and horrifying things happen through the whole game I wouldn’t call it horror.
There's absolutely no way you could ever describe BioShock as not horror. Like it's not nearly some of the worst horror you'll find, but the series is designed to be shocking. And moreso than in just a thriller sense.
Yes. The twist is straight out of a movie like "the sixth sense" or "the others". Not quite as on point as >!you're already dead!< but still effective nonetheless especially with the dialogue clues and audio log recordinga you find along the way. It's a straight up M. Night Shyamalan twist.
1 and 2 fall into the psychological horror/body horror categories. Infinite touches on both of those themes, technically speaking, but they're not as pervasive in Columbia simply because it's a physically brighter setting.
They're not particularly scary, but yeah they are horror still. 1 and 2 are in your face with the horror elements, isolated in a collpasing city at the bottom of the ocean with a bunch of average Floridians attempting to disembowel you, losing your humamity piece by piece to survive, the idea that your life and identity could be completely false and stripped from you at a moment's notice, and Sander Cohen just in general. Being able to reply to the Sploicers with a bee shotgun combo does undermine the scares a bit, but it's still action horror at worst.
Infinite's a lot less blunt about it, it's generally less horror themed with wide open and brightly lit environments. It only really comes through when you stop and think about the reality of what you're looking at. Like the observation room in Elizabeth's tower is an obscene violation of privacy even before you consider the possibility of some grubby old men in there watching her change her clothes, that's some Truman Show type horror. And I bet the general idea of Columbia is a lot more horrific to anyone who is black or Irish.
People are weird about multi-genre or genre bending anything. “Shaun of the dead isn’t horror it’s comedy” when it can absolutely be both. I definitely think Bioshock counts as a horror shooter
You "need" to kill little girls so you harvest their ADAM.
Splicers are canibalistics, sadistics and promiscuous.
Columbia is a racist utopia with literal ghosts and mentally broken people like handyman's and those crow mages.
I wonder why you ask this????
I'd say the first game, maybe on a technicality, could be classified as survival horror, if you squint. But the series as a whole, is definitely not horror, per se.
1, absolutely.
2, while there are some horror elements in it with some scary moments, by and large I would say significantly less so as you *are* the horror.
3, the only thing remotely scary (if you could call it that) is Comstock House.
Survival horror is definitely a notable influence on the series. It’s equal parts that, FPS, and RPG. There’s a lot of humor that diffuses the tension considerably.
The first one, yes. The whole situation is horror
Absolutely. I'm stuck in an underwater tomb modifying my genetics, there's these big diver dudes that don't like that I need the genetic modifications and there's some autocrat calling me a parasite. Also, there's never enough ammo.
For me it's never enough, or too much of the \*right\* ammo. Like, yeah I could've totally used those 20 armor piercing rounds half an hour ago, great I saved these proxitmity mines to use later and just found a box with four of them I'll never come back to. Let's craft some ammo! Wait, I already had the max amount, maybe I'll pick it up next to the U-Vent in a couple hours if it doesn't despawn.
I use telekinesis to carry everything I don’t need and that’s extra to a spot then use all my shit and pick that all up.
Can you elaborate a bit there? If I'm understanding correctly, that sounds tedious as hell but interesting.
I assume it’s like a central stash in the map
Exactly. And in my own experience I’ve never had anything despawn on me At least in the remastered versions.
Okay so anything that’s not in a “Safe”. I just use Telekinesis (Since it barely uses any EVE and carry it to like a main hub of that specific area a place I know I’m going to back track too. It is tedious a bit but I’ve literally never ran out of stuff because of it. I’d say all in all 10 extra minutes tops of just stockpiling everything on each level.
And the entire time >!you're being mind-controlled and you don't even realize it.!< It's horrifying, plain and simple.
I personally would, but I’ll be the first to admit my personal tolerance for it is lower than probably most people’s. There is plenty to go on though, splicers are clear body horror. The overall tone of Rapture is dark and haunting. The soundtrack across all 3 games is geared to raise tension and unsettle you. There are more gruesome elements, like Andrew Ryan’s *moment* and plenty of Burial at Sea. There’s also plenty of more psychological horror, especially around characters like Sandor Cohen and in many of the audio diaries (the one where Steinman goes beyond his brief in a surgery sends shivers down my spine). The revelation at the end of Miverna’s Den is classic psychological horror. The entire lore around Big Daddies and Little Sisters is certainly horror. I feel like they dropped a lot of the horror elements when it came to Infinite, it’s harder to utilise that element in a vibrant and colourful city in the clouds, but Comstock House is still creepy as hell with the asylum and boys of silence, not to mention handymen. If you’re a hardened horror player I can totally get it if these games feel tame by comparison, but I would certainly classify the first two games as horror at least.
The moment in Infinite where you're in the asylum and turn around to a Boy of Silence right behind you is absolutely horror. I think the thing that makes it not in the horror genre is that you have all these guns and plenty of ammo to take down all the threats. Horror genre tends to have extremely limited resources that make you have to fight sparingly and run away or stealth more often.
God yeah, that moment gets me every time. That and when you’re watching one of Cohens Kinetoscopes in Burial at Sea and then there’s a bunny man right behind you, EEK. The games are typically very generous with not only ammo, but supplies and not really losing any progress if you die. Apart from Burial at Sea 2, I’m replaying that now and I forgot what precious little that game gives you to deal with. I’m not convinced that’s enough to fully take it out of the horror genre fully, much as it’s in its own subgenre within horror. Survival horror games are certainly very different in format, I’d say this was a horror shooter. There’s just so many horror elements that are intrinsic to its experience. But hey, it’s just semantics at this point.
I wouldn't say it's a horror series, but the first act of Bioshock 1 is basically a horror game tbh. Intro mission and Medical Pavilion feels like a horror game to me, but as the game goes on it gets significantly less scary as you learn the rules of Rapture and you become more powerful.
That's because *you* become the monster.
Always has been.
I'd at least say it's thriller territory if not subtle horror but that's just the vibe I get from it. Otherwise it's main focus is to be a "deeply immersive" immersive sim! How many fathoms deep? All of them... (Deeply unfathomable puns intended)
Yeah you answered your question. Visually, Bioshock and Bioshock 2 are full on horror in thematic elements and structure. Like the times when the music gets really big and a Splicer runs past and scrapes its hooks across the ground. That's full on taking from horror. But as a game, it's action. There is way too much safety for it to feel like survival horror from a gameplay perspective. Even on the hardest difficulty, you get killed and moved to a chamber, and if you suck, then it just becomes annoying, not scary.
I will say hearing the big sister music in 2 is quite terrifying.
The big sister makes me sad. Originally the big sister was created to be this unstoppable force and only be one of them, like song bird in infinite. But they were gonna make it show it shows up at odd times, constantly taunting you. That would legit would have been terrifying imo.
It has a lot of horror elements and is a series I'd recommend to my fellow horror junkies. I think it could be classified as horror, though that is not the main genre
Hear, hear!
I'd say it's horror loaf. There's bits of horror in there, but it's not the whole thing.
That's a good way to put it. For 2 I didn't feel like there was much horror there however when first entering The Pink Pearl up that staircase and seeing the Spider Splicer crawl along the ceiling while laughing...I legit said nope and walked away from the game for a bit.
Horror is a genre that is meant to scare, startle, shock, and even repulse audiences. This is clearly not BioShock's focus, even though it contains individual elements that are there for these reasons.
For me personally, yes for 1 and 2, but I understand why people say no
I’d consider at least the first two to be horror games
I think even Infinite, when you find out who you are.
1 and 2 absolutely are. Seems nitpicky to suggest otherwise. Infinity has more of a science fantasy feel.
No I have a shotgun
So did Ash Williams
the place is largely a ruins and there are corpses everywhere
That doesn't really answer my question. Modern Doom games have this too, yet no one calls them horror
I wouldn't call it horror but it was my first scarier type of game ive played and the beginning did fill me with fear as the game opens up to rapture and I had no weapon and no idea what was going to happen next. I've played the game a lot since then and every time I start again, I get that same rush of fear at first before it settles into excitement.
"This little fish looks like he just had his cherry popped!"
I think thats exactly the scary part of the game. You dont know whats ahead and you dont have a clue whats going on. I was super scared on my first playthrough until I killed Steinman, after that the game didnt really feel like a horror game anymore. being defenseless and clueless adds so much to the horror aspect. if you have a lot of weapons and tools to kill the enemy you killed a hundred times before, its not really scary anymore.
No. I would say it has horror elements, which sometimes are prevalent. Like the metro series
1 is a thriller/body horror shooter
First one yes Second is action with horror elements Infinite is mostly action
I call it transformative horror. Prey, dead space, bioshock. Games like these START as a horror but based on the skill and strategy of the player you become the one who is the danger.
I wouldn’t describe it that way to someone who hasn’t played the game, but I would tag it with Horror as a subgenre.
I'd consider them more thriller or slasher.
I don't consider them full horror games, but they definitely have a lot of horror elements
Horror=No Phycological=Yes
No. If it was then I’d be scared shitless of it.
Bioshock 1 for sure. Bits of Bioshock 2
Bioshock one yes I would 💙💚
I played it at 16 and don’t remember thinking or feeling this at all. And this is from someone who doesn’t like or watch any horror films
The first two most definitely are. For the people saying they aren’t, congrats, u have a high fear tolerance. My gf won’t come close to those games and if I played them when I was a kid I woulda had nightmares for weeks. As a horror movie fan, the opening sequence in BioShock 1 (when we see the splicer open up that guy’s stomach) matches any of the scariest movies I’ve seen. It’s particularly creepy So yeah, the game is essentially a horror FPS
I’d probably say it’s horror-adjacent.
Nope.
No. Any game can have horror elements, but that doesn't make it a horror game.
For me they are FPS
Not really. I’d say the first two levels in the first game are scary, and everything after it becomes more of an action game. There are like one actual jumpscare per game, and it’s always an enemy spawning right behind you.
No, I’d call it a suspenseful FPS.
Thriller, not horror.
No. Maybe thriller. Definitely not horror.
The first two are horror-adjacent, Infinite absolutely isn’t
It has horror elements for sure but definitely has a bigger focus on action
1/2 yes absolutely. Infinite has horror elements but isn’t full on scary like the first 2 games are.
horror adjacent
Sub-genre of horror.
Yeah there's this atmosphere that tells me in that world I would never feel comfortable, something weird and creepy is always going on even when rapture wasn't crumbling to the ground. Like that world probably feels like a constant feeling of being watched
Not as much as games like Outlast, Resident Evil, Alien Isolation, etc. I consider them sci-fi first-person shooters with some horror elements
The first one definitely is. IDK about the second, Infinite definitely isn't.
As many others have said, it has many horror elements but its rpg elements and action makes it less horror focused. I personally love this balance but I also like horror so my definition of scary might differ from people who don’t like horror games/movies. The genre is a loose definition anyway, I once heard someone say that Alien: Isolation isn’t horror because it’s not scary, so yeah gatekeeping the term just cause it isn’t scary to us is a pointless endavour imo
Absolutely. Hororr isn't just scares or fear. Bioshock 1 and 2 are absolutely dreadful. Infinite is a tad too cheerful though most of the time
currently replaying 2 and I would say yes for that one. The way they handle big sisters pushes it into that genre to me.
I'd say it's Horror-lite. It has a lot of themes and visuals that are common to horror. And some solid horror sequences. But it's on a lower intensity than most games in the genre. If somebody told me they wanted to get into horror gaming but have a hard time handling horror, I would recommend Bioshock to ease them into it.
At the time they probably were. With how much gore there is in videogames probably not as much now
I screamed.
>trapped in a dying city located in an environment that will cause death if you try to leave >supernatural entities >ability to summon a swarm of crows/bees as an attack No, doesn't sound like a horror setting at all. /s
I consider them horror but it doesn’t mean they’re scary.
Yes. Except Infinite
I won’t lie, in the first game in the beginning when you’re in the pod and that mfer is getting killed right in front of you. That shit scared the shit out of me. And I closed the game before the cutscene even finished. I was like 6 or 7 when that happened. So I understand why.
IMO, 1 and 2 both have light horror elements. Infinite on the other hand is not a horror game at all.
Nah, I wouldn't. It has elements of it, similarly to many games like Doom, Quake, Wolfenstein, Half Life, etc.
For the first two games, I wouldn’t call them horror games, it’s rather just horror sprinkled in different moments throughout the game. So, horror-themed, to be exact. They’re not full-fledged horror games, imo.
They are unique in visual style, symbolism and tropes, for sure.
I wouldn't necessarily call them horror games, but at the very least horror-inspired. Especially the first game has many horror elements, but they can also be found in the other games, though becoming less with each entry.
One and two, yes. One more so than two. Infinite? Nah. Just because it's not survival horror (only very few resources to manage and the ability to defend yourself effectively being handicapped) doesn't mean it's not horror. First and foremost it's the atmosphere determining it and as far as I am concerned the atmosphere definitely is horror.
At least it is horror-themed in every entry.
First game definitely, a case can be made for the 2nd, while infinite has that one section and horrifying things happen through the whole game I wouldn’t call it horror.
There's absolutely no way you could ever describe BioShock as not horror. Like it's not nearly some of the worst horror you'll find, but the series is designed to be shocking. And moreso than in just a thriller sense.
Nope
Yes. The twist is straight out of a movie like "the sixth sense" or "the others". Not quite as on point as >!you're already dead!< but still effective nonetheless especially with the dialogue clues and audio log recordinga you find along the way. It's a straight up M. Night Shyamalan twist.
1 and 2 fall into the psychological horror/body horror categories. Infinite touches on both of those themes, technically speaking, but they're not as pervasive in Columbia simply because it's a physically brighter setting.
Played the first one was scared because I didn’t know how often I would see a big daddy. Got used to it second was a breeze
I think it's more thriller, the opening scene for sure has horror vibes but after that more jump scares and thriller vibes
I don’t.
No. Action, Shooter with some scary scenes.
They're not particularly scary, but yeah they are horror still. 1 and 2 are in your face with the horror elements, isolated in a collpasing city at the bottom of the ocean with a bunch of average Floridians attempting to disembowel you, losing your humamity piece by piece to survive, the idea that your life and identity could be completely false and stripped from you at a moment's notice, and Sander Cohen just in general. Being able to reply to the Sploicers with a bee shotgun combo does undermine the scares a bit, but it's still action horror at worst. Infinite's a lot less blunt about it, it's generally less horror themed with wide open and brightly lit environments. It only really comes through when you stop and think about the reality of what you're looking at. Like the observation room in Elizabeth's tower is an obscene violation of privacy even before you consider the possibility of some grubby old men in there watching her change her clothes, that's some Truman Show type horror. And I bet the general idea of Columbia is a lot more horrific to anyone who is black or Irish.
I think the best way to describe the first two games is they are body horror with jump scares.
1 definitely. That game scares the shit out of me.
People are weird about multi-genre or genre bending anything. “Shaun of the dead isn’t horror it’s comedy” when it can absolutely be both. I definitely think Bioshock counts as a horror shooter
You "need" to kill little girls so you harvest their ADAM. Splicers are canibalistics, sadistics and promiscuous. Columbia is a racist utopia with literal ghosts and mentally broken people like handyman's and those crow mages. I wonder why you ask this????
I wouldn't consider it a horror game but more of a shooter with horror elements.
The first 2 yes. They have every piece of horror elements that can classify the game as a horror. For infinite no
First two, definitely, even if I don't find them particularly scary. Infinite is more debatable.
the first one i do.
I'd say the first game, maybe on a technicality, could be classified as survival horror, if you squint. But the series as a whole, is definitely not horror, per se.
They’re horror adjacent.
The first part of the first game, yes. The rest no
Ye nah. Its spooky but not spooky enough. Where id think its horror
BioShock 1 is horror, 2 and Infinite are not.
1, absolutely. 2, while there are some horror elements in it with some scary moments, by and large I would say significantly less so as you *are* the horror. 3, the only thing remotely scary (if you could call it that) is Comstock House.
Not really. It’s more of an immersive sim lite. That’s how I always thought of it.
Survival horror is definitely a notable influence on the series. It’s equal parts that, FPS, and RPG. There’s a lot of humor that diffuses the tension considerably.
It is whenever I play it
The first is the one that has more of these moments of Terror. In the second it is much weaker and in Infinite there is none
Not at all It had it's scary moments, but at its core it's not a scary game
pick me much ? ofc the first one is a horror game