Outthinking your adversaries is a good idea considering how scarce ammo will be. Yes, you'll be armed; in the demo we saw a gun that was right at home with the art-deco stylings of the rest of Rapture. Your firearm can use different types of ammo, each to suit different situations. For example, armor-piecing ammo will be handy against mechanized bad guys, but not so effective for putting down flesh-and-bone opponents.
You'll also have access to a set of abilities called Plasmid Powers. These genetic goodies will let you pull off superhuman moves, but the effect is temporary. They don't grow on trees either, so you'll want to use them only when you really need them. One Plasmid ability we saw lets you move superfast; another increases aggro for NPC characters to encourage NPC-on-NPC violence.
Love the Decor
BioShock has a unique atmosphere that blends '50s music with old-school sci-fi gadgets, horrific enemies, and a sense of unease that I haven't felt since I saw The Ring. It's also been a while since fantastic graphics have been blended with such a unique art style. The design of Rapture is 1950s art deco with a bit of Jules Verne and Rube Goldberg thrown in for good measure. No grey offices or endless brown corridors here.
Water also plays heavily into the surroundings. You're surrounded by it on the outside and it's seeping in everywhere inside. You hear it almost everywhere you go. Thanks to a heavily tweaked version of the Unreal Engine that Irrational has dubbed "Vengeance," you may not see better water effects anywhere outside of the Atlantic and the Pacific. There will be no multiplayer mode, but that just means Irrational has more time to focus on the single-player game, which it promises will be totally nonlinear.
BioShock is scheduled to arrive in 2007 for both the PC and the Xbox 360. Other than the control schemes, both versions should be identical, and from the looks of things, well worth waiting for.
