Bio Inc: Redemption
A patient’s life is in your hands, will you play the part of the masterful healer or will you take a more sinister route? In Bio Inc: Redemption you’ll have the power to choose between those two paths, or you can do what I did and bounce between the two, you never know when you might want to see how the other side feels. This is coming to you on iOS and Android devices and will give you a battle to keep your patient alive, or a test of how fast you can end your patient’s life in about 10 - 20 minute rounds.
The game will have you focusing on eight different parts of the human body.
Circulatory
Respiratory
Digestive
Skeletal
Nervous
Renal
Immune
Muscular
In each of these areas there will be a list of ailments that you will either have to detect, or cause. Some ailments will require prerequisites for either lifestyle choices or preexisting issues. No matter what, ailments will cause those specific areas to decrease in wellness, and once those areas crash (0% functioning) you can be sure that the rest of the body isn’t far behind.
For the “Healer” route, you will be given symptoms that the patient is experiencing. When you select the Biomap option, you’ll be able to highlight specific symptoms that will allow you to see all the potential systems that might be affected. You’ll then have to run tests to narrow down what the issue could possibly be. Once you discover the issue you’ll get to prescribe treatment/medication to try to make the patient better. Patients may gain additional symptoms or additional ailments, so time is always of the essence. In order to perform tests and prescribe treatments/medication you’ll have to collect Bio Points. To gain those precious points you will have to keep an eye on the patient screen for systems that become highlighted. You will then have to quickly select that system so that you can try to collect the different cells that will appear in/around the body, they will disappear after a couple of seconds, and it isn’t as easy as just tapping on the different cells. You will have to hold your finger down to draw the cells in (The best scenario is if there are several cells clustered in an area and you can hold your finger down to draw them all in, the worst case is that they are wide spread and you’ll be lucky to get one). There are resource upgrades that become available throughout the game so just be on the lookout, they can help.
For the “Sinister” route you will be causing ailments to the patient. You will be going up against a CPU doctor that will try to heal the patient. I always try to take one system right off the bat. I do usually sprinkle in an ailment in one or two different systems, just for fun, but I try to take down one system at a time, I find that the domino effect can greatly decrease the likelihood for survival in the patient. As with the “Healer” route you will have to collect Bio Points, but this time instead of cells you’ll be collecting viruses. Once you have accumulated enough points you will be able to unleash different ailments. You will also be able to affect the patient’s lifestyle in a negative fashion. I have found the unprotected sex option very useful as it will add additional stress to different systems.
Either route will cost you energy points. You can recover them over time by buying them with in-game specials (GEMS) currency, or by completing side quests to gain them as rewards. The energy point cost increases as you go up in difficulty.
Mild (6 Energy)
Moderate (12 Energy)
Severe (18 Energy)
Lethal (24 Energy)
You will need to try to aim for higher difficulty to unlock new departments that will offer different challenges for you. I do want to point out that you might not be able to unlock a new department in your first go-around (it will take a combination of difficulties that equal 7).
Alright now that I’ve basically laid out a huge chunk of the game let’s actually talk about my gaming experience. As I previously stated, I enjoyed playing on both sides, and so I definitely killed quite a few patients, but I also saved quite a few as well. The game mechanics for the most part were pretty solid, I never truly mastered the “sucking” in of Bio Point resources (cells or viruses), and I definitely had a constant level of frustration when it came to needing those extra couple of points and my finger placement, which I thought would bring in the resources that ended up being a complete failure.
There was also an additional mechanic that I both enjoyed and hated and that was the skills portion. Before each attempt you are given the chance to choose (at a cost) a selection of skills, one from each category:
Economy
Diseases
Lifestyles
Intensive Care
Environment
These skills will help give you a boost in one of those areas, but they’re not cheap, and they also have a daily limit to them (I think this is the part that really gets to me, if I’m going to be paying the in-game cost why restrict me to only a few uses a day).
In the end this is an entertaining game, sure there are a couple of frustrating parts to it, but it has enough that I am willing to wait a little bit between sessions so that I can get back to saving or destroying lives.