Preview: BioShock's DLC Challenge Rooms

The first section of the DLC content I got to see were the test chambers. Players are dropped into a central room with eight doors leading to eight different scenarios. In the center of the room, a saved Little Sister is walking around in a glassed in room containing eight vents for the Little Sister to travel to the eight rooms. Surrounding this is all of the machines available from the main game such as the El Ammo Bandito, The Circus of Values, Gatherers Gardens and more. All are hackable, but they're set to the maximum hacking difficulty.

Players won’t start off with any money, weapons, or Plasmid powers, but the first test chamber door is open and players will find a shotgun, magnum and some bullets for the magnum lying on the ground at the entrance of this test chamber.

Before entering the actual chamber, players can scout out the chamber as the floor is made of glass, allowing the player to see the entire chamber below him. Once the player is committed to the challenge, they will drop in through a hole and can't leave until killing everything in the room.

The first room is the easiest as there's nothing in the room but a single Splicer. The Splicer is too busy trying to "convince" a Little Sister to pop out of a vent, so he won't notice the player until it's too late. After all of the dangers in the room have been cleared, the Little Sister will come out of the vent and give the player some sort of reward. In this case, the Little Sister gave me every weapon that's available in the game (all lacking ammo).

After receiving my reward, a teleporter appears allowing me to go back to the central room, but first I went to loot some corpses and then used a “Power to the People” machine that's located in every test chamber to upgrade one of my guns. A new door is unlocked and this time I have to fight a single Big Daddy.

I didn't receive that much money and I still had no Plasmid skills so this battle wasn't going to be that easy. Luckily, a section of this chamber had sprung a leak and had an electric problem too. Players will need to basically have a toro match with the Big Daddy in order to defeat it. After I got in position in front of the electrified water, I shot the Big Daddy, which then immediately charged at me. I dived away at the last second, turned around and saw that the Big Daddy didn't fall into the water. Players basically have that first chance to get through the room easily. You can try again to trick the Big Daddy to charge at you, but it's pretty hard to make him fall into the electrocuted water if you miss the first chance.

I eventually died and respawned in the first test chamber. The game will automatically save your progress right after you've received your gift from the Little Sister. The second time through, I got it right and watched the Big Daddy slowly die from the electrified water. This time, the Little Sister gave me Adam as a reward and now the challenges ramped up in difficulty.

Back to the central room, all of the doors were opened and it's up to the player on how to tackle each room. Money and Adam is limited, so players really have to think about their battle plan. Thanks to the glass ceilings, players can look down into a room and figure out what guns they will need and what Plasmids would be best.

All of the rooms start to differ in design too. The first too rooms were simple, small, square rooms with no major obstructions. Now the rooms have large obstructions, walls, and one of the rooms is a large, six story deep room.

Think you can handle the room containing several fire and ice Houdini Splicers? Or how about the room with several turrets along with Splicers and a Big Daddy? Or how about my favorite room with four Big Daddies? There's eight rooms in all and the entire run is timed. 

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After the test chambers, I checked out the second part of the DLC content, "A Shocking Turn of Events.” Now, you're at the Rapture Carnival where a Little Sister is trapped on a ferris wheel ride and the player needs to get her down. There’s a switch that will move the ferris wheel, but it’s having some electrical problems. Check out the above video for an explanation of this scenario.

This part of the DLC challenge is more about puzzles rather then action. You need to explore the entire area to find ways to feed the panel electricity. I didn't get too far, but I can say it will be pretty hard to figure this section out.

And what's a Carnival without games? There's a section on this level where players can play Carnival games and win an endless amount of health and EVE.

There is one more challenge that’s a part of the DLC pack, but you'll have to wait to see it when it comes out November 20. The DLC content will go for $9.99 and overall, I think the package will be worth it to die hard BioShock fans.