BioShock

The Good
Do you like the term - intellectual shooter? I don't, since it’s used mostly to identify oneself as an intellectual gamer instead of celebrating the game itself. However, I think it’s impossible to find any other two words describing BioShock so fully and extensively. I mean it in the most neutral sense of the phrase, because it is a well-known fact that you can’t take good without the bad. And it can’t be more so as in case of BioShock.

Irrational Games’ lastborn child, a successor to the critically acclaimed, yet ultimately unknown System Shock series, BioShock has brought the company just two things they were short of – wealth and fame. Now if there was just a single developer company that didn’t get enough of that, I would have bet on Irrational anytime of day. During its eight years course it hasn’t released a single average game. Let me remind you of the the unique concept of Freedom Force, flawless game mechanics and stunning level design of SWAT4, brilliant storytelling and engaging multiplayer of Tribes: Vengeance. All of those games (including, of course, System Shock 2 – the masterpiece of sci-fi horror) clearly showed that Irrational Games is an extraordinary team worthy of any amount of hype, overreaction and 10/10 reviews making the unsuspecting X360 owners rush into the street in order to buy a title from one of the most prominent developer of the recent decade.

However that should not cloud one’s judgment in light of the most obvious of BioShock faults, which we’re going to look over shortly.

Now to the premise. BioShock casts you in the role of a simple man living a simple life, who accidentally discovers a huge underwater city which the brightest minds of the post-war (WWII) world have made their home. Rapture. The world of unlimited possibilities for anyone who is willing to work and create. It opens its gates for anyone except for a single man - a parasite, a man who’s unable to do anything with his life, carrying his pathetic existence through the false notions of compassion, mercy and morality. Those who live in Rapture reject these people and all the governments supporting them, which is pretty much the whole "civilized" world. “It was not impossible to build Rapture at the bottom of the ocean, it was impossible to build it anywhere else”, says Andrew Ryan, the architect and the mastermind behind the city.

But you arrive too late to ripe the fruits of one man’s vision. As with all the ideas and utopias there is always one thing people forget to account for – it’s the faulty nature of the man himself. In case of Rapture, greed and lust for power turned out to be the harbingers of city’s downfall. You can’t build a society based on rationale and objectivism, because (watch out! Another Star Trek quote is coming!) human-beings are extremely irrational creatures and logic is just the beginning of wisdom. Despite seeming overwhelmingly complex the main idea of the game’s story is actually very simple and profound. It’s about how faulty the man is. No matter how much we strive into the sky towards perfection we should not forget about the chains on our legs, chains of human nature. The only thing that can beat the story of this game is the presentation of it..

The postfactum nature of BioShock’s storytelling provides the most impressive strength of the game. You’re not experiencing the story through the series of cut scenes or dialogs. Actually there’s no even a story to experience. Of course there is a series of events taking place inside the gameworld with varying objections and motivations but it is secondary to the history of the place. It’s not that important who you are and what you’re doing, what is important are the characters of Rapture and the details of their sad demise. The game achieves that sort of unusual narrative through the series of audio logs scattered throughout the gameworld combined with the detailed vision of what a certain environment has become. Irrational doesn’t connect the dots for you as it is done in many games via cutscenes or long dialogs. It offers you point A and point B and let your imagination do the rest, with results being much more striking and impressive.

That level of immersion is possible only in a video game, which in its own turn creates a much needed excuse for ideas of BioShock to take form of a video game. It creates an illusion of time overlapping – you hear the choices people made, the feelings they’ve experienced and at the same time you see the consequences of those choices and feelings right before your eyes. An amazing example of the interactive storytelling!

Ron Gilbert, the creator of Monkey Island series has once said that a game is a shitty place to tell a story. Yes, Mr. Gilbert it is, but instead of trying to tell it with the common devices used in movies and books, (yes, Square, you too) BioShock chooses another method unimaginable in the limits of those two media.

Certainly, a knowing man would notice that all of that (retrospective narrative, audio logs, post-factum presentation) was already presented by both System Shocks, Doom 3 and lots of other games which thought this to be a neat way to cut expenses on cutscenes, motion-cap and character modeling. But very few of them offered such an amazing treatment of this technique as BioShock did and neither has put it to so much use. The counterarguments to the tenets of objectivism, coined by Ayn Rand, are perfect fit for the BioShock’s way of narrating, with the characters speaking not of the current events or explaining a lot unnecessary info but expressing their thoughts and views in words instead. This in its own turn creates one of the most fleshed out set of videogame characters of recent years.

The best one being nobody else but the creator of Rapture himself – Andrew Ryan. Much as his prototype – Ayn Rand – Andrew has emigrated from the Soviet Union when he had found himself unable to cope with all the changes happening to his country. Yet he didn’t find any rest in USA either. Everywhere he was despised for his talent, money and radical views. He didn’t want the parasites, people without ambition or talent, to impose their will upon him. Much in fashion of Dostoevsky’s characters Ryan saw himself as an extraordinary being far above the issues of morality and decency. But unlike Raskolnikov, Ryan doesn’t doubt his beliefs and is not tormented by them. He is the man of great faith and strong convictions. He firmly believes in everything he does and doesn't care what others think of it. So even in time of his death he remains as strong in his faith as he ever was.

To be frank, the scene of Andrew Ryan's death requires some more space of this review. This is undoubtedly the piece of drama that will stay in your mind forever. Without spoilering much I can only say, that during witnessing it, I haven't thought for a second about how great/talented/skilled the guys at Irrational are. All of my thoughts were with that man before me, who even in his death doesn't lose a single inch of his faith and views. Very strong and convincing scene, indeed. It would make every movie director jealous.

In the spotlight is also a well-known duo. Big Daddy and Little Sister are perfect metaphor to unconditional love that requires no objective or rational explanation. You will love those interplays, they bring warmth and create a very important contrast to the cold and menacing environments of the city. Of course it’s a cheap argument to put a cute little girl on one plate of the scales and Ayn Rand with her philosophy on the other. The contrast works well, however.Partly, because it is a contrast which you, the player, must inevitably break, not by your choice, but by the necessity.

Other characters do not disappoint either. Each of them is a representation of a specific part of the new, corrupted Rapture. Art, Science and Industry. Fueled by plasmids (which are essentially a plot device and a key gameplay feature) they strive for perfection in those areas. A mad plastic surgeon with his mind completely whacked, an artist finishing his last masterpiece of dead bodies and a smuggler with non-existent values. Each character has lots of background to him depending on how thorough you are in examining your environments, finding clues and actually thinking. Because, as I mentioned earlier, Irrational doesn't care if you're following a story or not. This is excellent, since it always keeps you on your toes and your mind is always working, trying to figure out the real motivations of the characters. No wonder there are so many plot-analysis written after the game's release.

Visually, Bioshock is nothing but stunning. The game's visuals are a beautiful example as to what exactly constitutes great graphics in a game. Obviously, not technical superiority or the hardware the game is capable of taking advantage of. The true brilliance of graphics lies on sole shoulders of an artist. Artistically, BioShock is a very ambitious project. It has been compared to Fallout on numerous occasions with similarities in its 30's ads stylistic approach. Some people attached "art-deco" label shortly after. But the truth is that BioShock is something you haven't ever seen before. It seamlessly combines incombinable. The screaming ads of smiling people reminiscent of mid-20th century America is merged with technological wonders which feels more at home in Wells and Verne novels, than in the works of Asimov and Clarke, and all that is spiced up with the extreme attention to details. Texturing, modeling, special effects - everything in here is working in a single unit to bring the atmosphere of the decayed city of wonders as to close to reality as possible. I've already known that level designers of Irrational are miracle workers with their amazing job on SWAT4 realistic levels, but this time, when they were not constrained by limitations of our real world, they outdid themselves. Sometimes, I even felt like crying staring looking over beautiful locations, so different and yet following the same stylistic guidelines.

That does sound like a perfect game, doesn't it? Well, I don't want to break it for you, but it isn't. The irony is that if BioShock didn't have all those extraordinary things I've mentioned up to this point I might have had no problem with it whatsoever. But the game's unique and unusual subject, superior artistic design and overall professional quality brings me to blaming BioShock for a thing I wouldn't consider to blame any other game for. Namely, it's genre choice.

The Bad
Why on Earth this game decided to be a First Person Shooter?

As I said I had no problems with any game's choice of genre up to this point. You see in games like No One Lives Forever, System Shock I & II, Outlaws, Dark Forces, Strife, Half-Life - all the additional features (non-shooting) are used to enhance them. Thus, it results in a perfect blend. We take a shooter canvas and put some nice touches on it that elevates it above it's contemporaries. It worked on numerous times, and should have worked with BioShock as well.

Especially, if we take into consideration, that the "shooter canvas" of it is much more superior to any other FPS. You have lots of abilities to choose from, different plasmids in various combinations can easily provide a lot of unexpected results. It's fun to experiment with those techniques, trying to find an instant-kill solution. Which, of course, is impossible to find, prompting you to keep chaging your approach in every situation. I didn't miss any of the System Shock exclusive features, like inventory, research or character stats, and was completely satisfied with the way revival chamber were realized in BioShock. So, what's wrong? We have an excellent story/subject and great gameplay which easily result in a game like one has never seen before, don’t we?

The problem is that those do not go together at all. I think the reason of that lies in BioShock's subject which requires everything to work for it. It wasn't a problem in NOLF - where subject required you to be a spy, you did what spies usually do (at least in 60's movies), in Outlaws - subject required you to take revenge on your dead wife and daughter. And what does BioShock subject (counterarguments to objectivism) requires you to do? Nice question.

Kill hordes of zombie-like Splicers is the answer. Now tell me, how does that reinforce the game's point? What is the reason to all the time I spent in-between admiring locations and listening to the logs? There's none. BioShock with its serious subject would have looked much better in the canvas of adventure or an RPG (as showed by Bioware/Black Isle) or maybe tried to get there by some other means. The core of the BioShock's gameplay should have been "a choice" instead of "a shooting". The choice players face in the current game is laughable, because it doesn't provide any effect on the story, (it shows another cut-scene in the end, true, but how does it help to change the message of the game?) and benefits from saving the girls are obvious from the start.

Once again, I will say that have the subject of the game been simpler and less dominant; it wouldn't have made the action seem much more appropriate. But as it is, each part of the game must work towards a single goal -- conveying an idea. Obviously, "shooting zombies", which is somewhere around 70% of the game doesn't help that cause much.

I completely understand the reasons behind BioShock's choice of genre. First, people were expecting a successor to System Shock, secondly, one cannot expect BioShock the Adventure to break as many sells as BioShock the FPS did. Which is a shame, since in the end, it did outgrow both System Shocks, and perhaps became the best top-sold game of the last decade. It certainly deserved upon much better treatment.

The Bottom Line
This is my first review that features a newly created rating system. It came up as I wasn't satisfied with the criteria usually used for game ratings. I called it TAPEA, with each letter standing for a certain aspect of Developer Company as reflected by the game.

Talent: 5/5

One should not doubt the talent of Irrational. Once again they proved that they were touched by God himself. I can't imagine an untalented person coming up with those outstanding locations and brilliant ideas. Rapture, Big Daddies, Art-Deco, Plasmids, Little Sisters, Underwater setting – they're constantly feeding you high-class ideas, which could’ve only born in the minds of extremely talented individuals.

Ambition: 4/5

In BioShock the developer offered something rarely seen in a video game. A mature subject venturing beyond love/hatred/revenge clichés. Unfortunately they didn't dare to carry this ambition through. I mean creating a gameplay that would have been on par with the game's subject, hence a drop in one point.

Pteity (Pushing The Envelope - ity): 3/5

BioShock does go when nobody has gone before. It changes your mind on the subject of how games can communicate stories and ideas. Unfortunately, all of those elements have been already seen in other games, even if executed on a much lower scale and with much lesser effect. The story repeats itself in game play department as well - it does provide some unique ideas, but nothing warranting a legion of clones.

Effort: 5/5

The colossal attention to detail and the game's impressive length (around 12 hours) show many sleepless nights and cups of coffee drunk in the Irrational Games headquarters.

Adequacy: 5/5

The overall coherency of different departments is the evidence of how much the developer cared about how things are fitting together, the style and theme are always maintained regardless of the situation. I won't drop any point here since even the game's questionable FPS attitude towards gameplay is reasonably justified within the limits of the gameworld. Completely adequate and nothing feels out of place.

In the end we receive 4.4/5 which is an average score of those five equally important criteria.

As for the closing part I'll just repeat the one-liner "Who is John Galt?" It's a quote from "Atlas Shrugged", book by Ayn Rand, which BioShock names as its primary source of inspiration. It's a synonym to hopelessness and inability to change anything. The same feelings I am left with after completing BioShock. I understand that you can't have best of both worlds at the same time. You can't be commercially successful and yet break new grounds, at least not on a scale, shareholders' meeting would appreciate.

Perhaps, you need people like Andrew Ryan or Dagny Taggart (a character from the book) to do it, people not constrained by the concerns of others or by the questions of appropriateness and decency. Men who uses only common sense and objective truth as their Bible. And, you know, I am sure that the phrase "BioShock could have been so much more" would have been written somewhere in that book.

Maybe Ayn Rand was actually right?

Nah. :)

The Good
Bioshock is probably one of the most disturbingly beautiful games I've ever played. While the aesthetic is clearly designed to make the player uncomfortable, it's clear that the game's designers took great care to construct a believable world. The environments are believable and look lived in, water effects are above par, and the dynamic light and shadows really add to the sense of dread that makes a really good suspense/horror game possible.

The other half of making the world believable is giving it a compelling story. Rapture has no shortage of interesting characters, and the audio diaries that litter its halls add a wonderfully woven back story to an already intriguing world. Bioshock is a shining example of how to properly tell a story in a first-person shooter.

The game's controls are solid, its weapons varied, and a veritable host of power-up combinations make for an experience that never gets dull. Plasmids, or genetic enhancements, provide a new implementation of on old mechanic, namely spellcasting, but supported by an impressive customization system and a drool-worthy physics engine.

The Bad
While Bioshock leaves very little to be found wanting, it's not without its problems, minor as they may be.

While Bioshock's layout is generally good at helping the player suspend disbelief, there are times when the age-old "invisible wall" problem comes into play. Certain ledges, staircases, etc that look as if they should be accessible are instead impassible borders. The game does avoid this for the most part, but it cropped up enough that I felt it bears mentioning at least.

I also had some issues with the controller mapping, particularly certain buttons performing double duty. For example, the x button is used to hack machinery, and in many cases you need to do this quick, before a turret or security bot is reactivated. This isn't a problem, except that x ALSO is the hotkeyed button for using an EVE hypo, so if you hit it too early you can end up wasting a valuable resource. The same thing happened to me occasionally with using the b button to cancel out of menus and accidentally using health packs.

All in all though, most of my issues with the game were minimal and didn't take away at all from the overall experience.

The Bottom Line
Imagine being totally immersed in a world where everyone around you has gone horribly insane and you are the only sane person left. Not a new concept, but entirely re imagined and relocated to Rapture, the underwater utopia gone wrong.

Bioshock is chock full of truly frightening moments, and not the standard spring-loaded cat stuff, but real glimpses into chaos and insanity. There's nothing about the game that isn't entirely creepy, but at the same time appealing.

The Good
First off, I want to say this: BioShock is a solid game, a decent game. It didn't grab me by any part of my anatomy and make me fall in love with it, but it didn't make me want to spit blood, either. It's a... solid game... which is about the highest compliment I can pay it.

It can certainly be fun at times. My favorite thing has to be the telekinesis plasmid. Tossing explosive barrels around is fun. Tossing heavy bags of fertiliser at an enemy's head is fun. Less effective, but good for a sadistic chuckle: Throwing a dead cat at an enemy's head. And throwing a dead enemy at a live enemy is fun. I really like the telekinesis plasmid.

Garbage cans! They're good to throw.

Forgetting telekinesis for a moment, I also enjoyed watching the fights between Big Daddies and splicers. You know the splicers are going to lose, which just makes the whole thing more entertaining.

Though it became repetitive, I did enjoy hacking gun turrets and security bots, then sitting back and watching them do their job.

Other good points:
* Good graphics (though I personally found them rather hard to look at after a while, with their overly high contrast and slew of filters).
* Pretty decent voice acting (except for a major character who pops up later in the game... no spoilers... if you've played it, you should know who I'm referring to).
* High attention to detail, with plenty of nice touches. Something I thought was really cool was the weapon upgrades, which actually change the look of your steampunkish guns by adding extra cogs and tubes, etc.
* An interesting, different setting.
* The story is decent enough (though very similar to System Shock 1 & 2).
* Good ragdolls (except for the incessant jitter problems).

The Bad
The main problem is how repetitive this game is. There are only a few different types of enemies, and they are all 'splicers' (super-fast homicidal maniacs). Most blast you with pistols or tommy-guns. Others leap wildly and try to slash your face off. A third, rarer type crawl along the ceiling and throw spinning blades at you. Later on, you encounter a couple who are a bit more interesting (the guy who phases in and out of corporeal form and shoots fireballs) but by the half-way point of the game, you will have seen every one of the five(?) enemy variations... over and over again. You will have also heard all their dialog to the point of boredom. I have read many reviews, comments and pieces of hyperbole about how these are 'tragic characters' you can 'empathise with.' Well... no... they're fast, repetitive zombies. Just because they're dressed to go to the ball and have a few lines of speech about their dead spouse or moulting scalp does not make me feel sorry for them, particularly when repetition reinforces the fact that they are all clones of each other and they are all 'crazy' in exactly the same way (i.e. they see you and instantly want to murder your ass).

The two other denizens of Rapture who you will meet regularly are the famous Big Daddy and Little Sister. Sadly, repeated dialogue and behavior also make them seem very artificial, despite the interplay between the two. Unlike the splicers, the Big Daddies don't attack you unless provoked. However, you have to kill them to get to the Little Sisters, to get the 'Adam,' which is the local currency and will allow you to 'buy' additional plasmids and power-ups. Therefore, it's up to you to choose when you want to fight a Big Daddy. Unfortunately, this makes the Big Daddy fights feel like more of a chore than anything. It's sort of like, "Well, I'm going to be leaving the level soon. Guess I'd better kill a couple of Big Daddies before I go sigh." At least, that was how I was feeling after a few fights. These 'boss battles' really lose all their tension because, although the Big Daddies are tough, it absolutely doesn't matter if you die, as you will just get sent to a nearby respawn chamber, then you can come back and continue fighting with only a few seconds' delay. If the Big Daddies could, say, go plug themselves into an unhackable wall socket and recover their energy while you were temporarily dead, this might even the odds. Then you'd have to kill 'em in one go, which would definitely bring the tension back. But no.
Anyway, I like the Big Daddies. They are pretty cute, and can be fun to fight, sometimes. Maybe the first few times. But like everything else in BioShock, they become dull.

The game throws a constant stream of splicers at you, from start to finish. They respawn like mad. Clear an area and approximately a minute later (or less), another splicer will spawn. Combat becomes very boring, especially as (on normal difficulty), it takes a lot of shots from most weapons to take down even a single attacker.

The idea of the game is to make each encounter different by giving the player a wide range of plasmids (or, as another reviewer called them; 'spells') and guns (with plenty of different ammo types). Unfortunately, as with the enemies, by the half-way point of the game, you will have collected all the available guns and all the plasmid types (the only remaining thing will be more powerful versions of existing plasmids). Also, by this point, I had fought so many splicers that I'd become thoroughly bored with the battles.

Most encounters will involve you switching back and forth between your plasmids and guns, as the guns on their own are usually too weak. In fact, all the weapons feel too weak, even when upgraded (the crossbow being the one exception). Switching between plasmids and guns is technically simple but in practice, it feels over-fiddly. The problem is that this game, despite its pretensions of being something greater, is just a shooter; but it's a shooter that's over-complicated and lacks one of the most basic requirements of the genre; the simple, satisfying fun factor. You cannot just blow enemies away in BioShock, although it will probably get to a point where you will long to. Each encounter is a drawn-out battle where you will switch between plasmids and guns as you first distract, then slightly maim, then confuse, then finally kill your opponent. What is intended as an innovative approach to combat becomes stale through repetition. Sure, there are some really interesting plasmids (turn people against each other; make them targets for security bots; make them attack a fake version of yourself) but some are better than others, some prove to be near useless and there are a few basic strategies you will find yourself using time and time again.

There are other problems, too. Throughout the game, you are swamped with items to pick up and vending machines to buy items from. As if there wasn't enough ammo lying around already, and enough money to buy ammo, you can also pick up seemingly useless items such as 'brass tubes' and screws. Then, you throw all these pieces of junk into another wall-mounted machine, which will magically turn them into... more ammo. Why is this a problem? Because there is simply too much. It is yet another aspect of the game that becomes repetitive; endlessly picking up things, endlessly using vending machines. And when a vending machine is never less than a couple of rooms away, it removes much of the challenge and excitement of being low on ammo and having to survive. In fact, when I was about 3/4 of the way through the game, I decided to make things more interesting by imposing a rule on myself: I would stop using vending machines and 'invent-o-matics' - From now on, I would only take what I could find lying around. It came as no surprise that this instantly made the game more fun, and took away some of the repetitiveness as I no longer had to hack those damn vending machines.

Hacking...
Hacking is something that sounds like it should be exciting and carry some level of difficulty. But it's not. Every time you hack a vending machine, bot, camera, gun turret or lock you do the exact same thing: Play a game of Pipe Dream. Now, I quite like Pipe Dream but you'll play it a few hundred times in BioShock. And as if it wasn't easy enough already, you have the option of using all kinds of 'gene tonics' (aka. power-ups) to boost your hacking skills and make the game ridiculously easy. It sort of boggles the mind that Rapture is full of security devices that can all be easily overcome by sticking a few bits of pipe together.

The big problem with this game, apart from its crashing lack of variety is that its design is fearful. What do I mean? Well, there is a sort of schizophrenic battle going on here between trying to make the game complex and flexible and advanced... and then the flipside of the coin: trying desperately hard to make it accessible, and not too difficult or daunting for novices, and making sure that absolutely no-one is going to be the slightest bit confused by anything. Yes, it's the 'dumbing down' that this game has inflicted on itself.

The most obvious example of this is what I'm going to call 'the golden arrow of idiocy.' You know a game is treating you like an idiot when you are given an objective, which is then not only written in your diary (with optional extra hints) and marked on your map but also pointed out by a giant golden arrow which hangs in the air and which you can follow along mindlessly like an obedient puppy dog. The doors you have to open are even marked in gold! At least, that's what I'm told. I turned off the arrow as soon as I saw it. Thankfully, there was an option to do so, though maybe there won't be in BioShock 2. Honestly, I can't believe that the designers were so worried about people getting lost that they put a giant golden arrow in this game! It works for GTA, sure, but it has no place here.

Oh yeah, and the respawn chambers. On the one hand, I can actually see the point of them, as the load times are so horrendous that reloading every time you died would be a real hassle. But come on! Where is the tension in a game that has basically no penalty for dying? Death doesn't cost anything, doesn't lose you anything... You re-appear with a decent chunk of health and psi-power ('Eve') in a chamber which is usually about 20 seconds' walk from the spot where you died. In fact, dying can often be a benefit! Low on health? Only got one medi-kit left? Well, you may as well save it for later. It'd be more efficient to quickly die, because then you'll get some free health! It does honestly come down to that mental process sometimes. "Oh, I'm about to die. No point in wasting a medi-kit. ZAP! There we go... respawn chamber."

I am whining like a miserable baby here. The trouble is, there's just so much to complain about.

What else?

Well, what's so great about the story? It has strong similarities to System Shock 1 / 2 (Great story the first time around, but feeling a bit recycled now), and apart from that, there isn't much going on here. I don't think it's a spoiler to say that there are two goals in the game - "Save my kids" and then, a bit later, "Kill the bad guy." I kept thinking as I was wandering about: "WHY am I doing this? Why am I following these orders from some guy talking to me on the radio?" Now, those who have played the game will know that there's a twist in the story that answers this very question. Fans will say it's a great twist! Personally, I think it's an excuse, trying to explain away the standard following of objectives that goes on and the standard lack of player choice.

I'm going to wrap this up soon. Just a few more points:
* The game isn't scary at all, though I think it's trying to be. It copies so many elements from System Shock 2. However, SS2 was incredibly scary; one of the things that made it stand out. BioShock, once you get used to it after the first hour or so, and aside from a couple of isolated moments, totally fails on this count.
* Nearly everything from SS2 is back, whether it was good or bad. BioShock's 'research camera' is not very practical and only slightly less silly than ingesting(?) random chemicals in SS2.
* Patches may have fixed this by now, but I experienced a few random crashes. When this happens, it will delete your config file and replace it with a default one, meaning you lose all your settings, including your key mappings. This is very annoying. It also makes no real sense and seems to be a strange trend in recent games (Prey was the same). I know you can locate the 'default' file and edit that, but you shouldn't have to. You should at least be given the choice of starting the game with your settings after a crash.

The Bottom Line
Looking back at this review, I think it sounds as though I was deeply hurt by this game. That's not the case, although I did become quite bored by it, and I trudged on and completed it only for the sake of achieving that goal. But like I said at the start of the review, it's a solid game. It's alright. It's decent. It just could've used more variety (particularly in the enemy types) and some different design decisions.

If you haven't played any of the System Shock, Deus Ex or Thief games, then you may think BioShock is fantastic. If you have played those games, you may still think it's fantastic (because people have different opinions; which is great, by the way!). Or like me, you may feel it's a game that tries hard to continue the great tradition of those immersive, amazing action/RPGs... but falls short.