BioShock

The Good
Nice graphics, nice decorations, starts very interestingly, unique Ayn Rand concept in a game (or is it not?). Also the whole underwater, big daddy iconography is instant classic and very characteristic, good for marketing this crappy fps.

The Bad
Gameplay, gameplay, gameplay, gameplay. It reeked of awfulness!

Trying to aim an enemy is so bad that you end up shooting whatever in wherever direction. So much for the fps character of the game. No head shots here and all the "splicers" (the word for zombies in this game) have a health bar like a beat-em up game, meaning you have to exhaust it with mindless shooting without the fun of special movements and combos of the latter type of games.

There are no stealth-mechanics either. You just walk and shoot. The weapons-plasmids in this game are so unbalanced and have been used in so many forms and games in the past, that it really makes me question what so breakthrough did the reviewers of "big zines" find in them. Lets leave that matter to everyone's own opinion, I have a really insulting one.

Whoever said there are rpg elements in this game, he is lying or has never played an actual rpg. The only such element is that you can choose to advance between a bit more in health or a bit more mana, and some weapon decisions. Then Snoopy vs the Red Baron is an rpg too! NOPE! It's just a nice arcade game and this is just a bad shooter. The enemies are boring and repetitive.

The objectives and "quests" for the story to move forward are boring and dull.

Did I mention the word boring? That's the definite word for this game after playing for 2-3 hours. The only reason left to continue playing is the hype this game got.. thoughts crossed my mind like "maybe it will get better", "maybe the story becomes fascinating afterwards", "maybe the environments will become breathtaking". NO. So I quited about halfway through the game and uninstalled it.

Saw the rest of the plot in YouTube and well it's just a mediocre b-movie scenario with a twist, nothing spectacular whatsoever. If this is a deep intellectual story then Arnold Schwarzenegger movies are more deep than the fathomless abyss! The whole Ayn Rand concept is used so shallowly and Hollywoodish in a bad comic manner that it just vanishes in favour of a "different" zombie concept, so overused in cinema and games today.

The Bottom Line
If it's your first or second fps, go ahead give it a try. You'll probably like it, statistically speaking. For me having played games with great horror plots like Undying or Dark Corners of the Earth combined with superb gameplay which was actually fun and breathtaking at the same time, I can tell that the only thing this game has in spades is hype. And blind followers.

I'm closing this review saying that I've never played System Shock games, so I do not compare it with them and I don't care about the rootkit or the limited installations. I'm only interested in the fun factor, be it mind-bogging fun, scary sweaty, jumping off your seat fun, arcade fun, silliness, intellectuality or anything that can suck you in and offer you a non-boring experience. Thanx for reading my first review.