My Bioshock Review

[WrinklyNinja]

Just finnished Bioshock and here is my review.

Im gonna cut out all the fat that you have probably already read/known yourself. This is less of a review and more my personal notebook.

Graphics are awesome. Sound amazing on surround sound (if not a little bass-heavy).

Now the gameplay. Much was made about the whole plasmids and conventional weapon combination. And it started out promisingly with the whole electricity + wrench thing. I remember thinking "ah, this will make me think, awesome". A few hours into the game, it was still awesome. It wasnt until I had seen all the splicer types that I thought "oh, so its rock paper scissors then.."

The shooting is really quite bad. What are easily the most innacurate guns in an FPS game ever. "LUL ITS NOT AN FPS!" Yes, yes it is. Fuck off with that "ALSO ROLEPLAYING" the roleplaying portion is this: "Press X to harvest and Y to save". Thats it.

It sounds like Im being harsh. I am and Im not, even though these are faults, the game isnt broken. I had an absolute blast. The combat although very Rock Paper Scissor, is engaging, challenging and makes you fight smarter than any other first person shooter. You often find yourself fighting multiple different enemies at once and using multiple different methods to kill them. The atmosphere created by the brilliant sound and graphics, especially the art style, is un-rivaled in my opinion. I had quite a few "OHMYGODIMBEINGATTACKEDINTHEDARKBYSOMETHINGTHATSCREAMS!" moments. And had various occasions where I got caught out by the developers. Maybe this was down to me playing the game very loud on surround and usually in the dark.

This game is a good game. Infact its a great game and it makes me glad that I play games so I can experiance things like this. However the last 3 or so hours of the game are boring as hell. The game grinds into a normal shooter, just with really bad shooting mechanisms. And the final hour is a joke which involves some of the worst linear corridor crawling with some of the worst friendly AI in a game EVER.

Yes there is a final boss fight like pretty much every game ever. And no, its not awesome. Infact, because I stocked up on ammo beforehand instead of all 9 possible health packs. I got caught out and kept getting killed. No save points for the past hour except the one where you are in the start of the final fight meant that I had to reload back to an hour before, do all the terrible corridor crawl again and then buy ample medical supplies and skimp on some of my ammo supplies.

Ending? Bad, really really bad. Even the Ken Levine who was the head of irrational games said that it wasnt his idea..

To sum up. This is a fantastic game for everything but the last 3 hours. The Art style is brilliant, the combat flawed but still awesome and the atmosphere it creates is un-rivaled.

A must buy for anybody even if you do smash up your room at the closing stages.

[Mankind]

I mostly agree with you, the first 5 hours of the game are absolutely brilliant, but it just trails off into the realm of genericness near the end.

The graphics aren't awesome though. Too shiny.

Also, the game was too easy on Normal. I died only a couple of times during the whole game.

[WrinklyNinja]

Originally Posted by Mankind

The graphics aren't awesome though. Too shiny.

Well they are and they arnt. Yes they are shiny, almost Doom 3 plastic shiny, however its not like the world was naturalistic either. I feel that within the context of its art style it can get away with the graphics.

[Wedgy]

Originally Posted by Mankind

Also, the game was too easy on Normal. I died only a couple of times during the whole game.

I think i read somewhere that the PC versions difficulty was not tweaked for keyboard and mouse so you played the same game that was set for a controller with the slower less accurate aim mechanics.

[Grael]

I found the last boss stupidly easy, i did it on normal too and totally agree with you, the last bit with collecting all the big daddy bits was very dull i found some of the plasmids totally useless and alot of the games totally useless, once you had the cross bow for example, everything else just isnt used.

[draganess]

Thanks for the personal review. It made very interesting reading. I havent had a go at this one and was concidering getting it for the older kids (like the hubby hehe) Is there anything that singles it out above other games of its type? AND lol would you recomend someone to buy it or to just rent it?

[WrinklyNinja]

Originally Posted by draganess

Thanks for the personal review. It made very interesting reading. I havent had a go at this one and was concidering getting it for the older kids (like the hubby hehe) Is there anything that singles it out above other games of its type? AND lol would you recomend someone to buy it or to just rent it?

I would recommend it to anyone. The game is awesome. just a bad ending few hours.

[Fable]

So what was the ending?

Everybody I know got to the save the trees bit, got bored and stopped playing.

[teflon]

I played it for a bit and got bored too. The graphics were nice but FPS are all the same, I think they give me vertigo because I always feel sick after playing them for a while.