A truly engrossing and fascinating story told with style, but the gameplay is not what it could have been.
First, the good. BioShock's strong point, by far, is its story. It is immersive like nothing else I've seen all year, and compels the player to continue to unwrap more layers of the story. Side bits are also filled in through audio diaries that the player can pick up throughout the game. It all adds up to one amazing story that would be a New York Times best-seller if it found its way to book format. The game is also presented in an incredibly ambient and environmental way that sucks the player in during the parts that advance the story or atmosphere.
Another huge plus for BioShock is its unique combat system with the plasmids that the player can pick up. I can't recall seeing a first-person shooter that was so deeply customizable as BioShock is, and it's done very well. All of the plasmids are useful, as well - though some more than others - so you don't get a large stockpile of useless abilities and then a select few that you actually make use of.
Another thing I liked was the hacking system used in the game. Whenever the player comes to an electronic device, he or she can hack it by completing a puzzle minigame in order to make it work more in his or her favor. If it's a hostile device like a security camera or a security bot, it will work for the player once hacked. If it's a vending machine, it will lower its prices once hacked and get new inventory. There are other hackable things, as well.
But as can be guessed from the score this review gives the games, there are also, sadly, the not-so-good points. The first of these is BioShock's engaging combat system. Or, more precisely, the lack of such a thing. The enemies move very fast in the game, making it quite hard to get a lock on them when using things like a pistol or a machine gun from any sort of distance. This results in the player having to simply sit there and get shot while trying to aim at the person shooting at you. It all just feels a bit overly clumsy, and as if it could have been much more refined and fine-tuned.
The hacking minigame also has a fatal flaw in it, and I'm quite surprised that no one realized the possibility of this (or, if they did, that no one did anything about it). Within the minigame, you must assemble a randomly generated array of pipes to get a flow of liquid from point A to point B. Occasionally, bad tiles show up, where if liquid gets into them, the machine will short circuit, or an alarm will sound, and the game will end and you will have to try again. The fatal flaw is this: as the game advances and these puzzles become harder, it occasionally will be the case that there will be a *wall* of such tiles, rendering the puzzle unsolvable! I found this quite a notable flaw in the game, one that severely detracted from the hacking experience when it comes up.
The final gripe I have with the game is with the system of big daddies and little sisters. Each level has a set number of little sisters that must be either saved or harvested to collect ADAM, a substance that can be used to upgrade many aspects of the player. Since there are only a set number of little sisters, it's imperative when playing the game that you deal with them all to maximize the ADAM collected. But there's a big problem here: the appearance of little sisters is totally random, save for the first one. This is a problem because it often requires the player to simply wander aimlessly through the level in search of little sisters, when the player is probably wanting instead to just get on with the game and advance the story.
Another problem here is that the fight against big daddies is monumentally boring. The big daddies are nigh impossible to kill at first without you yourself either depleting your entire first aid kit stockpile or dying multiple times. As first aid kits are often hard to come by, this often results in the player just engaging a big daddy, dying, coming back, dying, coming back, dying, and so on until the thing is finally dead. It's not fun or exciting; it's just tedious, and is one of the worst parts of the game.
So here comes the bottom line. Should you buy BioShock? It depends on what you're looking for. Do you like intense, tactical shooters? Then perhaps you should rent it first, as the combat system leaves much to be desired. Do you like environmental, creepy games? Then yes, BioShock succeeds here as well. Do you love stories with immersive stories? Then yes, you should definitely buy BioShock.