Bioshock is a shockingly bad game that you wont regret ignoring.
I want to get this out of the way before anything else, Bioshock is a good game, but in lue of the fact that this game was supposed to be one of the best of the year, I can't not think of it as a disappointment. It's the spiritual successor to System Shock 2, which it is an almost carbon copy of, however it is dumbed/watered down to the point where it doesn't even feel like an FPS with RPG elements, and more like a customizeable wrench wielding (explicit)fest. I can't say I ever got the feeling off, yeah, now this game is fun, because I was loathing the repetatitveness of this game. I think at one point I got so irritated with those stupid hacking mini games that I wanted to stop playing the game because I was going to punch my monitor.
Yeah it blew hot (youknowwhat) as far as I'm concerned. It was basically the same level, same enemies - as irritating and annoying as they get - same useless concepts which in the end just kill the game. I don't know if 2k realized that less than a handfull of those "plasmids" are worth it - the super "power" addons you can inject yourself with. Even thought some are amusing, the price you pay for using the garbage ones, which is about 90% of them, outweighs the outcomes, making most of them just a waste of EVE - the bio-fuel you need for using Plasmids. What was probably the most irritating part had to be the constant diversions, for example, coming up to door, which should be easy to open, then being told that you have to travel through hell just to get it to open, which involves senseless backtracking, irritating enemies and my personal favorite, those (explicit) annoying gun turrents/cameras.
The first thing you hear about this game is that it's a "FPS-RPG", which is just a bunch of bull(explicit). I don't know what was more pathetic, its FPS aspects or its RPG aspects. For the most part, you can beat the entire game using your wrench, which totally defeats the purpose of an FPS, since it is a first person 'shooter'; not only that but a good 60% of your weapons are useless, completely useless, like they aren't even worth your time. These upgrades virtually don't do (explicit) and are complete useless, furthermore they don't equate to being an RPG element, because as far as I'm concerned, there have been tons of FPS games out there that do have gun improvements. Not only that but having three kinds of specific ammunition, might sound usefull to some, is completely worthess in this game, and even more difficult to cycle through, because it takes a year to load the new bullets or the new magazine, making the pace of the game slow as (explicit).
The next thing that you might hear is that you can customize the abilities of your character. This in truth is usefull, I actually found several of those "Tonics" which prove to give you an uper hand. However just like Plasmids and the weapons in this game, only a handfull are actually worth something, the rest are just crap. Which then brings up the question, what where they thinking? I know the point of an RPG is to have choice right? You got crappy weapons and crrappy abilities, and then you have the vise versa, but the good seems to outweigh the bad; in this game the crappy severely outweighs the good. Also "moral choice" in this game, once again leads us down the path of either becoming the second coming of Jesus Chirst, or Satan reborn. Seriously, is there something wrong with doing something different than that? Can I be in the middle? Presentation wise, this game has probably the worst graphics for a game using the Unreal 3 Engine. I was running this maxed out and it seriously just looks bad. The enemies look pasty, and so does the blood, the level design is like I said before, repetative and boring, and the animations look pretty bad. All in all this isn't a pretty looking game for those that have the ability to max it out, or for the guy who loves his graphics. Sound for the most part is pretty non-existant. You don't have interludes of music like you do in other games. Even though I'm not a "sound guy", I believe that sound is able to drive the pace of the game and create a setting that is what both the developers and the audience want. The story is great, taking nothing away from it, but it is a carbon of copy of the one from System Shock 2, just that has a different theme and setting.
Even if you felt like you wanted to try a game that isn't your conventional FPS, Bioshock isn't the one to be choosing. It gets boring and mundane, you want to finish it off just for the sake of beating the game. It doesn't have multiplayer and is of average length, around 15 hours, meaning that unless you enjoy playing games over and over again, this probably wont fit your needs. I can see how this would work on the Xbox 360 because of the achievements, they would promote playing it over again just to get them, seeing as a lot of them are hard to get from what I heard. However that doesn't translate well on the PC, due to the fact that there are no achievements, and if you beat the game and are attentive, you can pretty much figure out all there is to know about Bioshock. This is a game with a lot of promise, that just doesn't come through; it's empty, annoying, and difficult to get it up running on the PC, meaning that it's safe to say that letting this one go wouldn't be a bad idea.