Time for review Mr. Bubbles.
There is little to say about "BioShock" which you haven't already heard. But let me repeat it anyways. It is a sfi-fi first person shooter in an utopian world gone terribly wrong. It's 1960, your plane crashes in the middle of an ocean, it seems you are the sole survivor. You manage to swim to the near lighthouse to find out it's a passage to an underwater city called Rapture. And that is a place where the real troubles begin. You must go and rescue family of a guy named Atlas who communicates with you by radio. But Andrew Ryan, genius who build the city is not very happy about it and so are splicers - the degenerated citizens of this sinking and collapsing world.
At times "BioShock" is a standard run and gun shooter, or should I rather say, it is if you want it to be. There is so much more to do here besides killing everything that moves that you can't consider it as just another shooter. There is also some variety in developing your character, so it's partly an RPG if you will. You can upgrade your weapons, hack security cameras, bots, safes, locks, learn new skills, create items, do little gambling, and of course mess with all the plasmids. Plasmids play quite a big part in the whole game both for storyline and gameplay. You can say they are equivalent of magic from fantasy games, EVE being mana but it's more than just that. You will not progress in game without some plasmids and you will not discover some additional stuff without others. You cannot possess them all at one time so it's your call which of them you want to use, and that will greatly influence your gameplay. There are more choices you need to make throughout the game and they will determine one of the game endings. Choosing, free will etc. is I think one of the themes of "BioShock" but you really need to play through the entire game to see all this.
Art design is absolutely extraordinary and you see it on every single step of your journey through Rapture. There are not many games that look that good and interesting from purely artistic point of view. It someway reminds me of "American McGee's Alice" but with non-linear level design... and of course running on Unreal Engine 3. Technically it's also very, very impressive, especially looking at water effects in different locations and situations. You can easily say that it's the most realistic water in video games and there's a lot of it in Rapture. But the game is not without a flaw. It's pretty, yes, but there is some problem (perhaps solved in some update, I don't know) with streaming textures. Very often you need to wait several seconds for all the textures to appear. That's maybe not a huge problem for gameplay but it takes some of the atmosphere, you know, you think to yourself "oh it just remembered me that it's just a game". Fortunately story, characters, and the overall design are all so friggin awesome that you will forget about that kind of bugs as soon as they are cease to be visible.
However, even the most compelling story would be nothing without solid gameplay. "Bioshock" generally delivers on both of that but I need to say it one more time, it's not a standard shooter. Yeah, you can shoot your way through the game but you will be missing a lot of content, backstory and everything there is to discover. But let's say you want "BioShock" to be a standard shooter and don't care much about other activities. Unfortunately here comes another problem. The truth is "BioShock" is not the best shooter out there. When it comes to intense firefight action "BioShock" is nowhere near games such as "Half-Life" series to name just that. It has it's moments, especially fighting with Big Daddies but it's more about playing with plasmids, launching your opponents into the air with mini tornados, setting them on fire, releasing a bee swarm on them etc. There is also something unconventional about set of your firearms even if it's pretty standard for FPS with guns like pistol, shotgun, grenade launcher, machine gun and couple of others. Not everyone will like it for sure.
"BioShock" is definitely something different from most of the popular shooters. It's not another "Call of Duty" or "Halo" clone, it manages to set it's own place in video game industry. "BioShock's" success will surely spawn a number of mediocre wannabe games but whatever happens it will be remembered for its unique style and the impact it made. People will talk about it in ten years and in twenty years and so on. So play it and see for yourself what is it all about, would you kindly?