A masterpiece, that falls just short of perfection.
You open in the eyes of an unnamed hero, crash landing from a plane, right at the entrance to an underwater city called Rapture. The creator, Andrew Ryan, has built this city, in hopes that he could create a place to get away from the government that exists on the planet, that suppresses choice and total freedom of man.
The reason I say this is not a FPS is because your motivation in this game is not to kill whatever you see. Your motivation is to unravel the story, investigate the ruins of this city, and find out why you ended up here in the first place. Throughout the story you find diaries in the form of voice recordings. Each of these diaries gives you either a clue as to what to do next, or parts of the story behind Rapture. You get to know many characters that you never actually see, only hear the stories of from these diaries. You hear about a plastic surgeon that wants to change the way people look at beauty, the creator of Rapture's lover, and the woman who cares for the little sisters, which I will spare explaining in this review.
Throughout the story, your views on any character can shift in a second. You become sympathetic with the most cruel people in rapture, you hear all the sides of the story, and it's the story of Rapture and the people in it that compels you to continue you.
Now for the game play. There is action in this game, and it does have similarities to shooters. You have basic FPS guns, you have basic FPS shooting controls and game play, but the game puts it's own spin on it in a number of ways. One, you have something called plasmids, which are genetic enhancements to your DNA that allow you to do things like set people on fire and freeze people. The way you buy and use these, and other customizable characteristics you can buy, makes the game customizable, and actually gives it a sense that you're playing an RPG.
The game play, though, is where the game has it's problems. Firstly, as you get later into the game, it becomes harder and harder to find ammo. Towards the end, the constant, desperate search for ammo becomes a major element in the game play, and makes it quite tedious. The end of the game in general ends up being like this, especially since towards the end, the damage a splicer (the primary enemy in the game) can take grows to a ridiculous amount, so you need twice as much ammo.
The end certainly is the let down. Beyond that, the game ends with a rigorous and cruel escorting mission, that seems to have nothing to do at all with the story, and seems only to add more needless work that is certainly not fun. The climactic ending ends like any other action game, and is completely unoriginal-it's like something out of another game completely, because this game is so groundbreaking.
It is thankful though, that the game is a joy to play up until it's dying hours. It's original, it's beautiful, and it has it's own very unique style. It's creepy, haunting, and the story really is brilliance, and as is the game as a whole.