Untouchable atmosphere and a more-than-decent storyline back up this original and innovative hybrid shooter.
Good: Bioshock is the master of atmosphere, blowing literally every other game out of the water. The story is pretty decent, with a few very nice scenes, and the environment is top-notch. The powers and experimental side f the game all work extremely well and add that new flavor to the game. The game is of a decent length. Great graphics all around. AMAZING sound and soundtrack. Extremely memorable segments and level design. Interesting to think about in terms of its present philosophical level--something rather new to games. Overall, a great package.
Bad: The game is entirely too easy thanks to a silly, "approachable" re-spawn system that essentially makes your character invincible. Some of the later levels seems tedious and include a few segments that seem put there just for length. The final boss fight is incredibly easy, and helps to add to the abrupt feeling the entire ending segment has. The epilogue cutscene fir both good and evil sides is very short, and the lack of something as simple as credits after this epilogue really make the ending seem very blunt and abrupt, which manages to make the game feel sort of rushed or disappointing in that department. The story, while good, seems like it could've been a bit better to me.
Seriously, the biggest problem for this game is the difficulty. And some might squabble with me: play on hard! Don't use the vita-chambers! But that just makes the game tedious. It feels very unbalanced, especially when later enemies can really hurt your character pretty much all of the sudden. And as for the "hard" difficulty, it manages to make the entire game feel a bit too tedious. There is challenge in playing, but because there is no viable system of checkpoints or just using ONLY the ability to save anywhere, there's a whole lot of unnecessary running back-and-forth, and a lot of otherwise careless playing on parts that otherwise could rock. It is my biggest problem with Bioshock.
Still, the game has a huge number of plusses, and is definitely an experience worth playing through more than once and loving more than once. Recommended to fans of shooters, horror games, and--to some extent--RPGs.