i think the biggest problem with bioshock is that they pretty much took everything that was good about system shock 2, and then said - okay, this is great, but that element of it isn't great, how can we improve that?
and they tweak and tweak and tweak and eventually that element of the game works great, but it throwsthe overall mechanicout of whack completely
hacking is a perfect example, in system shock 2 it was super tense because you were in the game environment as you hacked, no gamepauses, so hacking was always cool and tense, even if it was justrandomly based off your character skill
in bioshock, they take a great concept - hacking, tweak it to make it "more accessable" or whatever the hell that's supposed to mean, and suddenly it's a tedious gameplay element, hacking stuff becomes a chore, you do it too much and there's no challenge or tension to it, you can't even die from failure
in system shock 2, if you fail, either the security alarm would activate or if it was a container, the damn thing could blow up, you were rewarded for success and punished for failure, the only flaw to the hacking mechanic was that it was based entirely on character skill, and you just click click click until it passes
they fixed that by making it into an interactive game, they just broke the overall hacking mechanic in the process
most of the game is similar, really
i know a lot of people might see constant referencing to shock 2 as pretty annoying, maybe even evangelical and self-important preaching simply for having played some computer game - but it really doeshappen for avery good reason, especially since bioshock is being lauded as the second coming... maybe by the current industry standards it is, and that's a pretty depressing thought
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