It has been a few weeks since Bioshock was released to critical acclaim and high sales. In every sense of the word Bioshock has been a huge success and yet I can't help but feel disappointed. Its not that the game didn't meet my expectations, it did everything I knew it would, because I had watched every gameplay video released under the sun. And that is the problem, it didn't exceed any of my expectations. I was hoping to be blown away in sheer awesomeness, and well it never happened. I knew exactly what to expect and so far there have been no surprises (gameplay wise anyway). I had really been hoping that it would give me the same sense of amazement that Oblivion did.

We'll take a step back to about a year ago. Oblivion has been on the shelf for a good number of months and I finally just realize that this game exists. I see a few screenshots and it looks intriguing (first person sword play? Reminded me of the fun I had with Kingsfield for ps2), so I decide to try it out. Well needless to say within that first hour of gameplay I was blown away ten fold. And that was just in that little dungeon. The moment of sheer bliss came when I finally exited the sewer and realized just how bloody huge the game was. I'm pretty sure I spent a few moments just trying to take it all in. Oblivion would then go on to waste a substantial amount of my life.

Coming back to the present, here I am trying to figure out what went wrong. Why wasn't I blown away by Bioshock? After some thought I came to my conclusion. It was simple... I knew too much about the game going into it. There was no surprise because I had let there be none. I had researched every square inch of the game.

So here we now are, in the thick of the holiday game release season from hell. Far too many high quality titles are being released to the buying masses at the same time, and we are being overloaded with gameplay videos, previews and updates. If you have any games that you know are just gonna be awesome, do yourself a favour and avoid all this media and information. It will be a far better feeling when you first discover this stuff in game, rather than in a gameplay video. If you keep it fresh, the game will be all that more amazing.

PS - If you are waiting for Mass Effect, please for all that is good and holy in this world HEED MY ADVICE! I can tell Mass Effect will be one of those games that you want to save all the discovery and mystery up for when you play the game.