Like everyone else with a pulse and an Xbox 360, I played the Bioshock demo, and here are my thoughts.

The only thing I didn't really like about the demo was the hacking gameplay. It fit with the whole 50s art-deco style, I guess, but I thought it was too cumbersome and jolted the player away from the action.

I also didn't like that you can't equip both your weapon and your plasmid simultaneously, it's either one or the other. It made sense with the machine gun since it's two handed, but not with the pistol or wrench.

I love the way they implemented the save system with the Vita-chambers. Your bog standard Checkpoint system, except a)there's no idiotic "Checkpoint Reached" notification every 2 minutes, b)you know exactly where you're going to reappear when you die, and c)the game doesn't "reset" itself to your last checkpoint; everything you did before you died stays done when you respawn. You don't have to watch the same tired cutscenes over and over again.

It makes Rapture feel like a real place, because of the consistency. You aren't going to be caught in some sort of Groundhog-day situation, the world resetting itself so you can repeat the same scenes over and over until you get it right. I think that is perhaps the most ingenious thing about the game.

On the whole, I think it's a much-needed breath of fresh air for the scripted singleplayer FPS, and I plan to pick up a copy of the full game on release. This is the kind of game that will live or die on its marketing and buzz, despite its awesomeness. It's a new IP set in an unfamiliar world that asks the player to do things he or she has never done before in a way that is different from other FPS games.

Quite frankly, I urge people to give this game a serious look. If Bioshock doesn't sell, it's going to be yet another case of a publisher taking a bona fide risk and it not paying off, and it'll take us just a little further down the path of homogeny in gaming.