Bioshock

[jodiamonds]

I finished Bioshock tonight.

It's excellent. Bravo to those who made it.

(Also, first FPS I've played much at all, let alone finished, on console. I'm more of a PC guy. But it was excellent nonetheless.)

You may now make spoiler-related comments should you be so inclined. :)

Comments

Some Critique

[jodiamonds]

This isn't really intended to be thorough.

=== SPOILERS CONTAINED WITHIN ===

Bioshock was pretty great and a fun time. But I wouldn't give it 10/10 (so the 9.9 rankings I've seen seem off to me).

It didn't have as much RPG elements as I would have liked. Yes, there was some "character design", but that was -mostly- a consideration about which weapons you want. And while there were some differences between weapons (and I'm counting most plasmids as weapons here), it was more a matter of having diversity or guessing what enemies you'd be facing and choosing the Best Weapon appropriately.

The beginning of the game was good for incorporating a tutorial, but kind of bad for the excessively linear gameplay. There's virtually no choices to make for the first few hours (unless you want to be perverse and try killing things with the wrench, but that's not really a meaningful choice presented to the player). Normally you get -some- choices before the game even starts, often significant ones. I'm sure this part is pretty boring for

Re: Some Critique

[dibalh]

Pretty much spot on with my opinions. From about hour 2 until The Big Reveal was a fantastic experience. Then there was a strong lack of new stuff, and the story really stopped on a dime at the end. I played on Medium difficulty, and took the more short-term-rewards behavioral route. I'm inclined to give it a few weeks and then play again on Hard, with perhaps more of a stealth bent (I was pretty unsubtle.). It did feel like it was missing real choices in character-build. Maybe the PC community will mod that in.

The other thing that felt missing was interaction with what normality was left in Rapture. There's clearly a few people with a shred of sanity left, and you're isolated from them in a way that feels artificial.

As far as 10/10 review scores, I wouldn't rate it 10 of 10, but I would rate it as highly as other games that get ridiculously high nonsensical review scores.