BioShock Review

[noelbear]

BioShock - Take2

Overall - 9.5
Art direction/ animation - 8
Story - 10
Controls/ Combat/ Platforming - 8
Replay Value - 6
(Scale 1 - 10)

Summary

It's all about the plot. An extremely strong narrative with very memorable characters, and a plot twist that comes out of nowhere and kicks you in the teeth is supported by very solid graphics (particularly

Comments

[cowfusior]

I loved Bioshock (well, as far as I got through it anyway), but what has impressed me most is the art direction. There's not a whole lot of copy-and-paste going on there. I love the way the art lends so much to the mood of the whole thing: something cheerful gone terribly awry.

Now that I have migrated to new hardware I am going to reload and give it another shot. My aim is still horrible, though.

[noelbear]

The story is so great that you shouldn't not finish the game because you got frustrated by the combat. I assume that you did not get to the plot twist [confrontation with Andrew Ryan] - trust me - it's REALLY worth getting to.

You know you can turn the difficulty down mid-game in the options menu right? On Easy setting - with the shotgun - you don't need to have much aim. Fire in their general direction and they will go down. Also make sure you obtain and equip static discharge. That way every time a character hits you they get shocked which makes them stand perfectly still for a few seconds while you treat them to some shotgun lovin.

[cowfusior]

It's the flying things got me almost every time because my mouselook aiming isn't the greatest. And then regenerating with no real ammo, well, little frustrating for us old timers. :)

Another trick

[noelbear]

Well there's a trick for that also. Get and equip the Camouflage Plasmid. It makes you turn invisible when you stop moving. While it's not that effective against Splicers - it makes you nearly invulnerable to the flying security bots. Whenever you hear or see one - simple stop moving, you will turn invisible and the bot will lose interest in you and fly right by you, completely leaving you alone. This works for security cameras and turrets too. Electricity also fries the bots and knocks them out of the sky. You can then run up to them and break them at your leisure or hack them to make them fight on your side

[bigreddee]

The only surprise I have here is your replay score, because I would have raised this one to an 8 for a couple of reasons, all having to do with the way you play through the game, against the Big Daddies/Little Sisters. There are *two* possible endings, depending on how you harvest the Little Sisters. You can blow through the game by killing them and harvesting them, or saving every one,
which is more difficult given that you don't get as easy access to the upgrades to kill the baddies without them. For that alone, I played through the game twice, back to back. Plus, with the PS3 version, there's new downloadable content that I (who beat the 360 version a year and a half ago and don't get the cool new DLC) would love to get my hands on.

You're absolutely right: that plot twist has to be one of the most shocking things I've ever seen INS videogame. I think Gore Verbinski is going to make one helluva movie out of it.

[noelbear]

fair enough - I am considering replaying to get the other ending so maybe I did score that too low. I just downloaded the new content and you are welcome to come play anytime.

[shirtlifterbear]

I adored BioShock, though it creeped my out a LOT.

Some of the splicer dialog, when they don't know you're there?

*shudder*

PS Howdy!