Click the link above for video. You know, I watched the emmy’s last night and I thought to myself “hmmm….I wonder why she was silenced. Was it a glitch? Did she curse? Did she say something stupid?”
Well, two out of those three were some pretty good odds I’d be right.
I don’t know why ANYONE would put Thomas the Tank Engine with a song that is about debating serial murder, BUT for some reason the music matches the video. Which means that I’ll probably never see a commercial for Thomas the Tank Engine without getting some shiver up my spine.
Murderous trains. Creepy.
First off let me say that Bioshock isn’t a bad game. It’s actually a quite good game which tries to add some bit of depth to the overall simple premise to the FPS genre. Unlike its other hyped up FPS cousins (Halo) this game actually tries to dig up something more than just “pew pew pew” laser beams and gunshots. However, in the course of the production of this game it seemed to lose something.
Namely, an actual personality of its own. “But Aurvant! You just said it added depth and stuff!”
It does. Sorta. Let me explain.
Bioshock is the “spiritual successor” to an older game known as System Shock 2. The latter game was created some years ago and it has been hailed as a brilliant and horrifying game that takes the player through a pretty detailed world that has some FPS and RPG elements all mashed in there. As I just mentioned the game has been thought to be “brilliant” and apparently just because Bioshock has the term “shock” in its name we should all assume that this is the next game in the series we’ve been waiting for and should fall down and praise it’s name.
Here’s where I have my problem with the game and many other people do as well. When they said the game was a “spiritual successor” to System Shock 2 they figured it was built in the same element. However, the truth is that Bioshock actually sucked out the soul of SS2 and has paraded around as if it had a inner being of its own. In short – It isn’t LIKE System Shock 2….It IS System shock 2.
Aside from the 1950’s like propaganda mantra and the inclusion of Big Daddy it pretty much is the same game in a different closed in area with a nice bit of polished paint thrown on top of it. Plus, the RPG elements of Bioshock are so incredibly simple that a child who is required by the state to wear a helmet could figure out how to “customize” the character. When I first played the demo I was amazed to see my character pick up his first plasmid and then see Big Daddy and stuff, but then I noticed something really weird. My character could immediately use anything he so wished without having to carry any type of proficiency in it at all.
Namely, Hacking. I found it somewhat disconcerting that my character, who has no battle experience, mechanical prowess, or history of even knowing what the hell a Plasmid was, could just run around and pick up anything and start killing and hacking things with it as if it were second nature. This is a common occurrence in FPS games, but if your going to tout the addition of an RPG aspect then by GOD actually add something RPG-ish in to it.
The tonics are, for the most part, trivial and really don’t change the aspect of your game, and considering that your guy can just use anything he sees from the get go they don’t really make much sense.
The shining aspect of the game is it’s battle system (which is actually just the standard point at things and shoot it interface) and it’s well done. The animation was nice and it was cool to see Big Daddy running around but aside from all of the eye candy and wonderment of exploring Rapture there really isn’t much to see. I previously wrote in a post that the greatest part of Bioshock wasn’t the gameplay or the story itself but instead it is just Rapture. The city is glorious and if they could remove all of the broken crap that gets in your way (splicers) of exploring the underwater city then it would actually be a much better game.
That said, it’s still a pretty decent game. It’s not the gaming messiah that it was promised, but it IS fun to play….at least until the last 1/4 of the game where it just feels kinda rushed. However, I don’t write game reviews so you’ll have to go to some other mainstream source to get the story on what some of the “experts” in the industry think. However, I came across this guy and he pretty much says exactly what I was thinking when I completed the game.
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