I'm pissed off with Bioshock, I feel cheated, misled.
I'm sure I played 2K Boston's game, but all can recall is watching it, taking it in. The gameplay was purely incidental. I can remember the shock of being thrust in a flaming ocean, I can remember marvelling at the elegant, art-deco architecture, I can remember losing myself in the artistic consistency of the world 2K Boston had created, sucking in with a grinning appreciation it's nods to Ayn Rand. I remember still the trepidatious awe of my first encounter with a Big Daddy, the buzzing neon and stylish advertisements and I remember the brilliance of Andrew Ryan's revelation, one of those ingenious twists that transforms any consequent play-throughs into marathons of forehead-slapping disbelief.
All these things were enough that, having finished the game after a week, I left with the impression of having played one of those masterpieces that emerge for the PC every four or five years... a Deus Ex, or a System Shock or a Grim Fandango. I suspect the writers of every 95% and over review felt the same way.
It was only months later, in the shower that I remembered with a bemused "Hang on just a bloody minute!" about actually playing the game.
This time I remembered the plethora of weapons and powers I didnt use because the game literally threw ammunition at me after every fire-fight, I remembered the false choice that the game put to you: whether to hamper yourself and free the little girls or aid yourself in destroying them (2K Boston copped out and made them both pretty much equivalent, in gameplay terms) and I remembered feeling absolutely no tension whatsoever, safe in the knowledge that should anything go wrong I would respawn a few doors back to restart the firefight where I left off.
The only elements I struggled to remember were the anemic 'hacking' system and the incongruously over-blown boss fight.
The game is a bamboozle, a con-artist. It distracts with it's complex and thoughtful treatise on Objectivism, it's beautiful, consistent, unique and detailed world and it's superb and superbly delivered dialogue, pushing you obliviously through the kind of straight-forward, linear shoot'em up that you'd otherwise leave to marinade on the $5 shelf of Best Buy.
I'm sure I played 2K Boston's game, but all can recall is watching it, taking it in. The gameplay was purely incidental. I can remember the shock of being thrust in a flaming ocean, I can remember marvelling at the elegant, art-deco architecture, I can remember losing myself in the artistic consistency of the world 2K Boston had created, sucking in with a grinning appreciation it's nods to Ayn Rand. I remember still the trepidatious awe of my first encounter with a Big Daddy, the buzzing neon and stylish advertisements and I remember the brilliance of Andrew Ryan's revelation, one of those ingenious twists that transforms any consequent play-throughs into marathons of forehead-slapping disbelief.
All these things were enough that, having finished the game after a week, I left with the impression of having played one of those masterpieces that emerge for the PC every four or five years... a Deus Ex, or a System Shock or a Grim Fandango. I suspect the writers of every 95% and over review felt the same way.
It was only months later, in the shower that I remembered with a bemused "Hang on just a bloody minute!" about actually playing the game.
This time I remembered the plethora of weapons and powers I didnt use because the game literally threw ammunition at me after every fire-fight, I remembered the false choice that the game put to you: whether to hamper yourself and free the little girls or aid yourself in destroying them (2K Boston copped out and made them both pretty much equivalent, in gameplay terms) and I remembered feeling absolutely no tension whatsoever, safe in the knowledge that should anything go wrong I would respawn a few doors back to restart the firefight where I left off.
The only elements I struggled to remember were the anemic 'hacking' system and the incongruously over-blown boss fight.
The game is a bamboozle, a con-artist. It distracts with it's complex and thoughtful treatise on Objectivism, it's beautiful, consistent, unique and detailed world and it's superb and superbly delivered dialogue, pushing you obliviously through the kind of straight-forward, linear shoot'em up that you'd otherwise leave to marinade on the $5 shelf of Best Buy.
Months later and its still there, on your hard-drive, as you scratch your head and shake your fist at the bloody nerve of it!
1 comment:
I take offense to your judgement. So what if its a typical gameplay and very straightforward? Games aren't all about the gameplay, many people such as myself appreciate the graphics. And more to the point the storyline is amazing. I think the choice of using a basic game engine makes the game that much better. The best games have two out of those three things: Gameplay, Graphics, Story. You put any of those two together and you've got an amazing game. If Bioshock had tried to add a new innovative type of gameplay i believe that it would have ruined it. Their style of guns and upgrades are great, and then add in the ability for plasmids and that was top of the line for basic gameplay! Even you appreciated it until you thought about the gameplay... apparently you're one of the few people who has specific wants in games. Most people just want graphics so that its more fun to blow things up and whatnot. I also believe that if the graphics and story hadn't been so good you wouldn't have cared about the gameplay, you just felt as though the gameplay didn't match the rest of the game. But its near impossible to get all three.
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