BioShock
This weekend I finished BioShock and, despite the 5-star review Gamespy gave it, I still fail to see it as the next level of gaming. Note: Spoilers exist below.
I’m nowhere near smart enough to grasp all the things going on in regards to objectivism—the way the Gamespy staff did—and, oddly enough, the target market for gaming (I assume, 13 to 25-year-old males) includes a large portion who wouldn’t get it either. Maybe this depth is needed as gamers age, but that doesn’t mean we’re getting smarter. Anyway, the story was very good—except for the inconsistencies. For instance, the way Little Sisters are immune to harm until you’re forced to protect one (adding just one line of dialogue to explain this would’ve fixed it). It feels like that scene from Thank You for Smoking where they have to justify smoking in space. These issues appear consistently in the game, done purely for gameplay sake—but for a game marketed as "for the thinking man," it really shouldn’t have happened.
The look of the game is amazing. It’s stylized perfectly, with a consistent theme across levels, but each area has its own unique feel. The design of the enemies is also brilliant. I mean, where else can you fight a giant in a 1940s deep-sea suit wielding a drill for a hand?
The gameplay is fairly straightforward for anyone who’s played a first-person shooter, with few new elements. The combination of abilities, skills, weapons, and mods harken directly back to Deus Ex (yes, and it copied from System Shock), but the games that pioneered this were slower, more cerebral. BioShock has no issue sending 10 maniacs of different types at you at once. That means all those abilities—using different ammo or powers—come down to whatever’s loaded at that moment, wasting what could’ve been a great system. The only difference is late in the game, when you lose control over your powers and they randomly switch (even introducing ones you never had before, breaking the story again). This does let you see what each power does, and maybe reconsider some choices late in the game. More of the game should work like this—especially the Big Daddy transformation, which basically just means the screen switches to a round shape and your footsteps get louder. 2K, take a hint from Halo or Riddick, where near the end you get a big, fun bonus moment (Halo has the Warthog drive, Riddick has the robot romp—and Riddick’s is better, since it’s the robot you’ve been fighting all game).
The gameplay has two standout elements. First, the camera acts like a weapon (ammo = film), and each successful shot at an enemy, turret, or drone increases your damage against that type—or makes them less effective or grants you a new ability. It rewards you for taking the time to do more than just spray-and-pray, or slowly stalk your target for that perfect shot before engaging. The second element isn’t so good: the vitachambers. These respawn you when you die—with more health than before and no penalty. They remove the primary risk of diving headfirst into battles and dying repeatedly. In fact, the AI is about as smart as a dog, since you can easily lead enemies to a vitachamber, turning combat into a mindless cycle: spawn → shoot → die → respawn → repeat.
The AI is smarter than a dog, but given that it’s built on the Unreal Tournament 2003 engine, I’d expect better. They attack recklessly (no squad control or use of cover), then flee to medics once wounded. If 2K had one person dedicated full-time to water effects, why not assign someone to AI?!
Anyway, it’s a much better game than Quake 4 or most of the garbage coming out of studios today—but it doesn’t raise any new bars.