GregHowley.com

As much as I've heard Bioshock praised by critics and players from all over, I'm not finding it to be the best shooter I've ever played. (Yes, I got Bioshock running, thanks to my new $50 Radeon X1300 card and Gamespot's performance guide) Sure, it's a lot of fun and I'm enjoying it, but it reminds me more of Doom 3 than of Half-Life 2. This got me thinking about which shooters I've found good and why. Here's what I came up with.

Half-Life 2 still tops my list. The graphics are amazing, and the game runs fine even on older machines. Even now, years later, the physics are still better than anything else out there, and the dystopic setting and storyline of fighting back against a government of alien invaders really struck a chord with me. I love the game.

Not far behind is Resident Evil 4, which is the only third-person shooter on my list. Despite the fact that you have to play with a dual shock controller rather than mouse and keyboard, it played very well, and incorporated a number of very cool elements such as Dragon's Lair-like action during cutscenes and God of War-like minigames. It was the first Resident Evil game to not be in the survival horror genre, but I loved it.

The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay was probably the only game based off a movie that I can say I really liked. It's probably also the best blend of stealth game and shooter I've ever seen. It had some conversation and mission-based elements that I enjoyed, and Vin Diesel played his part very well. It's just too bad that they haven't yet updated the XBox 360 backwards-compatibility list so that 360 owners can play this game. Hopefully it will happen in a firmware update before long.

My initial impression of Far Cry was not a good one, but the game quickly grew on me. It's still the game that springs to mind when I think about very difficult shooters, but the superlong draw range, the superdifficult stealth, and just... something about it keeps drawing me back. I do enjoy this game quite a lot.

I'll discuss Bioshock later.

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic was a game for which I had extremely low expectations. Maybe that's why I liked it so much - after the poor ratings it received, I was expecting crap, and I was pleasantly surprised. The skill tree was indeed fairly small, but the battle system and stealth mechanics were good, and so were the graphics. When a cyclops picked me up and roared in my face before dashing me on the rocks, I almost yelled out loud.

I may be giving F.E.A.R. a bit of a bad rap because it ran so poorly on my machine, but I wouldn't really be interested in going back and playing this one again. The creepy little girl mechanic has become a bit overdone, and this game didn't even do it very well. Yes, the AI was good, and yes, the way the enemies interacted with the terrain was neat, but it didn't make the game for me. It was an okay game, but I'm not sure I can really call it more than average. Ditto for Doom 3. I enjoyed it, but almost wish the game hadn't run so long. It had some good parts, but all-in-all, it wasn't outstanding.

Very few games have frustrated me more than Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. That game too had its moments, and actually had halfway decent stealth. But it wasn't particularly scary. The only truly good moments in the game come before you pick up a single weapon. And that didn't by far make up for the frustrations that come later in the game.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. just did not do it for me. Too much of an open world gave me no real direction. Probably the real reason I don't like the game is the same reason I don't like MMOs.

Prey had an interesting sounding premise: aliens invade Earth and capture you and your girlfriend. Interesting, but poorly executed. The wallwalking was fun, and the portals were neat, but those things alone couldn't carry the game, and the game was not a great one.

Lastly, Condemned: Criminal Origins had probably the best melee combat I've seen in a first person shooter. And the way enemies sometimes sidled up behind me was at times genuinely scary. But that in itself couldn't make up for the lousy story and poorly implemented firearm combat.

So what do I think about Bioshock? Well, the things about it that are being praised most are the graphics, the atmosphere, and the story. I'm not getting the best graphics (or even the best framerate) which detracts from the atmosphere, and I'm not sure yet about the story. It's interesting, but since it's told from the audiojournals you find lying around, it seems a bit disjointed. And since I'm only about halfway through the game, I'm sure I haven't yet hit the best parts. When I finish the game and review it, I'll revisit my feelings on this shooter in relation to others, but for right now I'll give it a B.