GregHowley.com

To me, the term Game of the Year has come to mean that a game is simply above average. And so maybe Bioshock will be the game of the year. Meh. What was last year's? Gears of War? I think that's out on PC in November - I'll give it a shot.

Anyway, Bioshock certainly isn't a bad game. It's very good. The voice acting is excellent, the storyline is well-written, the setting is very dramatic and well thought-out. It's a very atmospheric game, due largely to the graphics.

Ahh, the graphics. One of the main things people gush about. Yes, Bioshock does very well in taking advantage of Vista's DirectX10 capabilities and the XBox 360's high-def goodness. But why then could they not make it look nearly as good as Half-Life 2 on my machine? Half-Life 2 is a three year old game and runs with a near-perfect framerate on my machine. Bioshock chugs - my framerate is abyssmal - and the graphics don't look nearly as good. So forgive me if I scoff at the boasts about graphics. Yes, I'm sure it does look great on a $3000 machine. Good for you, mister big spender.

The story was apparently strongly influenced by the book Atlas Shrugged, which my cousin is reading. Based on his reports, I'll skip it. Seems like there's a deep political and philosophical statement somewhere in there about the working man, capitalism and socialism, and the interference of ethics in progress. Somehow, it just wasn't my bag, baby.

So now on to the concrete details. First, weapons. The game's weapons weren't bad. My only complaint was that later in the game, some weapons such as the handgun, the machine gun, and even the shotgun became useless. Each weapon has three different types of ammo available, but even with the shotgun's exploding ammo or the machine gun's antipersonnel rounds, they still weren't very good against the game's later enemies. I found myself using the chemical thrower and crossbow almost exclusively. I really enjoyed setting traps with proximity mines and the crossbow's electric "trap bolts", and with the tornado trap plasmids. But it's a bit odd that all these things are completely invisible to enemies, whereas you can see them just fine.

The second half of weaponry are the "plasmids", which are sequences of genes that are spliced into your DNA to give you special abilities. My favorite was the Incinerate ability, which sets people on fire, but the Electro-whatever ability was by far the most useful, as it stuns people and machinery. It was indispensible for dealing with turrets and cameras. It seems that the game's creators wanted plasmids to be more than just extra weaponry, as most don't do much in the way of direct damage.

Throughout the game are various vending machines from which you can purchase ammunition, upgrade your weapons, or swap out the plasmids you have spliced. These vending machines can all be hacked, as can cameras and turrets. Hacked vending machines give you items at a cheaper cost. Hacked cameras and turrets turn from enemy to friend. The hacking process is actually a lot of fun - it's the old game Pipeworks, where you rearrange bits of pipe to give the water a clear channel from beginning to end. But the water is flowing as you work, so you have to work quickly.

There are also U-Invent stations, with which you can take random bits of raw material you find, like rubber hoses, distilled water, and empty shell casings, and build yourself new ammunition and other useful tidbits. It's an interesting system, even if it's not as good as Oblivion's alchemy system.

Partway through the game, you also get a camera, and as you take research photos of your enemies, you gain progressively larger damage bonuses against them. The more centered and closer the photo, the further your research on that category of subject progresses. It's a nice mechanic, and the camera reminds me of my beloved Beyond Good and Evil.

Another of the things about the game that bugged me, and reminded me of Prey was the fact that you cannot die. Every time you're killed, you come back at a Vita-Chamber. It's lame.

Okay, now for my analysis of the story. SPOILERS! - if you don't want the story at least partially ruined, don't read any further. First, the death of Andrew Ryan. Why the heck did he want to die like that? I kept thinking that he was going to come back via Vita-Chamber, but he never did. So we're left to assume that he really died. Why the heck did he stand there and keep commanding the PC to kill him even as he was being killed? I just don't buy it. Dumb. Next, I was expecting a big graphicsfest at the end where we see the whole city flooded. We saw a bit of that at the beginning, which was exciting, and I fully expected it at the end. Alas, I was let down. So what happened to the place at the end? It's left unclear. Again, lame.

I'll probably replay the game when I get a better machine, if only to see the DirectX 10 graphics, but this is far from my favorite shooter.