Having a week off I managed to get quite a bit of time to play BioShock on the 360. The game has just come out, and is one of the first AAA games since Gears Of War. So I thought I would put up a little review.
As a summary before I start, the game lives up to it's AAA status, it's beautiful, quality, deep and long. Everything you want from a £40 investment, and something you don't always get back. Well not from only single player games anyway. It's not quite up to the level of detail of something like Metal Gear Solid, and I doubt I will be playing it in a years time like PES6, but it's almost as good as you can get from a game in it's genera.
Presentation: The story is strong, and game polished. There are very few cut scenes, and of those they are all in game, or let you roam around while they happen which makes you feel much more involved. Most of the narrative is played through recordings you pick up and play, although often you get attacked while listening to these (or enter automated narrative which stops them) but it is easy to replay them, or read the scripts (handy when they contain codes). The story is also quite adult, containing gene splicing, morality and some rather sick characters, which is nice to see, as often they are rather dully Hollywood rip offs with, America the great and no choice but to do the moral thing, in Rapture it's all about choice...
Graphics: The graphics are great. The city of Rapture is stunning, with Art Deco straight from roaring twenties America. The style is carried off thought the game, from the symmetry of the menu screen to the handles on fridges, characters costumes and posters. There are some gripes I have though, it seems the Xbox 360 struggles to load in all the textures and I often find myself running up to a machine to see the high resolution textures load in one at a time, rather like polygon counts in last generation games. This is a slight annoyance but easy to ignore. The only other gripe I have is the splicers, I was trying to have a look for screen shots on the web but they all looked great... I however seem to notice that most of the time they are quite simple with low polly counts and stretched textures, perhaps to allow a lot on screen at once, and perhaps covered up by the story of being mutated... cunning! This shouldn't mar the game though, as it generally looks fantastic, the big daddies are stunning, but it's just not quite Gears of War.
The environments are huge and some rooms serve only to waste your time, which makes the game feel much more open. A number of the items can be smashed or knocked about, and the designers often place items on top of one another to cause them to fall when you pick them up or bash into them. Levels are separated by a metro/lift kind of thing, with I think the botanical garden level being the most stunning.
Sound: The sounds or Rapture are really good, hight quality authentic and with some great voice acting. The only annoyances are that some of the sounds get rather repetitive in most games it's the enemies comments, which here are numerous and clever, but for BioShock it's the sounds of searching for items, the vending machines ("welcome to the circus of vaaaaalue"..... again and again), and swishing back drinks. Although it's a small gripe for a game that has got most of the sound so spot on.
Gameplay: BioShock presents you with choice, not necessarily over the physical route you take (although there is a good and bad option) but over how to kill enemies and build up your character and arsenal. The environment can be used to your advantage allowing you to electrify water and set fire to olil spills, and burn and freeze furniture, but in some ways it's inconsistent. For example you can often melt ice to water, but never freeze water to ice, which is just enough to make you feel it's not totally up to you, but rather set up for you. It would be great to knock over barrels to create oil spills, or make holes in windows to flood rooms but this isn't the case. The AI is also very good, I have heard reports of enemies being very clever, and have witnessed them healing themselves, putting out fire by jumping in water and taking alternate routes through rooms. Although I think I have been conditioned by so many other games to ignore this, or put it down to a bug in their AI. In BioShock they have started to develop the AI into something less straight forward and perhaps something I have wanted to see for ages... AS (artificial stupidity).
One of the most annoying things in the game play has to be the hacking... It's great at first and a clever way to make you choose if you want to spend money or time, but after 10 hours of game play it's tedious... I'm sure they could have found a few other simple games to use, but now I choose not to hack things, not because they are hard, but because I can't bare to go through it all again.
Lasting Appeal: This game is long. I have put in about 10-15 hours I think and there is still a way to go. I am not sure I will play through it again, although there is clearly another route to take, not because of the game but more because it's a bit of a commitment, and PES2008 will be out soon.
Summary: In summary after writing the review I feel I have been harsh, but I though it would be nice to focus on the flaws (if you can even call them that) rather than building up even more hype. It's a great game, and one of the first games I have played of this generation that really sets the bar.