Apostrophe S

Bioshock was the first game I got for the Xbox 360. Excited, I played through the first few levels and quickly became distracted by other fare such as Gears of War, Fight Night: Round 3 and Assassin’s Creed. For some reason, nothing drew me back. Finally, right about the time it became clear that Bioshock was going to win Game of the Year, I decided that it was high time I actually played through it. I’m glad I did.Although a standard shooter in many ways, the addition of the basic RPG elements added a great deal of depth to the gameplay. Instead of just looking for the next biggest gun and the next key a la Doom, I found myself strategizing over which plasmids and tonics I should carry into the next area. I began collecting everything I could see in hopes of being able to invent another tonic at the next U-Invent station. I made an early decision to rescue all of the Little Sisters instead of harvesting them, and I feel that if the game has any flaw it’s that it doesn’t do a great job of explaining why this makes a difference. As a matter of fact, the game doesn’t do a great job of explaining any of the protagonist’s motivations, especially early on. I had collected almost 900 units of Adam before I realized what it was even for.Visually the game is stunning, even on the regular definition television my Xbox is hooked up to. I felt like (and this is a complaint I have with all Xbox titles I’ve played so far) the text was almost always too small to actually read on a standard TV. I’m going to venture to guess that the majority of gamers have yet to upgrade to an HDTV, and most must be more or less guessing what most of the text displayed on screen actually says. Thank god Bioshock’s diaries were audio and not just text. I could have gone blind.The gameplay is top-notch for a shooter. There were almost no clipping issues, and the near-lack of artificial boundaries increased the immersive effect of the outstanding production value of the game. I did feel like I was basically fighting the same 4 or 5 enemies over and over again, and that I rarely met any of the people who were talking to me and leaving me messages, making my journey through Rapture feel a little lonely.Playing through on medium difficulty felt just about right for the first half of the game, but as my weapons and plasmids improved, I felt like the last half of the game was kind of a breeze in comparison. Since I played through and got the “good” ending on medium, maybe I’ll try to play through on hard and get the “bad” ending.Overall, I agree that Bioshock is easily one of the best games I’ve played this year, but it doesn’t exactly bring anything new to the table.