Polished action
The graphics seems a bit dated, it has that "stuck in the past because we focus on aging game console hardware even if we make a PC version" look to it.
Lack of details and realism makes the characters look cartoonish, and faces does not show any emotions or depth. BI tries to smooth the rough edges by adding a lot of atmospheric effects and a crazy amount of bloom as well as other 3D engine features such as realtime shadows and lights, but it is the art style that comes to the rescue eventually. The creators of the world really has unleashed a wealth of imagination, and a lot of love has gone into the visuals. It is a joy to walk around and explore the world.
Expect to do a lot of revisiting to each area in the world though, a lot of recycled graphics here, but that is OK, there are plenty of secrets to find and things to do. Generally the world is quite open ended and you are encouraged to walk around freely to explore.
STORY
The story is told via dialogue between you and the girl you are supposed to rescue, and scripted 3D sequences. Thankfully there are not too many scripted sequences disturbing the gameplay, you get the story served mostly while you do other things.
The story is hard to digest and in my opinion it is trying too hard to be fantastic. It is a flying city, but wait, there is more. You can manipulate your DNA to summon crows and shoot electricity out of your fingers. But wait, there is more. Time traveling, multiple universes, reality being changed by will, ghosts, angels, religion, items appearing in thin air, multiple personalities, lost memories, badguys being the goodguys, but not really, because that was in another universe, or was it?
The story spins out of control, and in the end you are not surprised by anything anymore. It becomes a surrealistic experience where you expect weird things to happen constantly. A monkey with an elephant head appears flies around playing a banjo while singing kumbaya? Sure, why not, throw it in there.
It is a rabbit hole within a rabbit hole within a rabbit hole. The problem is, when anything can happen it is just not that interesting anymore. It seems unrealistic and it is hard to become immersed. They do tie up everything with some sort of explanation in the end, but by then I already lost all my interest and curiosity. Not going to add any spoilers here, but I did not like the ending either. It was quite unsatisfying after a lot of hard hero-work trying to make things right.
The game story is similar to my experience with the movie The Matrix. The first movie was awesome, because everything was based in the world we know it, then suddenly some crazy things happened. It was somewhat believable and the realistic setting made that one unrealistic element of the Matrix cool, and made you curious. The last Matrix was awful, because everything was now fantastic, and there was almost nothing you can relate to in your real life to keep you anchored in the experience. BI is more like the last Matrix movie in this respect.
GAMEPLAY
The game is a no nonsense FPS. And it does the job well. As before you can use conventional weapons like shotguns and machine guns, and also some type of supernatural attacks which are charged by salts. There are a wide variety of attacks, but I got stuck with using just a small amount of the abilities here, as many of the attacks were just not that useful.
You are constantly going to run out of ammo for your favorite gun though, so you will need to master a wide variety of different weapons. Although, on the easy level your companion will help out a lot by throwing you ammo when you need it.
An interesting feature is the ability to set up traps. Every power can be manifested in a trap, which is triggered by a passing enemy. But I did not find it very useful, and I could not find any real benefits of using those over conventional attacks. The game emphasizes chaotic fighting sequences where you are constantly rushed, not so much on stealth and trap type of gameplay.
One new feature is the ability to ride on sky rides, which are rails in the sky you can connect to and ride around. It adds some strategic element to the gameplay as you can use it to quickly ambush your enemy.
Another nice element is the ability to bring up arrows on the ground which shows you where to go for your next objective. You can explore as you want and never worry about getting lost.
You can upgrade your abilities and powers, by collecting money you buy the upgrades in vending machines spread around the level. You find money by exploring the maps, and your companion, the girl you are supposed to rescue, also helps out by giving you money she finds. Resources are very limited though, so the game ends long before you are able to max out our abilities. You need to specialize in a few favorites.
All in all I feel the game is giving you a lot of options, but not all of them are well balanced or worthwhile to dive into.
CONCLUSION
The game is a nice take on the FPS genre. 7.5 is a high score in my book, but the FPS game market is very crowded and this one is very short, is somewhat outdated graphics wise and does not stand out as much as I was hoping for. It has that interesting Bioshock personality though, and if you like the first one it is hard to go wrong here.