Good game, if you get it to work
One 1.1 patch and several months later I came back, started over and began a new trip into the demented underwater-city that is called Rapture.
Yes the game behaved better now - some staggering audio maybe and just 2 chrashes comes to mind. But the game has gotten old fast. Graphics had still that original feel, but felt other than that rather ugly. Audio is a mess at times with all the screaming voices, propelling robots, tape-recorder messages and random soundeffects - all at the same time. And I had often go to the map-screen to listen to most messages again, because I could not hear them properly the first time (and subtitles are still a mess). Looong loading times too (don´t we all hate that?).
The game itself is an rather straight-forward shooter, with an story.
Story is ok with some nice suprises thrown in at times - if not for that game would fall pancake flat. It is, of course, first-person, and like all shooters the game just starts off with you coming to the place you are supposed to break havoc in. Bang boom - have some weapons, now start kill everything. No originality here.
Your arsenal is rather big and ranges from a mere wrench to grenade launcher. You can upgrade weapons and even make your own ammo, which is a nice touch. Another thing is that you use a kind of "magic" aswell. You inject plasmids into your body that have unique functions. Some makes you able to shoot fire or ice. Some makes you skin harder or better at hacking stuff. Maybe it was this part that make some people, like myself, into believing that this game would have RPG-elements. Which was absolutely faulty.
The games enemies is not as varied as I would have liked. They consist off "splicers" - which are the demented remains of Raptures human population. Other than some little variations of them there are just the "Big Daddies". They are mutated humans in old fashioned diving suits who looks after "Little Sisters". An most important part of the game is killing off the daddies to get to the little sisters, harvesting or rescue them to get ADAM. It is important to use ADAM points to get new plasmids and update the old ones.
An vital part of the game's progressing story is messages - recorded or live. You are guided through the game by different voices of people - still living within Rapture. They give you quest, updates your progress and sometimes they just tease you. To booth, you can find numerous recorded messages (that just happens to lay around everywhere - people in Rapture must have loved to record there every single thought) that gives an insight in what's happend in the city up until the point you got there.
Overall, an pretty good game. But not worthy off all the grandour given to it by critics. Maybe I would have been a little more positive if I could have completed the game 18 months ago, when it still felt fresh. And not right now when I, parallel to this game, played Mass Effect 2.