I'm probably somewhere around the middle of the game, about 6-7 hours of play time. So far everything about the game is well done... Gorgeous graphics on the PC (especially the light and shadow effects), tight controls with either 360 controller or keyboard mouse, good sound and voice acting, a story that is holding my interest so far... There isn't really much to complain about. About my only big gripe is the general lack of exploration: so far the levels are very much linear and the optional tombs have been nothing more than a somewhat simple puzzle.

As others have stated, I feel they went a bit too far towards 3rd person shooter and too far away from environmental exploration. I can understand that this is the 'origin story'... But I don't think it makes much sense that Lara Croft isn't as skilled at climbing and jumping but can somehow single-handedly kills dozens and dozens of armed attackers. One minute she is limping around looking next to death, the next minute she is skillfully dodging a sword attack then implanting a climbing axe into a dude's forehead. I dunno... it just doesn't ring true. At least the older Tomb Raider games didn't try to fool me into thinking that Lara Croft was anything other than a James Bond meets Indiana Jones super hero. Had their been vast tombs to explore, with fewer moments of tense 'survival combat', I think it would have worked better... But when the game throws another six enemies at you every few minutes, it all just starts to seem like a bit much.

I'm still enjoying things... what they presented is very well done... I just would have liked to see something a bit closer to the original series and bit less like Uncharted. But I can see how this deserves to be in the mix for GOTY.

I just completed the game, having picked up the PC version on sale. While I would not personally assign a 4 to this game, I generally agree with most of Tom's points. They set up an interesting early premise and then buried it under multiverse nonsense... With only Time Lord Elizabeth being able to use her God powers at the end to tie it all into a neat bow. The first half of the game could have taken place anywhere, with anybody doing something generically 'evil' and the second half of the game wouldn't have had to change a bit... so all that exploring and listening to all those audio logs in the beginning about racism and religious zealotry... It was all just a big time sink until the 'real' story, the time space continuum stuff, kicked in about five hours into the game. There was a weird disconnect there.

While I enjoyed the gameplay more than Tom, there was a distinct grind to the whole thing that wasn't present in the first Bioshock. There was no sense of dread of what was behind the next door, no tension or suspense or any of that vibe that made the first game so memorable. Not that I necessarily wanted a straight rehash of the last couple of games... But without that fear of the unknown everything become a simple routine of enter room, clear room, look for audio logs, rinse, repeat. I also agree that the vigors always felt out of place in this universe... just an excuse to give your character super powers and provide a flimsy gameplay link to the original game.

I'm not trying to slag the game, I enjoyed it for the most part... I just don't think it lived up the hype or provided the overall gripping experience that the first game did.