The Good: Very well written story, amazing and intense atmosphere, huge variety in weapons and plasmids, easy to use controls, awesome graphics, outstanding gameplay, great ending.
The Bad: Plasmid & weapon select controls could work better, a few instances where gameplay gets repetitive, the final boss is dissapointing.
Hello everybody! This is Garrett with my first game review! To start out my reviews, I figured that I would do a game that I love; Bioshock.
In case you don't know the plot (which you probably do, but I'm going to say it anyway), you get in a plane wreck, and you swim to the nearest piece of land you can find, which so happens to be the entrance to Rapture- a twisted underwater city, where demonic little girls (Little Sisters), drug addled fish people (Splicers), and armored guards of the demonic little girls (Big Daddies), roam. Under the guidance of Atlas, a dude you meet after picking up a radio, you must explore Rapture, kill its psychotic leader Andrew Ryan, and escape Rapture. Okay, now onto the review.
The story for Bioshock is great. It manages to be dark and intense while being deep and thought provoking at the same time. It makes you think, "Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his own brow?" Also, the game has an amazing plot twist. I'm not going to spoil what happens, but it is shocking. Not to mention the characters are interesting as well.
Rapture is a cool place to explore. There's lots of areas to go to and lots of bad guys to kill. The splicers, big daddies, and the little sisters are all really scary enemies in their own way, which makes me excited, and sometimes even terrified, when I fight them.
On your way, you'll find an assortment of weapons to help you on your journey. There's a great variety of them and they all help you immensely. My personal favorite is the machine gun. Not only do you get weapons, but you also get plasmids. You inject plasmids into your arm and you're able to use a certain power, like electro bolt, incinerate, telekinesis, etc. This makes the game more fun, just shooting fire or lightning or a corpse at a bad guy. What I especially love about plasmids is that, this may seem odd, that they all have their own weakness. For example: incinerate burns you enemies but it can hurt you if you touch it, electro bolt shoots lightning at your enemies but it kills them only if they're in water, and telekinesis makes you pick up an object and shoot it at your enemies but it doesn't work if your not facing the object or there's nothing in the room to shoot. It's really creative how they thought of that.
For the most part, the controls work very well and are easy to adapt to. They're really responsive, making combat easy and fun. The only part of the controls I have a problem with is selecting your items. You hold down either L1 or R1 (at least on the PS3) and use the right analog stick to choose what weapon or plasmid you want. It's not the holding down a button I have a problem with, but the analog stick. Sometimes when I want a specific weapon or plasmid, it'll skip to the next one on the list. It's very precise and can be annoying at times. But still, it's a small, hardly noticeable, fault in the controls, because the rest are spot on.
The graphics, of course, are great. The dark, ominous rooms are actually really pleasing to look at, even if there is blood splattered everywhere. Everything looks great.
The gameplay is outstanding. The missions are easy to understand but complicated to get to. But it gets kind of repetitive after a little bit. Go to this place, kill people, do thing, go to this place, kill people, do thing. It's not the full game that gets repetitive, just specific parts.
The bosses in this game are… fine I guess. I mean, they're nothing special, but they're fine. Then there's the final boss. I was really, really disappointed in this fight. I was hoping it would be some intense fight where I would die 5 times or more and would give me a satisfying victory. I didn't get that. Sure, his attacks do some damage, but that doesn't help the fact that this fight is freakishly easy. I will tell you exactly how to beat him: Run up to him, Press X, shoot at him, rinse and repeat until he is dead. I wasn't satisfied at all when I defeated him, just really disappointed. But, at least the ending cutscene was good. No, good was an understatement. It was touching. Well, at least the good ending cutscene is. I haven't seen the bad ending cutscene, but I assume it's more intense and creepy.
Overall, this game is a sheer blast. It is so much fun with a compelling story that makes you want to keep playing. The moments of repetitive gameplay and the disappointing final boss aren't enough to drastically lower my review. This is a great game and I suggest you buy it, would you kindly?