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An Orgasmic Experience, but Where is the Replay Value?

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: December 21, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Bioshock is a terrific FPS with some unique artistic elements that I have never seen in other games. It ran very smoothly on my quad core and GeForce7950GT, and I don't remember ever having crashes or other major problem.

There're some small bugs with version 1.0, such as widescreen cutoffs and inability to arrange the plasmids on the scroll menu, but i assume the patch should have fixed all those things including adding a new plasmid.

The graphic design is just perfect, everything is visually stunning; the story is very cultured and has a delectable twist close to the last 1/3 of the game.

That being said, I do have some complaints. I think because the art deco design of this game is so well-done, the game makers intentionally made all resources scarce, as to force the player to scavenge every possible niche for items conducive for survival, thereby maximizing the experience so their hard work doesn't go to waste. Due to this, I had to explored every crevice of Rapture, and enjoyed the game's beautiful art works and architecture to the full. Unfortunately, this means if i were to play the game again, nothing would surprise me or give me nearly as much enjoyment as the 1st time through, since i have seen and done everything.

The game tried its best to offer some replay value, there're a variety of plasmids and tonics you can pick and choose, but once you find all of them (which i did the 1st time playing) you basically will use only some of them habitually because they perform optimally in certain situations. This means if you were to play the game again, you would most likely make the same choices, unless you just want to aggravate yourself just for the sake of equipping plasmids and tonics in situations that don't call for them.

Bioshock has prided itself in offering some morality in the game, but compare to shooters like Deus Ex I & II and RPG's like KOTOR and Fable, the 'choices' you have are very meager, and the only consequences that matter are the 3 different endings available (2 of them differ only in the narrator's tone of voice). I remember in Fable, when the game ends if the player sits through the credits, you can continue to explore all the maps and keep on fighting and finding items. This could have been done easily for Bioshock, but yet the game ends abruptly (even though it is a very good and conclusive ending), with no possibility for further exploration, accumulation of ADAM, and higher level plasmids.

The story does have some sophomoric philosophical plot lines, and since i have read almost all the major works from Ayn Rand and George Orwell (which are partial inspirations for the game makers), i was drawn to the story immediately; and all the dialogs, recordings, and cutscenes made a very strong and lasting impression. Again, this means the 2nd time through the game will be completely boring.

The game was close to orgasmic while it lasted, but now that i'm finished, i probably won't play through it again. But if you have not yet enjoyed the splendors of this game, it's highly recommended, just don't cry when you realize the game is over.

STOP TEARING DOWN THIS GAME ON AMAZON REVIEWS IF YOU HAVEN'T EVEN PLAYED IT!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 13 / 34
Date: August 27, 2007
Author: Amazon User

First off, I was very disappointed to come here and see that the PC version of the game has only a 3.5 star rating while the Xbox 360 version has 5! "Why is that?", I thought. After looking at all the MORONS who put a 1 star review; not because they played the game and didn't like it, but because they don't like its security features or have a POS computer that can't play/install it, and have NEVER played it; I feel justified in writing this review, not so much to praise the game, but to get the ratings up and tell you non-playing 1-stars to STOP IT!

Just from the hype and gameplay videos alone, I went ahead and reserved the Limited Edition of Bioshock for PC at Gamestop about a month before it came out. I went and picked it up on the day it came out and couldn't wait to get it home to install and play it. (I started my college classes the same day) Finally I got home and started up my computer and tore into the LE box. (Not literally of course!) The Big Daddy figurine is awesome and the bonus material is cool as well. My computer specs are:
-AMD X2 5600 Dual Core
-Asus M2NE MB
-4 GB DDR2 800 RAM
-300 GB Seagate SATA HD
-512 MB ATI X1800 XT Video Card
-Windows Vista Ultimate (32-bit)
I installed it, no problems met with whatsoever! It took about 15-20 minutes to install from putting in the disc to playing the game and my firewall asked me for permission to let Bioshock gain online access and activate, but that's it! All the security gripes others have whined about; I haven't experienced them!

The gameplay was superb! I had all the graphic settings turned to the highest settings, my system handled it no problem! Sound is excellent. The story is greatly detailed and the weapons/ammo combos and plasmid uses through the game are almost limitless! The many details such as hacking, U-Invent kiosks, etc. are also nice touches. My only disappointment is that the game wasn't long enough!

I don't feel a need to go into more detail about the merits of the game since others have. I mainly want to get the point across that all you one star cry babies have no right to put your reviews here. These reviews are meant for people who have actually PLAYED the game to tell other people their experiences in PLAYING it and what they liked or disliked about the GAME, so it can help others in deciding if they want to buy it or not and so others can communicate/debate about the GAMEPLAY with each other. If you have issues with the security or installation, take it up with the developers on THEIR website/forums, not here!

DO NOT buy it for the PC!!!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 6 / 11
Date: September 05, 2007
Author: Amazon User

It is hard to install and does not work on all computers (including mine) it is a GREAT game but buy it for XBOX 360, and if you dont have one save up for it!

Combine DOOM, Halo, F.E.A.R and add a lot of Diablo!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 11
Date: September 12, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This is really one of the best games I have ever played. Gorgeous graphics, sounds and UNBELIEVABLE weapons. The intense action and the amazing interaction with, well, everything on the screen, you can mess around in one area for a while just finding "stuff" to play with and destroy! Cool storyline. You do need s serious graphics card, they suggest at least 512 meg card and two gig RAM.(I run an nVidia GTX with more than that, so no problemo). This is the future!

The Long anticipated Game of the Year. Deus EX on steroids!!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 7 / 14
Date: November 28, 2007
Author: Amazon User

BioShock, which is a Horror FPS for the PC and XBOX360 was released last month to rave reviews from the major gaming news sites such as gamespot.com and www.synthworld.org. Since then the internet has been ablaze with outcry about the game's high rating scores. It's hard to understand why??????? This is considered as the spiritual successor of System Shock 2 but is in reality sublime. It's incredibly atmospheric, the game's story is well written and compellingly told, and the first-person shooter gameplay is a respectable, tightly crafted experience. It's a really, really good game. I'll tell you now: it's a 5/5. So why all the angst? Why the backlash? Read on for my review of BioShock, and a few comments on the dangers of 'merely' being a good game.

If you've been reading game sites at all in the last six months, you likely already know the gist of BioShock's unique twist on the old 'trapped in a scary place' storyline. As an unnamed protagonist you descend into the undersea realm of Andrew Ryan, a proponent of a belief system quite similar to Ayn Rand's objectivism with the serial numbers filed off. Proposing that man create his own future with the 'sweat of his brow', Ryan funds the construction of the undersea city of Rapture. Of course, things go horribly wrong. A genetics-altering substance called ADAM twists Rapture and her citizens into a madman's vision of perfection. The city's architecture and music are frozen in time by the deterioration of Ryan's society, and the result is one of the most cohesive, frightening settings I've experienced in a game. As the victim of a plane crash in the middle of the ocean, you have no choice but to brave the terrors of Rapture in hopes of - somehow - making it back to civilization.

The setting is Scary, but it's also the least of the player's worries. It can frighten, but the remaining citizens of Rapture - they can kill. And they'll kill cheerfully, too, all the while Cheering dancing and muttering enthusiastically to themselves. These people are lumped together under the generic term 'Splicer', implying their extreme genetic modification. From low-powered thugs in masks through to fire-tossing, teleporting madmen, their strength when wielding a pipe is far outweighed by the impact they can leave on your nerves. Far more threatening than this group of variously-powered miscreants are the iconic monsters of the title: the Big Daddies. Acting as patrons for their ADAM-hording Little Sister companions, these creatures are just as tough as you've been lead to believe. While much of a given level involves stalking from room to room dealing with the slicer infestation, the most memorable moments you'll have probably come from one-on-one combat with the diving-suit clad behemoths. And they are completely memorable. Even taken out of context the Big Daddy is one of the creepiest enemies ever to grace a videogame. Everything, from their low groans, to their thudding footsteps, to their cries of rage when they attack, gets across to you that when you face down a Daddy it's 'for real.' Game on. I particularly like how, as they become more and more damaged, steam escapes the Daddy's suit. The implication seems to be that there's something deeply wrong under that helmet.

You are going through most of the story by the whims of your mostly-unseen benefactor Atlas, who plays the part of the down-to-earth everyman paired with Ryan's soulless venture capitalist. He provides a great deal of information about Rapture's background ... but hints all throughout the game indicate Atlas may be more than he appears. The subtext of 'shades of grey' is laid on throughout the game. Though Ryan is clearly a madman you're given hints of his original intentions, which seem quite benign. Likewise (as has been highly publicized), the ghoulish Little Sisters can be either slain or saved as you desire. Nothing is as it initially appears in Rapture. This moral ambiguity never seems forced, but probably isn't everything the BioShock team hoped it could be. It's very gratifying to have options, but you're not even making as dramatic a choice as the good and evil options in Knights of the Old Republic. Whether you're a sinner or a saint, you're going to end up at roughly the same place in the end. The great writing and depiction throughout the game stands up much better than any moral overtones.

This of course is very very similar to System Shock 2, of course. In keeping with the spirit of that game, your ability to customize your avatar is very expansive. There are in reality four tracks of powerups to choose from: plasmids, physical tonics, engineering tonics, and combat tonics. While it might sound like you will be engineering a carefully constructed 'build', I found during the course of play that a particular style just emerged based on what I found most useful. Engineering tonics were the upgrades that most appealed to me, and so I made an effort to gain slots in that area. There are far more tonics than slots available, so even as you bump up your character's potential you'll never find yourself wanting for powers. Making use of these powers in the 'emergent gameplay' style is also equally effortless. While it sounds like work from the outside, when you're playing through the game encounters happen so quickly that you rarely have time to realize that you're doing cool stuff before it happens. That was another reason I particularly enjoyed engineering; emergent gameplay can even happen when you're not around. I regularly returned to an encampment I'd made out of hacked turrets to find that they'd been clearing the stage without me.

In respects to Audio and Graphics performance/quality
========================================
BioShock is like a living/surreal painting. Rendered by the Xbox 360, the world of Rapture is awe-inspiring to behold. Everything looks so good, it's hard to point out any one thing in specific that stands above the rest. After playing the game, the best thing to do is try to pull out moments that stick with you: water as it slides over bare rock, the endless wood paneling of nicer spaces, disturbing altars lit only by an open flame, the obvious fury of a Big Daddy wreathed in flames. The sound design is the same way, with a combination of eerie vocal performances blending into a background of music that could really have come from the 40s. Every movement, every gesture in BioShock has an associated sound. From the 'clunk' of entering the hacking menu to the squeal of radio static when activating the Security Bullseye Plasmid, the sound experience in BioShock is equal to the task of rendering a world from the Mysterious images on the screen.

Is it the best game that will be released this year?
i think yes!!! It's certainly the best FPS to be released since Valve's Episode One hit last year.

All of the above interwinted together may sound very familiar to veteran gamers, and they very well should. You've probably played a handful of games that had many elements similar to BioShock before. What sets this game apart and above other offerings, though, is the way the title brings it all together. There's almost nothing out of place here. There's no "but the story could have been better" or "the weapons didn't feel right", or "the enemies got boring" to mar the experience of playing this through for the first time.

Then why everyone seems to hate this game? Why are there so many posts and protestations on message boards, all claiming that BioShock 'isn't all it was promised to be'? Even Zero Punctuation's analysis of the game (which you should really seriously check out because it's hilarious) takes some cheap shots at the game's purported low difficulty level. It's all for laughs, of course, but it shows up in the review because it's a common complaint among players. The issue is that the restoration capsules scattered throughout the game, which allow you to respawn right after your death, apparently remove the 'challenge' from the game. Others have said in response, "just don't play it that way, that's why there is a quicksave option." That also seems like a strange argument, because it's essentially telling someone they're 'playing wrong'. I don't really think anyone can play a game incorrectly.

rather you have to look at it from the designer's viewpoint. What happens when you die in an FPS, normally? You reload from your last save. Why bother? Why not just respawn and get right back into the fight, ala the spirit world of Prey? Commenters then complain that it's easy because injured enemies on the level still have reduced health. By the same token, any resources you have expended in the fight up to that point (medkits, ammunition) are also still gone. To my mind, the vita-chambers are only there to make your play experience as seamless as possible, not to make it 'easy'. Ultimately, BioShock can be as hard as you want it to be. The variable difficulty rating along with several save options and the vita-chambers means that you can play through the game in a multitude of ways, with several 'steps' between simply easy, medium, and hard. BioShock is not a brief game, either, clocking in probably around 20-25 hours for most players. Anything that ensures you will move through the game as quickly as possible would (I think) be appreciated.

Of course this is not the real problem what you have to look is that there is too much hype. The result is that when the game is finally delivered, there's almost no way for the real product to match up with player expectations. After Halo 3 launches later this month, odds are there will be a lot of people in forums nitpicking the slightest flaw or perceived imperfection. The lesson, I think, is that as gamers we need to learn to manage our expectations. I'm really looking forward to Mass Effect, for example, but I don't think it's going to change my life. Really, what can we expect out of a game other than a few hours of enjoyment we might not otherwise have had? Just getting that much out of a game, I think, is a big win for the publisher, the developer, and (of course) the player.

Game will exceed the capacity of your machine to run it successfully

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 14 / 38
Date: August 23, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This game was built for only those customers that have the newest (less than one year old) and most expensive graphics cards. Do not buy it unless your PC's capabilities can exceed the recommended requirements. Minimum requirements don't matter, it will be so slow and lacking in detail that you will be unsatisfied. There are also hidden graphics requirements (like the shader problem) that could make it impossible even to play the game at all. As someone that has bought over 250 games over the past 20 years, I was sorry to see that 2K software didn't understand understand the basics about shipping software that meets customer needs.

Exceptional story, and one BIG bug.

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: September 19, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This was, by far, one of the most innovative concepts for a game in years. A technologically advanced society, unencumbered by morals, and set in the year 1960! The environment is big, and lot of fun to travel through. Game play is as any FPS should be (save for a little recoil issue, but hey, you're using old guns and can improve upon that throughout the game). I will say no more....big metal, underwater, Times Square. Ok that's it.

ONE BIG BUG!!!(and I ain't talkin' bosses, here)

For those PC users who have not upgraded their video or audio drivers in a while: DO THIS BEFORE YOU PLAY!! Also, and this effected my being able the game at all: Go to the Graphics Options screen and turn the "High Detail Shader" option OFF!! The Tech that I spoke to said that I should be able to turn it back on after the game starts, but I found myself stuck again later. I left it off. I can't tell you how much of a difference it made, but I can bet that if you can get that function to work, the better everything will look. Shadows are an incredible part of the feel of this game, but I live without it with no problem.

There. I just saved you 2 hours of hold time. You're welcome.

Despite the bug, get this game. It's a great pick-up for any FPS fans' library, and the "Holy crap!" feeling you get at certain points throughout will insure your satisfaction, and make you want to play again, and again.

Great story, solid gameplay, gorgeous environment, but nothing new!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: October 21, 2007
Author: Amazon User

=== The Good Stuff ===

+ Story: Very twisted with plenty of dark humor inside. The large amounts of audio logs littered through out the world of Rapture really shows how much the developers put so much details into this game. This game does an amazing job on pulling me into its world.

+ Environment: This whole Metropolis-like world is definitely refreshing. Very unique from many games that are out now.

+ Gameplay: Pacing is pretty good, thanks to the direction indicator and the whole die and respawn in the vita-chamber (essentially an instant respwan - which there is a problem with this too though - will discuss this later). The plasmids (mutant powers) are pretty nifty.

+ Sound: The production of the sound is amazing in this game. Very creepy and disturbing. Voice actors and actresses really gives you a sense that these maniacs of Rapture are really out to kill you.

=== The Bad Stuff ===

- Short: The game was a little shorter than I expected. The ending was very unsatisfactory (both of them). The whole instant respawn kind of gameplay made things go a bit too quickly.

- It's pretty much System Shock 2: It doesn't really bring anything new. It just felt like I was playing System Shock 2 in a different world.

=== The Final Words ===

I'd recommend this game to those who are into horror/survival and even adventure gamers. This definitely has a good amount of content to give. This isn't the type of game for those who just blindly runs and guns like Painkiller or Serious Sam. If you have played System Shock 2, you'll essentially get the same thing here - which may or may not be to your liking. Still though, discovering the world of Rapture was fun.

Troubled install versus Gaming goodness

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: October 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I orignally down loaded the Demo and was not able to get it to run on my machine, which is a 3.2ghz, 2meg ram and 6800GT-256K. By most standards not a power house of a machine. This weekend I saw the limited edtion in GameSpot and thought I would try the finished product. After 2.5 hours of installing and reinstalling and updating my video drivers I thought I was done in for. I read the readme file very carefully and found if you install it on any other drive besides C: you are going to need a cache file on the specified drive. So after doing this and turning off all my overclock tweaks to my system the program ran perfectly. I played for a good 1.5 hours and had no problems. The graphics look great and the game play is fun and has a great atmosphere. I do not like the internet activation but seems to be common lately. It does say on the box that internet is required to activate the game. My experience with 2K games in general have been buggy from the start and have always required some patches.

Recommendation:
Update video drivers, read the readme carefully to see if anything applies to your setup, turn off all over clocking and exit has many task bar programs as possible.

IF IT WORKS ON A TWO YEAR OLD SYSTEM THEN YOUR SYSTEM SHOULD WORK AS WELL.

Unique FPS

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 6
Date: January 02, 2008
Author: Amazon User

As background, I just completed the game last night on medium difficulty (probably 20 hours total exploring everything).

The good:
- Game is extremely well thought out
- Captivating story line with many pieces being learned through observation and plot twists
- Powers (plasmids, etc) make this a more interesting fps as you have more options for disposing of enemies
- Environment is very interesting and unusual. Most games in this setting would be dark and gloomy, but with the 40's atmosphere it has a somewhat lighthearted.
- Sound is excellent

The bad:
- Wish it were longer (took me about a week)
- High system requirements (but worth it as the graphics are nice)
- Replay value is somewhat low

Regarding the system requirements, I tried the demo of this on my old computer (1.8gHz single cpu, 6800GT) on low settings and it was like watching a slide show so I held off. The new computer (3gHz dual core, 8800GT) which was able to run the game without a hitch on the highest settings in 1680x1050. If you don't have a very current graphics card I would recommend trying to demo before buying to make sure you won't have any issues!

Overall, very much worth it - I would buy it again for sure.

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