BioShock Review

Closely tied to the design of the maps is the fair amount of backtracking you will be doing. Granted, this was never too intrusive so as to thwart the experience for me, but I did take note of it occasionally.

The designers have also tried to make the single-player campaign longer than it should have been. A bunch of menial tasks are added to the campaign, which try to forcefully lengthen it and thus add on top of whatever replay value there is - being able to influence the final outcome of the game, and having to take different approaches/plasmids to each situation. On its own, this is not high enough replay value and 2K Boston probably knows this, so they obviously tried to lengthen the experience through some unnecessary backtracking and mundane tasks like "pick up 7 flasks of distilled water to make such and such," and so on.

Finally, while the enemies you encounter throughout levels work great in terms of keeping up the tension (the addition of big daddies adds special flare to each level), the "boss" fights (if you can call them that at all) feel a tad bit underwhelming.

On one hand, I applaud 2K Boston for this, as they did everything to preserve the consistency of the story and the game world, but on the other hand, this *is* after all just a game, and more larger-than-life characters may have been in order maybe. More grotesquely bio-modified bosses perhaps?

Performance-wise, the game behaved beautifully on my Xbox 360 (I played the 360 version, obviously): the frame-rate was smooth throughout, the controls were excellently tuned, though, as you will see, the PC controls are even more intuitive, given the number of times you'll need to switch plasmids and weapons mid-combat.

In a nutshell, beyond any shadow of doubt, BioShock is an excellent single-player shooter experience. The undeniable quality of this title and its emphasis on true and not pseudo-mature storytelling and character development make it a must-have for every self-respecting gamer. On the other hand, the game is not without its faults, which, in all honesty, is true for just about every single thing on planet Earth (and possibly beyond).