Alrighty then... how bout them Bioshocks eh?
Graphics The game is gorgeous. Absolutely no way around it. I only played for about half an hour, but I can safely say that this game tops any title on the market, including GRAW2,
and Gears of War.
Now, before I get assailed by a horde of angry fans, I' ll give my reasoning behind this. While Gears of war was a very technically impressive game, I felt that it lacked real depth, real character, which this game serves up in heaps. Rapture feels like a living breathing environment, constantly changing as the demo progressed.
While Bioshock has some absolutely amazing graphics from a technical standpoint, that' s not what makes it amazing. It' s the seamless integration of hundreds of little details across the game that really makes it shine. Dust on the windows picks up light from the ever-flickering bulbs above. Sparks fly from broken electronics. Picket signs protesting the lockdown of Rapture litter the floor, and the archaic looking architecture of the desheveled Rapture itself is accentuated brilliantly by a sort of looming haze that covers the world. A lot of work was put into adding dozens of tiny details to the environment, and it really shows.
Oh yeah, did I mention? Zero framerate hitches the whole way through.
Sound When I first heard about Bioshock, I expected the standard decent horror-game fare. An eerie soundtrack, a lot of gun noises, and the occasional horror-story monologue... I was wrong. 50' s music croons from the tinny speakers in the walls as your head deeper into Rapture. All of your weapons give a deafening report, making you very aware that every bullet counts (which is good, because extra ammo is pretty hard to come by).
The voice acting is absolutely fantastic. The insane inhabitants are suitably deranged, carrying on a warped and twisted version of their everyday lives. Spouses arguing, a woman singing to a money-wrench in a baby crib, and Little Sister (the girl from the trailers) singing lullabies to herself as she preys on her victims. Projector recordings of Mr. Ryan (the creator of Rapture) hark back to the days of 50' s educational videos, and old reel-to-reel recordings give you an idea of what the world was like before and during whatever it is that went wrong in Rapture.
The soundtrack itself is breathtaking in it' s scope, especially for a videogame. The brilliant orchestration really encompases the " trapped " feeling you encounter during the demo. It' d easily hold it' s weight against almost any game soundtrack in the last 5 years.
Yes boys, Harry Gregson Williams is going to have a hell of a time topping this one.
Controls Won' t dwell long on this one, beyond the fact that they' re incredibly easy to pick up on. Unlike some games, changing between your powers & your conventional weapons is an incredibly simple task. They work great... ' nuff said.
Gameplay The game' s primary element is first-person action, of course, and it succeds wonderfully. It' s a well balanced game, their difficulty settings are done really well. If you' re terrible at shooters, you set it to easy mode & you' ll still have a decent challenge. I played through on both, and I have to say, if the harder of the two is Medium difficulty, I' d love to see the mode they didn' t include in the demo.
Your first run in with an enemy pits an insane resident up against you and 5 pounds of crecent-wrench. All of the fighting itself is pretty gratifying, as they do carry around a plethora of random junk. Health & Eve (mana) boosters, cash and very small stashes of ammunition are plentiful in both difficutly settings. It never feels like getting rid of the enemies is a chore, as there' s always some incentive to do so (actually progressing through the game being one of them
)
We only got a very small taste of the main " feature" they' ve been pushing in Bioshock. Using your environment against enemies. About half way through the demo, you run into 2 enemies in a large pool of water. They don' t notice you, and your Irish buddie on the other end of the radio instructs you to electrocute the water. They convulse satifyingly, and I (being the idiot that I am) followed right on into the water to finish them off with my wrench...
Bad idea. (Bzzzrrt!)
Final Impression? A-freaking-plus. This game absolutely blew my socks off, no question about it.
I was apprehensive about OXM' s 10 out of 10 review earlier, but if I had one major complaint about the demo now that I' ve played it, is that it didn' t go on for a bit longer. The 20 or so minutes in game flies right by.
I' m heading out as we speak to put some more money down on my copy.
Hope the review helps those who haven' t had a chance to play it yet.
< Message edited by eddie_the_hated -- 13 Aug 07 19:45:05 >