Bioshock retrospective

I went to visit my parents last week. They have quite a large house so it's where I keep most of my crap from when I used to live there. A considerate son would throw it out but I have an aversion to throwing things out. IT MAY BE USEFUL LATER.

Anyway, one of the things I should really throw out is my collection of old PC gaming magazines. I do love re-reading them, though. Reading previews for games that turned out to be shite and, of course, reading rapturous reviews that didn't find any flaws with deeply flawed games like Half Life 2 or Oblivion.

It was in this nostalgic haze that I came across their review of Bioshock. It really made me want to play through that flawed masterpiece again because they highlighted the unparalleled atmosphere, graphics etc.

So This morning, I installed it, patched it and started playing it again.

And half an hour later I stopped because it was shit.

The thing is, everyone who played Bioshock through the first time (including myself) got sucked in by the incredible graphics, atmosphere etc. These are still there and still excellent.

What none of us noticed until a couple of months after originally playing it is - It's not any bloody fun.

It just isn't.

There are four main problems with is:

1) It's a shooter but you never have enough ammo.

There are supposed to be numerous ways out of every encounter but most of the time, the only sensible one is to start blasting. This is directly linked into:


2) It's too goddamn linear:

Corridors. That's what Bioshock is, corridors, corridors, corridors. Even the Corridor-tastic Call of Duty 4 had more open areas than this. The direct consequence of this is that there are few opportunities to avoid conflict - meaning you have to start shooting, meaning you run into problem #1

3) The shooting is no damn fun:

Even if you can cope with problems 1 & 2, you'll hit problem 3. The weapons lack feel, there's no real accuracy system and they're all pretty damn generic. This is the problem with all games set in the past, the guns really weren't very interesting. You'd think they would sort this with the pasmids but no. They're either far too powerful (lightning or incinerate) or completely useless (telekinesis, sonic boom, shooting bees from your hand).


4) There are no RPG elements:

So you're not even really given the opportunity to improve your character, other than by being given Adam by the little sisters. This means that there's no way round problems 1, 2 & 3. You HAVE to get engaged in gunfights. There's no Bloodlines style melee options if you get bored of the gunfights.


There are other problems, of course, but the fact that it isn't fun lands neatly at the top of the list.

This really disappoints me. I was hoping to get past the flaws of Bioshock and really get into the story again. Sadly, this has proved impossible.