LogFAQs > #883684430

I'm cleaning up my PS3 hard drive in order to install Yakuza 4, and Bioshock is one of the largest games on here. I never finished it, and as much as I can fool myself to keep it around because I might get into it one day, I think it's best if I just uninstall it so I can play games that appeal more to me.

Here are some reasons I'm not so hot on Bioshock:

* I'm not a big fan of the setting. Oh, swingin' 60's music and such in a dingy, dystopian setting as you shoot insane drug addicts. Cool, I guess. You have audio logs detailing daily life before shit began to get fucked, and detailing the politics of the setting between Fontaine and the main guy, with areas like a fishery and a doctor's surgery where a guy forces people into horrific plastic surgery. The setting is somewhere between Cockney England and 50's/60's America, and it reminds me of Fallout 3 in its inspiration almost - and it doesn't do the game any favors, because it feels much more linear and constrained than Fallout 3.

* The weapons feel awful and loose. I hate the pistol, the shotgun is hit or miss and the wrench has no weight to it. There's something unappealing about the framerate and the Plasmids, so not even burning a Splicer alive with your hands feels all that good. The controls just feel really cheap, and I don't like how they feel.

* Pretty much everything has spoiled Bioshock's story. There's nothing here for me, because I know that you're the son of Rapture's main guy, you've been brainwashed into doing someone else's dirty work with the phrase "Would you kindly", and the chummy bloke who's been leading you along has been Fontaine the whole time. Youtube videos and forum posts just go and spill these secrets, and talk about how amazing and thought-provoking they are, and knowing this series of events, nothing that this radio guy says rings true. You know that part where you're trapped in a dark room and have to see this sub get blown up or whatever with Moira on it? I hate how you have movement controls in an absolute dead end of an area, there's nothing to do so you're forced into seeing "Moira" die - and then your radio dude sounds all cut up, but it rings absolutely hollow because I already know his game. The whole game is busywork - which wouldn't be a problem if the guns or Plasmids felt good to use, but I wasn't all that hot on them as I explained above.

* The voice acting and cutscenes feel forced, pretentious or lame. Remember that cutscene where you see a Big Daddy's drill for the first time, a bunch of Splicers talk all of this shit before a Big Daddy comes along and you get that iconic shot of the drill for the first time? It bored me to tears. You have to listen to these braindead Cockney morons talk for like three minutes, then you get the atmospheric stomping, and you basically wait around and sit through a cutscene that's filled with nothing but rambling, dead air and lame attempts to look epic or spooky.

The only positive thing I can say is that the Plasmid puzzles feel pretty good. Melting ice with the fire Plasmid and lighting up oil slicks felt really good, and it was cool how you could electrocute enemies by shocking all these pools of water they have laying around. Otherwise, Bioshock felt like an over-produced waste of time. The weapons feel mediocre at best, the writing felt flowery and over-emphasised, the game feels kind of linear, and in the years since its release, anything special or amazing about it has been cut-up and force-fed to gamers in top 10 lists along with all of these comment about how groundbreaking or amazing it is. A newcomer can conceivably know the whole game before they even play it, because people broadcast everything good about it so they can jerk it off. And for all I know, its innovations were taken and used in much more mechanically sound games in the future - making this one big "Seinfeld is Unfunny" moment.
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And outside it's ninety-two degrees, and KROQ is playing Siouxsie and the Banshees.
Currently playing: OSRS, Final Fantasy V