BioShock: Why A Good Thing Can Be Bad
For those that haven’t heard, BioShock is a new game for the Xbox 360 that was released last week. The game has been tearing up the reviews and has managed to become a major volly in the console wars. I just finished playing the game and have a few things to say about it. Some good and some not-so-good.
I am going to start with the bad, since that’s what people want to read about. You can go just about anywhere to hear how good the game is, so I am going to lead the charge with what I don’t like about the game. CAUTION: There may be some mild spoilers.
The game is too short – I read in last month’s Game Informer that short games are OK. That you don’t have to have a long game to make it worth the spend as long as people enjoy the title and have fun playing it, at least more than once. BioShock’s story is so good and the environment is so compelling that I wanted to explore more of the setting than the 9 or so levels allowed. Sure there were a couple of places where you could go off exploring without performing a task, but there could have been SO much more.
Lack of choice – I don’t think I am giving anything away about the game by saying that there is 1 major choice. Do you harvest or save? For me, this wasn’t a choice, so that’s not what I am talking about. There were many places in the game where tasks could have been choices the character made based on the person playing, and it could have built more into the consequences of those actions. For instance, there is one task where you have to do ’something’ for a boss. Well, I would have liked to have been able to refuse, because there was absolutely no information on why I would do this beyond; I needed to finish it to keep going in the game.
Too easy – There were many times where I felt like the game was too easy, especially with some of the bosses. It became just another shooter too often and didn’t challenge me more than: go somewhere and find stuff. Put in some riddles, put in some puzzles, and for goodness sake, change up the hacking game!
Hacking game – This was fun the first five times I did it. Beyond that it was tiresome. It would have been nice to have a different game for each type of thing you had to hack. I was just thankful to be able to get the auto-hack tools and buyouts on occasion.
Mature factor – This didn’t actually ‘bother’ me, but, well, I’ll explain in a bit.
Things that didn’t bother me, but could have:
Multiplayer? Nope, didn’t need it. This was one better played alone, in the dark, without anyone there to sneak up on you.
Complexity of the controls? It was unwieldy at first, but soon I got the hang of how to select things and what to do with things. The Y button jump threw me off one or twice, but luckily you don’t have to use it that much.
Boring story? No WAY! The story was the best thing about the game. In fact, I would have liked to see a bit more depth and clarity in a few places. The end tied it up too neatly for me.
What I liked:
Absolutely everything else. The sound, the graphics, the gameplay, the story. It was like they took my favorite parts of other games and made it into a pile of cool that I could lay in like a big comfy blanket. There were several times that I had to pause the game to check out a sound that I thought I heard in the other room. This was the first game that actually gave me the willies when I went to bed. Oh yeah, by-the-way? I’m a huge fan of sci-fi/horror.
Those things I mentioned before are just my frustration at an awesome game not being perfect for me. It is what keeps a game that is a 9.5 from being a 10.0, and I’ve never given ANY game a perfect 10. Even Halo 2 was a 9.7 for me, and I’m still playing that game.
So my biggest problem with the game is that I know that there are going to be a lot of parents actually buying or renting this thing for younger teens and even younger. I have a serious problem with that and those people who sell it to them, knowing who it is for. This is that type of game that should be rated beyond M, not for the gore and violence, but for the moral decisions that you have to make in the game. Do you save the Little Sisters, or do you kill them? Do you help someone out, or do you do something that will cause a life to end? Personally, I feel that there is a story there that an adult could pick out: You can take the easy road for the greater gain, or take the troubled path and come out ahead in the end. Save all of the Little Sisters and you get more ’stuff’ and you get the good end of the game, (Not to mention the mad gamer points) or you can kill them and harvest their ADAM.
Parents, PLEASE keep this game to yourselves. It isn’t a game to let little Johnny play when he’s holed up in his room with the 6 pack of Gamer Fuel. Take some time out of your busy life and actually pay attention to what your kids are doing, and spend some time with them. Don’t let them badger you into buying the coolest game in the market because some magazine said it was fun, or because one of their friends got to play it. (Or download the demo.) Like I said before, if you think your kids are mature and can take it, listen to them on Live when they don’t know you are around.
That’s enough of my rant now.
Filed under: Games and Gamers
