I heart Bioshock

Last night I finally finished downloading the Bioshock demo and was pleasantly surprised. Its not that I didn’t think that I would enjoy the game, the whole concept speaks to me, its just that I don’t usually like survival horror games and that seemed to be the genre that best fit the videos and what not I saw of Bioshock.

After playing about 12 minutes of the demo, not even half of it, last night I can honestly say that I need this game. The graphics, even on my low definition TV, are superb, the game play feels natural, and beating splicers to death with a wrench is satisfying to say the least.

I think what makes this game a step above a lot of games that have come out recently is the fact that it can appeal to a lot of different types of gamers. If you like the Resident Evil games, you will like Bioshock; if you like Halo or Doom, there is enough killing and cool weapons to satisfy your need to kill; even if you like RPGs, Bioshock is ready for you.

One other thing that I heard in an interview with one of the developers is that they set this game up for three types of gamers: the shooter, the shooter\investigator and the investigator(not their classifications but it makes sense, just give me a second).

Shooter:People who don’t care about the story, they just want to kill every splicer and other crazy in the game.

The shooters will finish the game first and probably enjoy it but they will miss a lot of the beauty that is Bioshock

Shooter\investigator: The hunter\gatherer of the game, kind of interested in the story, will listen to the main points but won’t necessarily explore every nook and cranny of the game.

I think that this will be most of the gaming population. enjoying but not getting immersed completely in the game.

Investigators: These gamers will follow every clue and learn every story of anyone living in the Rapture.

I hope to be one of these but I will probably lose focus about halfway through. We shall see. One thing that got me really interested in Bioshock again was the reviews. It has received and average review of 97.1/100 which is ridiculous. Since very few games receive higher then 85/100 average this is crazy(the new Zelda got 94.3/100). I have read some user reviews of the demo saying that they wanted more guns or that they didn’t like the way the game was presented. I may be crazy but I found this to be one of the more enjoyable demos that I have played and the number of choices that you can make in the game are staggering.

Take for instance the Big Daddy\Little Sister conundrum. In order to upgrade yourself to have more powerful attacks and what not, you need Adam( I am not sure what Adam is but you need it), the best way to get Adam is to kill Little Sisters, these strange little girls that walk around with these mechanical dive suit wearing behemoths. Unfortunately for you the Big Daddies are bad ass mothers who don’t take no crap from no buddy, basically as soon as you attack them to get at the Little Sister they try and usually succeed in killing you. I have yet to encounter one in the demo, in fact I am unsure if I even will, and I am pretty sure that the first time I encounter them I will get my ass handed to you.

The beauty of this game is that, supposedly, you don’t have to kill a single Little Sister to complete the game. From what I have read you get a different ending depending on if you killed any Little Sisters or not. Awesome. Well Bioshock comes out today, I don’t think I will be getting it for a little while but at least I have the Demo to learn the ropes until the full version blows my mind.