First Impressions - Bioshock Remastered by 2K Games
(based on my one hour torture session with this shlock)
Also the last impression...
Bioshock. Huh. It sucked hard! So much for that franchise. Good thing I got out quickly (unlike the addiction issue I have with
Path of Exile... sigh).
Setting
Underwater world that looks a LOT like the underwater level in
Deus Ex (the "Bathysphere" ride in the beginning felt just like the submarine ride in DX1). A huge
Fallout 3 feel too to it, though apparently Bioshlock came out a year earlier, so who knows why that is. I swear the men's room sign looks just like the pip boy! The posters and stuff everywhere all scream Fallout too, as do the enemy life bars, and the attept at irony apparent in the decorations (which works a LOT better in Fallout)...
The underwater kingdom - Rapture - is populated by fucking zombies (I facepalmed hard on seeing the first one... I hate zombies.), ugly-as-fuck robots and really ugly little zombie girls with glowing eyes. It's obvious from the start that you won't meet especially many humans there, and all of the aforementioned creatures don't have a shred of personality. You are constantly terrorised by an incorporeal voice which rambles on and on about going there and killing that, yet the game starts without even telling you WHO THE FUCK YOU ARE and therefore not giving you the slightest reason to care about any of it. Honestly, even fucking Half-Shite 2 (second most overrated game of all time) made more of an effort of making me care about moving through the levels, and that's saying something - at least in that game you are directly addressed as "Gordon Freeman" and are not just some blank fucking nobody. 2K Games fucked up the basic rule of storytelling (make the player care) harder than I could even have imagined! Groundbreaking!
Story
There is none. But yeah, there was something... apparently the mystery voice wants you to kill some other mystery guy - but who the fuck cares about that when there's nothing at stake for the player character or the slightest reason for him to care about any of the other characters in the setting (let's recap: zombies, robots, girl zombies, mystery voice, mystery villain)!!! What a piss-poor attempt at a storyline! Just throw him in (literally)! Holy hell.
Gameplay
SCRIPTED EVENTS NO JUTSU! Enemies always spawn in your vicinity (it's pretty obvious they didn't just MOVE there but were put there by the game), except when they spawn behind barriers and it's obvious instantly you won't be able to interfere with them. In one instance, the game wanted to create tension by spawning enemies clawing at a a glass wall in order to break through. To escape, the protagonist had to move into an elevator portal-style. However, I moved back out of the elevator to watch the futile scripted event and laugh about it.
Then the game... warped me to the next location (ten seconds later) like I had remained in the elevator!!! (I got that on video, btw.)
One episode like that really is enough to make me doubt the game design. Add to that that you can't jump over miniscule walls in the beginning because you would take damage... and you haven't received your lifebar at that point! Bioshock's linear-as-fuck level design makes
Half-Life 2's look like
Duke Nukem 3D, and again, that's saying something! In the beginning there is even a quest arrow to assure even the dumbest idiots (in other words, this game's fanbase that paid for a second part...) won't lose their way.
When you open the map, the interface screams CONSOLE PORT. Combat is clunky, but would be decent I guess. At the beginning of the game you are given magic powers for no reason, maybe eventually you get stuff like levitation that would be needed to make you progress, but the lightning ray you get in the beginning was boring and ineffective.
Fallout 3 has the same complete lack of a storyline, but at least has RPG elements and the tutorial set in the bunker to give you some kind of identification with your character. Oh yeah, and an open world instead of a train ride. On rails.
Graphics
are decent, but as I probably said before, graphics are only even a factor negatively influencing a game's rating, never positively. I grew up with DOS, so I know that it's gameplay and also controls which are the most important factors in video game making. Times have changed, unfortunately...
Summary
Playing Bioshock was a terrifying experience and quite probably it was the game I had the least fun with in a long, long time. To think this game got a 99 at Metacritic would be enough to make me question the collective sanity of mankind - if I didn't already KNOW before that man's decline is already going full throttle.
I died at the one-hour-mark, and I had no intention to continue as there wasn't even the slightest thing of interest to me. I play very few shooters nowadays, and the main reason for that is that most of them appear to be just as bland as this pathetic attempt at an atmospheric game (or
Call of Duty clones or sequels). When you have played the best shooter of all time (DX1) and
know that you have played the best shooter of all time, it is very, very hard to settle for anything lesser. Avoid like the plague, unless you are just as devoid of any individuality or personality as this vapid shell of a game.
