Zero Punction on Bioshock

[PlagueOfLocust]

naznatips said:
People chill, it's just a fun review. Yes, I have played both, and he's right that they are VERY similar. He didn't even say that he doesn't like the game, he just said it's not the stunningly original groundbreaking game it promised to be. Games can be good without being groundbreaking, or even without living up to their promises (Fable anyone?). I finally coughed up for the game on the PC a couple days ago. It doesn't run great on my crap PC, but I can say with certainty that it's a great game, but has some issues, and it presents the same problem that all of these supposedly free choice games do:

There is no middle ground. Good and Evil are not the only two things in the world. I can't help but feel like this formula is getting really tired. It was fresh and brilliant with KOTOR, it was fun with Fable, it's starting to smell bad with Bioshock, and I can't help but feel it's going to be rotten with Mass Effect if they don't deepen it. Give us more than two choices please. This doesn't by any means make it a bad game, it's just not the revolutionary moral choices that it was made out to be.

As far as the gameplay elements, they really are remarkably similar to System Shock 2, which I popped in again today just to see if I was remembering it correctly. Admittedly, they are better executed than they were in System Shock 2, and the much more appealing setting makes the game feel more imersive, but the things that make Bioshock a better game than system shock 2 really have nothing to do with originality. It's the polish that sets it apart.

"...they are VERY similar." This is rather vague. I went through the trouble of making a list; you can at least say more than "nuh-uh!" That said, I can mostly agree that it's not as groundbreaking in regard to moral choices as some may have felt led to believe, but I think the important accomplishment of the game was bringing SS2-depth-of-gameplay/story to a larger audience who need to see more of what potential the medium has. Sure, compared to SS2 there wasn't a quantum leap, but compared to the shooters most people who play shooters (the majority of which never played SS2) are familiar with, it certainly was. And those people have now experienced that, and will hopefully want more. That's pretty groundbreaking I think. Groundbreaking would also be a game that gets all of its elements just right (graphics, sound, gameplay, etc.) and is incredibly cohesive and believable. The experience the game delivers is groundbreaking in many ways you aren't focusing on.

Addressing the 2 moral-choices issue more deeply (since it seemed to be your primary concern), if you're looking for the only ground-breaking to be done here, then yes you may be disappointed... Though the developer never actually did suggest that there would be any moral choices to be made outside of whether or not to kill each of the Little Sisters. The theme of the game was still choice (as injected into the story and the gameplay in the mentioned regard), and the choice they gave you was a real one and did make for significantly unique paths through the game. And you really do FEEL the choice, which doesn't always come through in other games that have done something similar. But remember that nothing like that was even in SS2 in any form, which goes against the other part of what you're arguing - that it's a clone.

It's easy enough to pull the game apart piece by piece and say: "oh this was done here, that was done before there..." But I think time would be more wisely spent commenting on how all those elements and (undone) others came together so well in this one game to create an experience with a heart and depth you don't see often, if ever.