BioShock review

Having played the game through and gone a fair bit through my second attempt I felt compelled to give my final assesment of BioShock.

Definatley a slow burner, I was initially convinced the game was never going to live up to all the hype. The demo really didn't do it justice and only really showed off the excellent graphics.
The game really comes into it's own after a few hours when you begin to immerse yourself in the world of Rapture, an underwater city created by mad idealist Andrew Ryan. The story is very cleverly unfolded by tape recordings left lying around allowing you to try and piece together to the various causes of the city's downfall and the inhabitants. The voice acting is very good and really helps to develop a great story. Story is definatley a key element in this game and it feels very much like an interactive work of fiction. Deserving of it's 18 certificate, the game is dark and disturbing but has a strong enough plot to justify the shocking events as opposed to games like as manhunt which just use gore and mindless violence for the sake of it.
There have been a number of technial issues with the game and a few reviews have been critial of this in their scroing. For me the game does struggle to run reliably on the PC but I have had no issues playing it on the 360. Graphically the two versions are virtually identical and unless you have a very beafy PC (at least Geforce 8800) then XBox version will provide a much better experience especially at 1080P.
The sound in this game is very good and played through decent 5.1 THX system sounds incredible. The low rumbles of the Big Daddy as he moans and his heavy footfalls really test the subwoofer. Gunshot sound a little weaker then I would like but otherwise I can't fault it.
In conclusion, certainly one of the best FPS ever it not the best, a very close contest between it and Half life 2. Bioshock definatley has the better and more involving story but Half life 2 has better puzzle and gameplay elements.
95%