BioShock

THE GOOD:
- Graphics/The Engine: Everything you touch gives a different shine to it and you'll swear you're in the game after a few minutes

- Gameplay: With numerous types of enemies to defeat (albeit, not enough) and different ways to take them down, along with puzzles, twists and turns, the gameplay is nothing short of outstanding

- Ranging Difficulties: From newbie to rock solid, everything will give you a challenge

- Surroundings and Sound: From creepy areas to the creepy whispering of the splicers, to the beautiful introduction of rapture and the loud warning sounds from the Big Daddy, everything will give you a delightful experience interacting with the city

- Items: The currency, ADAM and plasmids are especially excellent with many things to obtain using your wits and your wad.

THE BAD:
- No replay value: It's a one time over game, complete it and you'll probably never look at it again

- No multiplayer/online mode: This may fall into the same boat as the one before this, but without an online mode nor a multiplayer mode, there's nothing to come back for

- Repetitive: Like Dead Rising, killing your enemies the same ol' ways gets boring, and running through the game again and again having the Big Daddies and splicers pop up whenever they feel like it, it really will feel like a chore to pummel them into the ground and reap your reward.

SUMMARY:
When I saw this game's trailer on a website before it was released, it didn't immediately grab me but I always thought it was an interesting concept and really could be one of a kind, and when I managed to get my hands on it when it came out, it still happened to be an amazing and outstanding concept along with gameplay that was refreshing in every other way, but unfortunately that was it. It just shows goes to show the perfect FPS can't just have an amazing gameplay and graphics, it needs replay value and if not that, it seriously needs multiplayer value.

Playing this game is not worth your money, if I had £40 and walked into a game shop I'd rather give it to the shopkeeper and ask him to punch me in the face in return rather than get that game. It's strange because I've never disliked a game more that seemed perfect in every way of gameplay, but when you've completed it just that once it's game over for good. The endings last two minutes at most and even the introduction lasts one minute, afterwards you're thrown right into the gameplay not even knowing what you're doing or where you're going, though the game is slightly understanding at the beginning and helps you find your feet. Anyway, getting back to the point; when the game is over it is well and truly over. If you found it so enthralling to play it again, well hats off to you because if you do so nothing will change and it'll be just as pointless last time. Basically, you can do two things different in the game, save these things known as "Little Sisters" which harvest ADAM (a certain currency in the world of Rapture) from the dead or you can harvest them yourself for your own ADAM. Either way, you'll get some ADAM but obviously more-so if you harvest them. However, if you even so much harvest one of these Little Sisters you'll be getting the bad ending at the end of the game, save them all and your reward is a shoddy two minute ending that doesn't do the game justice at all.

So if not buying the game because it has no replay isn't a good enough reason for you, then I'll let you know about the lack of multiplayer. In this game they could of easily had an opportunity to stick in a quick multiplayer game even if it was shoddy because the game itself is so good it didn't need a brilliant multiplayer that surpassed the offline game itself like Gears of War, but they didn't. They kept the original offline game thinking that it might damage it taking it online or making it multiplayer, a foolish decision if there ever was. Almost every FPS today happens to be online or multiplayer by choice or not, and these days it really matters. Your game won't last two minutes if it doesn't have replay value, and without multiplayer or online mode, people get bored real fast, just like me.

But enough of the bad points, I've talked about the gameplay itself being amazing so let's get right to why. The game is detailed in every spot with you being able to explore every nook and cranny as well as use it to your advantage. From cupboards to boxes to bodies you can literally search everything in the game and it's guaranteed you'll never find everything in the game, saying that there's no key items you need to find. Everything either stocks up your EVE (an item to use plasmids, but we'll talk about them later), health, currency and weaponry, the latter most important. This game happens to be very difficult with weapons and tries to get you to use your plasmids much more often that them, seeing as the weapons will become useful against the main bad guy in the game; the Big Daddy, protectors of the Little Sisters. Now, these guys don't mess around and if you don't harm them or pose threat to he Little Sisters, they won't rip you in half. However, even if you miss one single shot against a splicer and it happens to hit his full suit armor, prepare for a fight. There's around 80% chance you'll die at least three times against these (thank God for those respawn points) and what you'll keep having to do is go back and throw everything you have at them. In the long run, it's better to simply hit it over and over again with your wrench because it's simply not worth wasting all your money for around 90 dollars (although that money is like a million dollars for Rapture). Next to the Big Daddies, there's the splicers, the goons of the game. They keep up in different types, such as thug, nitros, houdini and spider, each one more deadly than the next, and if you don't pay enough attention you'll be down in a second.

Next to these two somewhat difficult but more-so repetetive enemies you have the 'bots' such as turrets, cameras and shooter bots which when the alarm is triggered will chase after you and easily gun you down in a mere second. Fortunately for you, these are easy to manipulate using the 'hack' option allowing you to use them to your advantage against the splicers. They usually don't tend to mess with the big daddies as they seem to be more the law enforcers than troublemakers. Speaking more of the 'hack' option, you can use it to hack everything from vendor bars to cameras. As soon as you begin to hack the item, prepare for a quick tube switching game where you must get from one end of the 'map' to the other before the machine short circuits and sometimes injures you in the form of an electric shock or a few annoying bots. These minigames usually get harder and harder as you go along the game rewarding you more and more. Sometimes it just isn't worth it adding a program to the machine which will injure splicers if they try to heal with it but you're in an area where they don't even spawn, and sometimes it is, mostly the vendor bars where it will unlock items and allow you to buy items you need to continue on.

Back to the weapons and plasmids, you are given an array of interesting items to fight against the enemies, and you'll find everything useful in different occasions of the game. You'll be equipped with a wrench, a pistol, shotgun, machine gun, grenade launcher, crossbow, chemical thrower which each have their different ammo types and differences. This happens to be one of the best parts of the game allowing you to upgrade such things as wrench power and your skill level with the help of a thing known as a 'gene' bank, but once again I'll leave that until later. Remember to use all of your weapons in different situations, where a pistol can't deal the damage there's no saying a crossbow can't. Next to the weapons are definitely the best part of the game; the plasmids, and if you're not careful you may just miss one. There are four main types of plasmids in the game; Active, Physical, Engineering and Weapons, and you'll be able to slot 6 into each category. These range from health upgrades, to hacking difficulties decreased to physical attacks, the latter being the most important in brawls against the opponent. Using eve, you can torch your enemies with fire, send a chill up their spine with ice, give them a surprising shock with thunder, swarm them with bees, piss them off with enrage sending them battling with another enemy nearby or the most fun; throw them around with telekenesis. This plasmid happens to be the most useful allowing you to bring items you can't grab close to you, throws bodies into tripwires activating traps you don't have to deal with amongst other things. Usually, you won't be able to lift your enemies if they're living and will rely on a dead body to throw around, or possibly grab a grenade they throw at you and send it right back. Either way, the plasmids are more dangerous and original than any other power seen in previous games, and I suggest you use them only when neccessary, as your EVE can easily be drained.

To sum up, this game has much amazing points to it giving you one of the most brilliant and original FPS playthroughs you'll ever have but that's it. If you really love this game you'll stick to it and continue to play it over and over again but you've got to ask yourself; "when am I going to get bored of doing this?" I got bored first time around, and that's why I urge you not to waste £40 on this straight away. Let the hype die down, win the lottery or simply get lucky and have a relation by it like what happened to me. It's a great game but I'll be damned if anyone doesn't want more...