Game EXP: BioShock (PS3)

I beat BioShock on 2/26/2019.  I was at home, waiting for the plumber to call.  I used that opportunity to take a full day off and have a really lazy day.  I also watched the first Matrix movie – holds up!  (other two are a boring slog though).  Speaking of boring slogs, I’m here to talk about BioShock.  BURN!  Just kidding, though not entirely. 

I definitely got into a groove after the first couple of worlds.  My favorite way to fight was definitely using the electricity and the wrench.  Stun the enemy and bludgeon it.  I did that for a long time, until I had acquired so much ammo I couldn’t take it with me anymore.  Then I used my guns until I ran out of ammo and it was back to the wrench again.  I killed maybe half of the Big Daddies.  As a result, I missed out on some of the cool Plasmids, (I found out too late in the game that the bees are really sweet ) but I wanted to continue moving forward, and those Big Daddies are tough!   .  If I were to play through again, I would definitely focus on my fav plasmids early on. 

The atmosphere of these game was fantastic.  Almost too good; it was stressful at times!  I think I might have burned out occasionally, because I just started dying all the time.  I’d like to think if I were just extra careful I wouldn’t have died so much.   The gameplay got really repetitive though.  It was a bit of a slog at times.  There were points in the game where I would get killed a lot, out of ammo, health packs etc, and I would just slowly grind my way back to normalcy.  Die, re-pop, kill one enemy, repeat.  There were at least three fetch quests I can recall, possibly more.  The progression was basically ‘go here, then go here, then go here --- waaaait, you can’t go there yet!  Go here and here instead, collect some stuff and then go back to where you were trying to go.”  Pretty uninspired.  Which is really strange in the context of what is otherwise a very inspired game! 

I think ultimately, what happened with this game is what happens with a lot of games:  I would rather play it twice if it were half as long, then once at the length it is.  The older I get, the more of a premium there is on time.  And  don’t want to spend it fetching things and fighting an endless horde of repopping enemies. 

I liked all of the philosophy stuff, and I liked getting the story in snips and pieces.  I relaly enjoyed Andrew Ryan.  Blowhard as he was, he was very committed to his *thing*.  That made him cool.  Not too keen on the final boss.  I didn’t really understand his motivation.  I appreciate the ‘gotcha!’ moment, but after that, I lost interest in him.  I appreciate that the game tries to ask questions about choice, but at the same time, it’s so linear that I don’t really… feel like I have a lot of choice.  It made for a cool environment, but ultimately feels sort of empty. 

All that being said, it felt really good to play such a high-end FPS. I’m seriously considering picking up a copy of BioShock Infinite now.  But I think I’ll play Deadspace first. 

-D