Bioshock

I honestly never understood what the big deal was about Bioshock. Now don't get me wrong, it's a good game, but it never really crossed the line into "great" for me. I guess it's that some of the gameplay elements seem too contrived. It's as if they never decided how "immersive" they wanted the game to be. The story is a big part of the game, but at the same time, the order in which you find recordings (for example) seems suspiciously "in order," so you don't really feel like you're discovering them but rather that they're simply being handed to you in a very linear fashion.

Then there's the mixed levels of technology that make you feel a little misplaced chronologically. Automated turrets and cameras? Genetic engineering? I understand that Rapture was supposed to have been established in 1946 and followed a different line of technological development than the rest of the world, but that's way more than 14 years worth of advancement even with some of the world's best minds rounded up, especially given the constraints that would go along with living in an underwater city. Similarly, why are there "bot shutdown panels" that anyone can use all over the city? And what are all these guns doing down here, anyway? There's a million little odd things like this spread throughout the game. While a handful of these sorts of problems is easily forgivable for the sake of gameplay, Bioshock has so many that it makes immersion nearly impossible.

Two of the most lauded aspects of Bioshock were it's political overtones and the moral decision you're forced to make regarding little sisters. Both of these elements seemed pretty shallow considering the amount of attention they got. A man-made paradise doesn't work because of human nature, don't play God (i.e., recklessly tamper with genetics) because you don't have a clue what the results may be, etc. Not that there's anything wrong with this, but it's hardly groundbreaking. It's just your generic "dystopian future" fare with a handful of references to Ayn Rand tossed in (Andrew Ryan, Atlas etc.) As far as the moral choice goes, you're either a good guy (saves little sisters) or a bad guy (kills little sisters). It's not something I'd even mention really, except that everyone made a big deal out of it. It wasn't introducing a new concept to videogames (different game endings based on choices made in gameplay had already been around for a while) and it didn't command anything close to the emotional depth reviews made it sound like it had. Maybe it could have if you had to kill the little sisters yourself ingame, in which case you might've been able to feel truly sinister. As it is, you chose one of two options from a menu, the screen cuts to black, and you're left with either a "saved" little sister or a slug-creature in your hand. It seems like the game does its best to NOT make you feel guilty for killing them, going so far as to call it "harvesting" them rather than killing them.

It's still a really good game, but hardly the masterpiece it was made out to be.