But that’s the first, and last, time I ever do that. Bioshock was a huge disappointment to me. The final game bore little resemblance to many of the descriptions and promises that were made during development.

When Bioshock 2 arrives, I definitely will not be pre-ordering or buying it until I’ve read reviews from fellow gamers. Not the gaming press. The press slobbered all over Bioshock and heaped enormous amounts of praise on it, while conveniently neglecting to mention important things like – oh, I don’t know – the horrible copy protection? The almost complete absence of the survival-horror aspect that was present in the System Shock series? The arcadey shoot-’em-up gameplay?

Now Zelnick’s already talking about Bioshock 3? And there’s a movie on the way? And a cell phone game? Feh. Doesn’t instill much confidence in me that future iterations of Bioshock won’t get worse, instead of better.

I always thought the FPS part of Bioshock was one of the most brilliant elements. There was no single weapon that could be used to kill enemies -even regular splices- you always needed to be creative and use a combination of skills and weapons or even the environment to kill enemies. And you couldn’t rely on the same one thanks to the sparseness of ammo.

Are you having a go? Playing Bioshock on the hardest setting, around-about Apollo apartments or so, I had every ammo type filled to max, and maximum cash. I would’ve had to empty a clip and a half into everyone I saw if I wanted to put a dent into my supplies. Even after Big Dadddy fights, I’d be back to full a room or two later; Bioshock’s the least challenging game I’ve played since Dynamite Dux for the Master System eighteen years ago (although that was awesome; hey, how about that, he was in ‘Sonic the Fighters’!).

Sounds like a winning strategy. I’m surprised we don’t see this more often.

Hopefully they’ll have listened to the masses and at last attempt to make the game we waited for.

You journos – all hype, no trousers!

Just goes to show the range of experiences you can have in that game. It might be because I’m so obsessed with efficiency, but once I got the crossbow that was all I used. Even against the boss :P. I also got bored with the plasmids half way through the game, and quit using them. I think if they would have mixed up the enemies a little bit instead of just slapping a new texture on an existing one and giving them more health, the FPS elements would have been more engaging.

Also, I fail to believe that a game not having certain RPG tropes stops it from being good. Inventory management is fun, in of itself, but frankly, I don’t miss it if there’s something more worthwhile to pursue. Too often, shifting around objects in inventories are the MOST fun part of RPGs. Which is sort of depressing, really.