BioShock Review
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Not ten minutes into the monster-smashing portion of the game, the player comes across his first ever hypodermic needle a (Plasmid), the game calls them and upon plucking it out of a busted vending machine, he immediately jams it into his arm, goes into wicked convulsions, crashes through a banister, and slams into the floor twenty feet below. The potato chips thing had made me laugh; this thing involving the instant hypodermic needle snapped me out of my trance; all at once, I was awake in the world of BioShock, watching the dream armed with rubber gloves and forceps. Our guiding spirit contacts us via the short-wave: (You've just used your first Plasmid! It's a bit of a doozy! Your genetic code is being re-written!) Thanks for telling us that before we jammed it into our arm! I bet your starving family finds it fucking hilarious that you're willing to let their only chance of salvation flail around on the floor while an entire troop of psycho-freaks walks by, stares at him, and laughs.Spotted on Kotaku.
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BioShock fails, and quite embarrassingly hard, as far as I'm concerned, when it comes time to tie all of its genuinely enthralling atmospheric concepts (underwater city, inspired art design, excellent music, political message, overt genetic enhancement as common and convenient as multivitamins) into an actual knife of entertainment. As-is, there's just too much to do, too many choices to make. I like having to choose my weapon upgrades wisely, and I can honestly see the pure-hearted intent of the game designers in making me do so; it's just that, in something like BioShock, the richer and more excellently executed the atmosphere, the more shocking and bubble-bursting are the whip-cracks of context.
