BioShock Reviews
-
Category: News ArchiveHits: 933
If you're debating which version to get, the PC version handles better. In part it's because of the greater precision with the mouse and keyboard, but also with how the plasmids and weapons are selected. With the default settings RMB switches between the two, LMB fires, and you use the mouse wheel instead of a radial menu or bumper clicks to select a specific plasmid or weapon. We also found the mouse wheel to be more responsive for selecting than the Xbox 360 version's bumper clicks, since with the console version the whole range of equipped plasmids or weapons doesn't pop up on the interface, just the active one. By hitting Shift you can bring up a plasmid and weapon selection screen if you so desire, but the mouse wheel scrolled through fast enough to stay useful. Note that you can't set LMB to fire a weapon and RMB to fire a plasmid; there's only one fire function. We also noticed the option to bind the functions "switch and fire weapon" and "switch and fire plasmid," but when we tested it out these only switched from weapon to plasmid and back again, much like the RMB default function. All weapons and plasmids are also bound to the number and function keys, making it even easier to ensure you always have the ideal attack at the ready.
The first of the 360 reviews is at Destructoid with a perfect score of 10/10:
I could certainly draw attention to some extremely petty faults like the occasional audio glitch (nothing more than an absence of sound once or twice), the lack of a player's shadow, and the somewhat shallow ending, but I'd feel kinda silly doing it. Vague disappointment over the game's very final minutes doesn't mean that the preceding 14 hours were anything short of brillianct. BioShock is to the FPS genre what Super Mario 64 was to platformers, what Chrono Trigger was to RPGs -- such a drastic leap forward that you wonder if it will ever be topped. Whether it will or won't be is largely irrelevant; what matters is that, after BioShock, the first-person shooter will never be the same.
And the other 360 review is at AtomicGamer with an overall score of 96%:
BioShock is one of those games that goes down in history as a shining example for other developers to learn from. The massive amount of effort that's gone into creating great architecture and environment goes beyond what many game developers are even remotely capable of, and while I'm not trying to trash other successful shooter franchises, the RPG elements in BioShock give the action a level of depth you simply can't get in games like the Halo series or Gears of War. Attention-deficit gamers might not find this one to be so great, but in my opinion this is not the fault of the developers. BioShock is a well-rounded single player experience with excellent action, a compelling story, some excellent horror moments, and stunning visuals.
