Is Bioshock really all that?

Thank god for game demos. The game I'm about to talk (or more or less rant) about has recently got amazing reviews, and everyone loves it. Except yours truly. I dislike it and just thought to throw in my 2 cents, though only based on the demo of it.

When the BioShock demo became available for the XBox 360, I thought to give it a go and see if it really is all that - great graphics, great story-line and hailed to be the next big hit. After a nice long download (the demo is rather hefty, over 1 gig) I was finally able to see if this game really lived up to its hype. Of course it was the demo, but isn't the demo supposed to gain interest in the full game? The demo must, or at least should, present the best parts of the game.

The introduction was nice and I thought that maybe, just maybe this demo will impress me enough to cash out 60 bucks for it. When I got a bit further into the game I noticed that I was actually already bored. I thought to myself "let's spice up the mood a bit" and turned off all the lights in my apartment. Did that do the trick? Honestly, no. I continued being a bit bored with the gameplay and thought to start looking at the graphics to see if there was something more than meets the eye. I would bluntly lie if I'd say that the graphics were poor, but they didn't impress me that much either. I tried my best to find something really impressive but my quest for mindblowing graphics was more or less useless.

The next thing I wanted to catch was the storyline. Now, am I the only one who got really annoyed by the fella who was yapping to you through the radio? Oh man, I would have been so happy to shut him up for good, but that would have killed the idea with the storyline I guess. Can't have it all.. So what happened with the storyline? The annoyance of the whole game started to take over and I decided to just go for it; kill'em all and get it over with. And so I did.

After playing the demo, I felt numb. I didn't like it one bit. I still don't. Reviewers, gamers and perhaps even my mom loves it, but I don't.

Despite my negative feelings about the game, I will try out the full game (if I can get a chance to play it after our reviewers are finished with it) to see if the demo was just a bummer. At the end of the day I feel good about the demo - it saved me 60 bucks! Always a happy thing.

/rant off

Don't hesitate to post your thoughts & feelings about my rant over at our discussion boards and if you really want to know if your system can handle this game, don't be shy to check it out here.

Be sure to check out a gameplay montage of the Bioshock PC demo, compiled by our very own Heikki!

Until next time..

Cheers,

Nick
Site Manager
YouGamers / Futuremark