Void

- it felt like pretty much all the art assets (textures, atmosphere, ideas, even models) were reused, with only reaarangements, so that was a definite minus

- way too many monsters. And sending waves after waves

+ they kept the audio journals, and though they weren’t as interesting as in the first due to the not so relatable character, they still provided some entertainment (and an opportunity for me to learn more german)

- so much repetition, of fights, repeated quest tasks (gather x sisters type), that by the end I had to add a cheat to finish it, and even that wasn’t too helpful as it just gave adam and not a way to make things easy

- yet another game that doesn’t know the word “easy” and confuses it with “hard”. On easy level i was expecting to breeze through the game (i’m a person who’s been playing and loving shooters for more than 15 years now), instead it was pretty challenging and i had a couple of deaths

+ in the end i’m happy i pulled through it as towards the end it pulled out a couple of gems, the story got more interesting, and in particular one moment blew me away, you end up playing as a little sister, but what I loved about that is that all the rusty dead bloody world through your new eyes now looks like a castle with roses and statues and drapery… very interesting stuff

+ the ending was also pretty interesting, and I suspect there are multiple endings depending on how you play it

- all in all I could feel the director of the first bioshock didn’t work on this one as it felt much more “point a to be kill everything, rince and repeat”, losing what the original had: a feeling of discovery, an exploration of social and political order, but I’m happy to say I have that vibe about Bioshock Infinite a bit more, and indeed I did see Ken Levine back in charge presenting things in imagination stimulating ways. By the way, I have to mention here my initial disappointment with Bioshock, something that holds true for the second one even more: when we were sold on the story it seemed as if each mutant would be unique, one guy would have fire, another teleport, and I was looking forward to finding out each guy’s story and psichosis, an illusion which was severely destroyed when you encounter tens maybe hundreds of each. That’s a missed opportunity for games. I realize this is a shooter… but still, for example Bioshock 2 should have imho had 20% of the monsters it had at the most. We have to get away from this kill-kill-killl thing.

- they should have takend a bit more care with sound bytes: my wife was particularly annoyed (as was I) by how killing certain female splicers would result in loooooooong dragged out screams, many continuing for whole seconds after the character was dead. Maybe you can do that once, but when it happens tens of times it’s just embarrassing for one to play such a game with anybody in the neighborhood :P

+ it was nice to walk through the underwaters, but it wasn’t given enough love and points of interest (i was expecting some magical underwater mirracles, some peaceful fish, isntead it felt like hallways made out of plant textures/models.

well, hoping the next Bioshock will be better.