Can’t say I’ve really been a fan of the series, possibly ever (i have my doubts about my first one which i found to be an original setting) BUT i must say i’m proud of the game industry producing such moving stuff, in any context!

PS: being the conspiracy theorist that I am i believe their decision to drop gamepad support is more economical/strategice/political than design related as they argue. I don’t honestly believe “they focused on the mouse & keyboard interface”. Even for games that were NEVER made for gamepads with some clever remappings I was able to play them quite well, so I strongly believe that especially for a game where it has not only been proven in the prequel to work great, meaning they already had the technology in place, but also for one which I believe will make most of it’s sales on consoles meaning that the interface is already proven…

It’s been quite a while since I saw a cinematic so very tragically well done. I approach all games (movies & books too, if possible) with an attitude of totally immersing myself in the characters… and realizing first person who I am, and what is happening, the sublte touches, the look in the mirror, the care for the little girl and the eerieness of the whole scene & situation, from her actions to the party, the sublte guilts and familiarities induced, and the tragic cruelty of the actions of the person using the plasmids on you to control your mind, simultaneously realizing both what’s happening and what you see and is also 100% true… all coupled with the human nature greed of the thieves and realizations that given the right context and the story from a different view it all seems justified (and indeed in the first Bioshock the bigdaddy seemed like a villain, no guilt over killing him in ingenious ways…) … shivers all through my body.

Well, i finally got aroudn to playing it:

+ + high production values

+ high framerate

+ some interesting physics/environment ideas (for example the gas, lighting it with a gun and using it for protection, i’d like to see that in a open survival world)

no super artwork to speak of. I mean everything’s good and polished, but nothing i can’t see in reality done better. The music is nice in the few fight moments it starts up, i also liked teh chitchat of the tertiary characters.

- ending map is just gratuitous… suddenly a more open place and you end up running around killing waves of big thingies. Not that fun, nor did it make a lot of sense

- – while the first game(s) made sense, you felt like a surviving scientist, pushed to do amazing things for survival, now the mood feels like it’s not a scientist but a marine, like many other marines, given tasks and no longer fighting for survival but part of a team and all that military stuff that’s so commonly used.

Most of them wouldn’t have been my choices… but they were chosen for other criteria than artwork… social impact, and in that way I think they’re prolly right (i’m surprised not to see Silent hill 2 up there though).

It’s finally out, i must say it’s not what i had hoped for in terms of story, seems too much ordinary stuff to me, not something i could immerse myself into (you prolly can’t make your own story/character either), but I do hope it shall open a path for story telling/cinematic games.

Just cinematic beauty…

If there is one thing that i’ve found over the years guarantees I’ll play a game even if it should have flawed mechanics that is not it’s graphics but it’s story and to what degree i can relate to it… so i’m interested in this category in particular.