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Game of the year! According to all the hundreds of reviews on ‘reputable’ sites on the internet. Yeah, it’s good, but the amount of hyperbole used to describe Bioshock make it out to be the single greatest thing to happen to videogames since Pong. A Gamerankings average score of 95.4%, means that it’s just outside of the top 10 most critically acclaimed games, which is no mean feat, for a ‘new’ game.

But I dunno….after spending a week or so with it, I’d have to disagree with the sentiment. Not to be contrary or anything, of course, but simply because it’s heritage has meant that, if anything, in some respects, it’s a step removed from what it could have been.

Because, of course, as most of you would know, it is, to all intents and purposes the third in the ‘Shock’ series. System Shocks 1 and 2 were PC only affairs, and were woefully ignored on release. System Shock 2, in particular, is one of the best games that I never completed. Not because it was too difficult, oh no (:)), but because it was so scary. In that game, you found yourself crashlanded on a seemingly deserted space station, with physical weapons and mental upgrades that could affected the diseased enemy, that seemed to be the only survivors, but whose only intent was to kill you. Along the way, you found recordings from the deceased that gave you some idea what had happened to turn the space station into a ghost land, and all this time, you were watched by the omnipresent baddy of the piece, SHODAN, who made sure that you felt unease with every step.

Now, replace SHODAN with Andrew Ryan, the Space station with Rapture, and the mental upgrades with Plasmids, and you’ve got Bioshock. What’s lacking in this update is the micromanagement of your person, and tools, which far less dull that in sounds, and added greatly to the sense of unease and fear. Finding your favourite weapon isn’t enough when you know that there’s a chance that your using it is going to break it, requiring you to find the parts to repair it. In Bioshock, this doesn’t happen. In fact, the exact opposite occurs - at no point do you really feel like you’re about to end up in the proverbial shit as far as firepower is concerned, thanks to the plentiful supplies of cash bandied about the game, and Rapture’s decision to have an ammo shop on every corner.

As for your own welbeing, in SS2, you upgraded your personality over a number of areas, meaning that you had to make the decision to specialise either in the physical, or mental capabilities of your character. The great thing, in this respect, is that the game could be whatever you wanted - would you decide to go all out and kill shit with guns, or would you go ‘psychic’? In Bioshock, it’s all open to you, and the only decision is what upgrades to choose at a particular point, as aside from the limit is the number of each type you can have at any one time, although they’re all interchangeable anyway.

But enough of that - the decision to ‘dumb down’, is probably a conscious decision, and my desire for it to be a true sequel to one of my favourite games ever is rather selfish in the respect that it’s fairly obvious, just by looking at the sales figures of SS2 that something had to give if this type of game was to be successful. And in almost every other respect, it succeeds admirably.

The game looks and sounds absolutely wonderful - they’ve nailed the 50’s Art Deco look perfectly. The atmosphere’s there, and the story is reasonably gripping. The action itself is OK, although, it can be hard, thanks to the busy surroundings, to work out what’s happening when you’re being attacked by 200 baddies at the same time.

When all’s said and done, though - I had fun. Which is way more than can be saide for Prey. It’s just a shame that it’s not what everyone wants it to be, but I’m very happy that they’ve decided to tray and turn this into a franchise - here’s hoping that they’re try and be more true to it’s predecessors in future releases.

Yeah, well, it’s been slim pickings for the past couple of months from my point of view - literally bugger all worth even considering buying has been released recently, which on the one side, is to be expected, as it’s summer, and everyone’s supposed to be out enjoying the sun - shame that the sun forgot about it’s obligations to actually be out and it’s basically been a rolling autumn for the past god knows how long.

So, anyway, the Bioshock demo was released, but surely everyone knows by now exactly how good that particular game is, so it’s not really worth covering. Or, at least, not until i have the full game in about 3 weeks time.

Anyway, rambling. The point is that once i’d finished enjoying that, i decided to check out the other demos available for download on XBL, and my interest was piqued by ‘The Darkness’. Had read some reviews and checked out some screenshots, and yeah, looked pretty neat. The developer’s last game, “The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay” had also been a personal favourite of mine on the original X Box, so I thought, ‘what the heck!’ and downloaded it.

My first thought was that I should have probably downloaded this before Bioshock, simply so that I could have appreciated the graphics more than I did. Sure, it looked nice enough, but really, Bioshock has raised my expectations of what the l’il powerdraining box is capable of. It doesn’t feel quite right. The demo kicks off with one of those interactive movie title sequences that games seem to have caught onto ever since Half Life started the whole thing all those years ago. You know, lots of action, you can’t control where you’re going, and the credits for the game roll up in such a way to give the game an air of sophistication.

As for the plot, turns out I’m some long haired Jon Romero type, who’s in with ‘the mob’, and it not particularly adept at reloading weapons, seeing that for half of this first chapter, my time was spent watching my character put shells in a shotgun, whilst being driven at high speed through an underpass. The other NPCs in the car were busy either getting shot, or shooting something just out of sight over my shoulder, which was incredibly annoying.

Anyway, to cut to the chase - once that bit finished, the demo moved on to some section where loads of people were trying to kill me in a cemetary. I ran round for a bit, and eventually, Mike Patton, formerly of Faith No More says something in a ’spooky voice(tm)’ about dark and monsters and shit and eventually, the titular darkness turn up.

Cue cutscene, and the Darkness, who turn out to be a pair of black tentacles with teeth, turn up, kill the rest of the mobsters after me, and i’m back in control. And annoyed that I was incapable of reproducing all that craziness I’d just witnessed, with my moves being confined to ‘eating mobster’s hearts’ and ‘making some demon appear from some hole in the ground’.

Anyway, there was a third part to the demo, btu I was so fucking bored by now, what with the gameplay consisting of solving lame puzzles that require my using the Darkness’ powers, shooting out lights so that I can move around with the Darkness out (well, they’re not called the Darkness for nothing) and turning on power saws in some shed, just because I could.

So, basically, the best part of this demo is that I now know that I don’t need this game any more. The worst part is trying to understand how or why it managed to get all those great reviews. It’s really fucking boring.

Probably the reason why i’ve lost the will to write about games. On top of being particularly lazy, I guess. Anyway, to justify the hosting on this site, here’s another brilliant review of a game people stopped caring about years ago!
Prey can be summed up in two words: Really boring. Well, more words, if I want to add ‘really’ a few more times, just to hit the point home.

In theory, it should be a fantastic game - the portal idea does add quite a bit, as does the bits that require your playing around with gravity, but the dual ‘badnessess’ (if it wasn’t a word before, it is now) of whiney main character, and dull, repetitive scenery mean that ultimately, this is more of a slog than it has any right to be. Of course, I haven’t finished it yet, but that’s mainly because I simply cannot be arsed. Puzzles are basically the same, requiring you to go into ’spirit form’ to go through walls, and that’s incredibly inconsistent, as you seem to only be able to go through walls lead you to the next, predefined section.

There are also ‘puzzles’ that you only really discover through losing patience with wandering aimlessly about, and try something, ANYTHING to get on to the next section.

And the sound’s crap, with the music being adequate at best, and the guns sounding like pea shooters.

All in all, a very average game, and not worth anyone’s time or money, even if, like me, you see it in CEX for 15 quid.

BORING BORING BORING.