Bioshock: Day 1

Like at least half of the rest of the gaming universe, I picked up Bioshock this week. Most of the industry appears ready to pronouce it to be the orgasmic second coming of gaming nirvana. This may or may not be the case, I don’t know. What I can say for sure is that the game knows how to begin with a bang.

You might recall that earlier this year I ruminated about how not to start a game. To summarize: don’t make me look at boring exposition taking place in a generic environment for a full 20 minutes without giving me anything to do but shoot a rat. Whatever else you might think about Bioshock, you can say it does not waste your time. You are literally thrown into the game and instantly given tasks to perform, scenery to look at and a reason to move forward and find out what comes next. In other words, you are given a reason to care about the game.

What is sad is how few games do this right. You’d think people would have learned by now that if I have no immediate reason to care about the game, I have no reason to play the game.

I can only hope that the rest of the game manages to maintain the standard set by the start. This might finally be a shooter that can stand against Resident Evil 4 in my conciousness.

So far my only complaint is, as usual, that Medium might be too hard again. I never learn.