Bioshock was made by Irrational Games (now known as 2k Boston/Australia), an offshoot of Looking Glass Studios that made interesting story driven, atmospheric games like System Shock and Thief. Irrational was given the task of making System Shock 2 as Looking Glass Studios was busy with Thief and Eidos were redirecting man power into Deus Ex. With Looking Glass no longer in existence and having made critically successful titles like System Shock 2, Freedom Force, Freedom Force vs. The 3rd Reich, Tribes Vengeance and SWAT 4, the expectation I had for Bioshock were pretty high. Well, not only did Irrational meet my expectations but they clearly surpassed it.

Action is tight and intense, weapons and plasmids are cool, animations are sweet, enemy AI is nice, story is superb, levels and missions are crafted in a meaningful way to help drive the story (those who have have played Thief will see identical mission structures and familiar game play elements), graphics and visuals are perfect, sound effects are plentiful and of good quality, music is hair rising and fits the game well, game play is fun and interesting, etc.

However Bioshocks true greatness lies in its presentation of a city called “Rapture” at the bottom of the ocean and injecting into it elements like politics, power, lust, greed, good, bad, heroics, sacrifice, love, hate, innocence, choice, deception, suspense, happiness, grief, knowledge, ideas, etc. that collectively comprise the “Art, Science and Industry” of Rapture. Bioshocks beauty is in its explorable environments. Take some time to explore the environments and you'll hear and see interesting stuff.

There's a lot more to Bioshock than what's covered in this review. But to summarize, Bioshock is all about choice.

A truly beautiful game – atmosphere, environment, graphics, voice-acting, story – all top-notch. Water effects especially impressive. (3700+, 2GB, 7900GTO)

Besides the irritation factor of having to put a modem in my gaming rig in order to activate it, this otherwise superb game is heavily flawed by the lack of challenge to the player – when you die you are respawned with about 70% health and EVE, while the enemies still retain the same damage they had when you died. Choosing a difficulty level at the outset seems kinda pointless.

It's possible to get through most of the game (apart form the final boss map) using the wrench, without ever using any ammo or EVE, of which there is too much anyway. It would have been more fun to be desperately trying to find enough raw materials to make some armour-piercing ammo to finish off that last Big Daddy in the map, and for careful use of plasmids/EVE to be a necessity. The feeling of “survival in a hostile environment” is lacking when you know a) the wrench will kill anything, and, b) you never die.

Not a lot of variety in the enemies, and their respawn rate was too many, and too quick, it just became annoying. I enjoyed this game, especially at first, but by 2/3 through I became a bit bored with the repetetive gameplay and lack of challenge. If they'd cut down on the respawns and left out the vita-chambers this could have been one of the best games ever.

Bioshock is one of those games that you just have to play!

It may not be a great first person shooter, but its story and atmosphere greatly makes up for that.

The city of rapture is a character of its own in bioshock, with its interesting design and its inhabitants. Rapture is what makes bioshock great.

The shooting and action in bioshock is good but not great. It is quite initiative with its use of plasmids which grant your character special abilities (fire balls etc). These help make the combat interesting yet still keep the game balanced.

Overall it is a great game that everyone should play!