Three words best describe this title: shortest game ever. I was done with it in four hours and once complete, there isn’t a whole lot left to do. To the game’s credit, the action is awesome and intense, but this doesn’t even begin to make up for the short length.

The action is a solid mix between a brawler and a shooter. The fighting sequences are fun, but can get repetitive. There is a light and heavy attack and they can be combined into several different three-hit combos. The block button can be used to defend against every incoming melee attack, so it is possible to win nearly every fight on the first try with enough patience. Boss fights are a bit more difficult, but only because they block your attack more than other enemies do. Every time you connect an attack, an adrenaline meter on the bottom of the screen fills up. As this fills, you can perform up to three takedowns on enemies. Against a normal enemy, these are instant kills. Against bosses, they do significantly more damage than a normal attack. These takedowns can be performed near most objects in the environment to use them against your enemy, like smashing their head into a jukebox or throwing them through a coffee table. While the combos do get old after a while, it is always fun to find different items around the level to use against your foe. The shooting in the game isn’t much different than in other games, but the the ability to use your Bourne Instinct spices it up a bit. Pressing this button sends the world into black and white but anything of interest is left in color, including enemies, weapons, explosive objects that can be shot, or hidden items. It also highlights how to get to your objective on the mini-map in case you are lost. You have unlimited use of the Bourne Instinct and it can be used constantly. The only issue I had with it was that it would automatically zoom to the nearest target upon use. Sometimes it would spin me around to look at a propane tank behind me when I really wanted to see what was hiding in front of me. If your adrenaline meter has enough saved up, you can also perform shooting takedowns when enemies are present. All the takedowns, shooting or melee, are fairly cinematic and look very good. When performing one on more than one enemy at a time, there is a timed button press segment that keeps the intensity of the moment up. One other problem I had with the controls; the game wouldn’t let me take cover behind an object or open a door until the animation for moving was completed and this left me open to attack a few times. Other than this, the controls work very well. To mix things up a little more is the car chase scene. It’s a fun segment and the controls are decent, but it is immediately obvious that this isn’t a racing game.

The boss battles stand out as one of the games best parts. The scenes from the movie are recreated and extended perfectly. The hand to hand fight in Bourne’s apartment is awesome, all the way down to actually having the chance to stab your enemy in the hand with a pen. The fight against the sniper out at the country home is the best scene in the game. Just like the movie, all you have to work with is a shotgun and you must blow up different objects to provide cover for yourself while you make your way to the enemy. There is even a timed button press segment where you look at yourself through the sniper’s scope and must evade his shots. The high level of quality and fun behind all the boss battles makes the final one that much more disappointing. Not only was the fight itself lame, but it didn’t even fit in with the story. After the final action scene in the movie, another assassin kills the man that set Bourne up. In the game, Bourne goes after the killer for no apparent reason. At first he says it is to find out who sent him, but then you kill the assassin without talking to him and the game ends. The fight itself is actually easier than a shoot-out against a normal enemy. You shoot him once and he runs further away. Chase after him four times or so, shoot him once each time and you win.

The game takes place during the first movie, The Bourne Identity, but throws in a few flashbacks of past missions, including the entire assassination attempt against Wombosi that leads to his amnesia. None of the actors from the movie are in the game but the replacements are worthy and don’t hurt the flow of the story. It seems strange that the game only covers the first movie’s time frame since the three books and movies have been out for so long now. With the extreme short length of the game, it wouldn’t have been unreasonable for us to expect the entire trilogy in one game. This would have made the final time clock in around ten hours, which is what I feel the minimum should be for an action game to be worth my money. While some scenes are shortened or skipped over, enough of the story is intact for the plot to flow well and you don’t really miss much.

The developer’s attempt at creating some replay value falls short. There are three difficulty levels, but I played the first two and didn’t notice much of a difference. There are passports hidden through each level, but the side rooms and secret niches where they are located are easily spotted on your mini-map, and it won’t really take more than one or two playthroughs to find them all if you are really looking. The awards and achievements don’t help much either. Every one of them can be earned during the course of two playthroughs. Anyway you look at it, there is nothing that you can do with this game that can’t be finished in half a rental period.

The in game graphics are very impressive. Everything looks great and most of the environment is destructible, both when being shot at or having an enemy thrown into it. The rain effects in some of the missions are the best I have seen in a game. The enemies look good, but there is a very small number of character models. In the first level alone, you will fight the same guy nearly a dozen times. While the in game graphics look very good, the cutscenes look terrible. The CGI itself is good, but the scenes are intentionally made grainy for some unknown reason and just look bad.

I did very much enjoy the game. The action is honestly some of the best I have seen in a third person shooter in a long time and the game itself is incredibly polished and glitch free. My only major issue is the incredibly short length. You could buy the whole Bourne movie trilogy for half the price and get twice the time out of them. Four hours of gameplay is just not acceptable.

Very few racing games can combine arcade and simulation gameplay successfully, but this game pulls it off. It isn’t perfect and made a few questionable design decisions, but it is still one of the best racing games I have played in a long time. It starts off a bit generic, but as more time passed, it really grew on me.

Edge of Control is the perfect title for the game. The entire time, you are right on the brink of loosing it, but actually flying off the track doesn’t happen unless you make a mistake. The other racers in the beginning of the career are bad enough to ease you into the gameplay but it doesn’t take long before they really start to challenge you, even on the easy difficulty setting. There is rarely a time when you can just keep the gas down and you must keep a fine balance between the regular brake and the handbrake. A technique that must be mastered in order to earn victory is the use of the clutch. When at low speeds, pressing the clutch will rev the engine up. Releasing it will give you a slight but effective speed boost. Naturally, this is very bad for the clutch and it will wear down after continuous use. Even in the rare event that I got a good lead on the rest of the pack, the game was still non-stop excitement because of how much you have to concentrate on keeping the truck on the track.

The AI is, hands down, the best I have ever seen in a racing game. I don’t mean the best drivers, but the most realistic. On their website, the developers make a point to say that they made sure all the rules that apply to you in the game also apply to your AI opposition, and it clearly shows. They make just as many mistakes as you will. They don’t drive better and faster when you get in first like many other games do, but they also are good enough that you won’t win by massive margins once you get good. Many other games will have that driver from time to time that cannot be beaten. I almost thought this game did that in one particular race. I fought as hard as I could the entire time to catch one particular racer. We were coming to the last turn and I was about to be annoyed when suddenly, he took the turn a bit too wide, over corrected, and slid to a stop in the middle of the track. Seeing the computer make colossal mistakes like this on occasion really makes the game much more fun.

There game strikes an awkward balance between simulation and arcade. The damage system is incredibly detailed: tires wear down, vehicles overheat, the clutch burns out, shocks go bad, and tires go flat. When these things happen, all that you need to do is pull into the repair area and wait a few seconds while your vehicle is automatically fixed. The vehicle physics are incredibly realistic, but if you leave the track, all you have to do is hit both top shoulder buttons to be reset onto the track without losing much time. After resetting, your car is a ghost for a few seconds that other cars can drive through. Even though the game is based on the real life Baja 1000, that race isn’t actually part of the career mode in it’s entirety. It is broken up into several different segments that are spread throughout your whole career. Most career events can be completed in less than fifteen minutes, which breaks the game into short, arcade-like gameplay segments. A full, three hour version of the Baja 1000 can be raced outside of the career mode, but it would have been nice to get some career rewards for doing it. While none of these things really hurt the game, I would have preferred if it leaned a little more away from the arcade racing. MotorStorm has that category cornered and there isn’t a good choice for a realistic off-road game in this genre. This doesn’t mean that I didn’t have a blast playing, though.

There is a vast number of licenced vehicles available to drive, ranging from an old Volkswagen Beetle to the trophy trucks that are seen on television. There are eight categories of vehicles. In the single race mode, all categories are open from the beginning, but not all the vehicles are available in each until they are unlocked through the career mode. In career mode, only the first category is open and experience must be earned to unlock more.

Progression through the career mode is probably the best aspect of the game. Many of the events are tournaments that consist of three or more tracks. Points are awarded depending on your place and the winner is the driver with the most at the end of the tournament. Like MarioKart, it is possible to win a tournament without ever getting first place in a race. The other type of event is a rally race. These are basically just a race against the clock with other racers on the track. The game tells you that although all categories of cars are on the track, you are only competing against those the same as you. I don’t really believe this because I have been passed by cars in the same class as me but remained in first. Even though the scoring isn’t entirely accurate, these were still my favorite events. These were races over large areas of the desert that were usually at least fifteen minutes or longer. There were no repair points in these races. If you damaged your vehicle, which is bound to happen in these longer events, you have to call in a repair helicopter that will land ahead of you to help you out. The higher you place in either race type, the more reward credits (i.e. money) you earn to buy new vehicles or upgrade your current one. There are different levels of each upgrade part, but the price difference is minimal, so there is no reason to buy anything but the best parts. Credits can also be earned from sponsors. As you gain notoriety, better and better sponsors will offer to put their decal on your vehicle and pay you for it. The amount they pay depends on if the panel that their decal is attached to is still on the truck at the end of the race. This adds an interesting aspect to the game because if you drive conservatively and place second or third, you can actually make more money than if you beat the hell out of your vehicle in order to make first place. Since you still earn experience from a race even if you don’t get first place, the next category of events can still be unlocked without always getting first; it will just take longer.

Since the last off-road racing game I played was MotorStorm, I was a bit disappointed by this game’s graphics at first. As time went on, however, I grew to like them. During the rally races, you can literally see for miles and the view is amazing. The free roam mode covers nine square miles of completely unrepeated land. The trucks could have looked better, but still look good. While the tracks left in the dirt look nice, the mud flung up by the tires looks bad and the dust kicked up dissipates too quickly. The pieces that start flying off your vehicle as it gets damaged look great. As they start to fall off, they will flap in the wind and after they come loose, they will remain on the track for you to run over on the next lap. Collision detection between vehicle is a bit off. The collisions between bodies of the cars themselves is accurate but the tires will clip into each other regularly. Once you get into a race, these issues don’t really detract from the action.

Problems considered, I still can’t stop playing this game. The action never gets old and the game is always challenging. Since it seemed to have come out of nowhere, I didn’t expect much. I was pleasantly surprised by this title.

So I have this friend that lives in Hell and he informed me the other day that it has, in fact, frozen over. Though he was unsure at first as to the cause, it was soon discover that it was due to EA making a good game. Actually, scratch that; a great game. Bad Company is impressive on nearly every front: graphics, gameplay, story, and so much more.

While the basic gameplay isn’t that much different than other first person shooters, what makes this game stand out is the destructible environments. Every single building in the game can be completely destroyed, except for the floors and stairs. This includes the walls, roof, all furniture, and doorways. I cannot fully explain how entertaining it is to fire a grenade at a well hidden enemy inside a building and see nothing but a massive hole in the wall where they were hiding once the smoke clears. It also makes the tank and helicopter fights completely different than in other games since you can’t hide behind the same wall and pop out when you have the chance. You are forced to stay on the move and hope you can take the enemy out before they destroy all the cover in the area. All the possible destruction made me flash an evil grin when I saw that the last mission takes place in a fairly sizable town with more buildings than I have ever seen in one level. The destruction doesn’t just apply to buildings, either. Blow up a wall of sandbags and you can watch them fly through the air. Fire enough bullets into a tree and it will fall over (a vehicle mounted machine gun can clear a forest). Explosions even leave holes in the ground that can be used to slow vehicles or as a makeshift hiding spot. Bad Company has the highest level of destruction that I can ever remember seeing in a game.

There are a vast number of weapons to use in the game. So many that they actually double as the games hidden packages. Weapons are scattered around the maps and the more powerful ones are hidden better than the weaker ones. On the title screen, there is a menu option that shows you which guns you have found and which you have yet to discover as well as each ones rarity. Even though each one handles differently, none are too easy to use. I mean this in a good way, though, because it makes you feel like you earned each kill. I did think the explosive weapons were a bit under-powered. Many times it felt like if the enemy wasn’t a couple of feet from a grenade, they wouldn’t take much damage.

While most war games have boring or non-existent storylines, this game’s plot is one of it’s strongest points. In the beginning, you are transferred to B Company (aka Bad Company), which is where the Army sticks it’s misfits that it doesn’t care about anymore. After the first mission, your squad runs across a mercenary group that is rumored to pay it’s soldiers in gold bars. After about two and a half seconds of moral dilemma, your squad decides to go after the gold. What follows is a chase across a couple of countries that has the squad fighting mercenaries, helping an exiled dictator, and maybe a tiny bit of treason. Every character has memorable and entertaining personalities and every cutscene is hilarious. Everything is explained about each person through the course of the game except your character, which I thought was odd. The game opens with him saying that he could have been thrown in jail for what he did, but they transferred him to B Company instead. This is that last that is mentioned about it and left me wanting to know more. Outside of this, the rest of the story is, by far, the best narrative I have ever seen in a war game.

Unfortunately, there are three big problems I have with the game that prevent it from being an instant classic. First is it’s length. Although it is longer than Call of Duty 4, it can still be completed in around 7 hours. I have always felt that an action game should be at least ten hours long for me to feel as if I am getting my money’s worth out of it. Three difficulties and hidden collectibles help the replay value, but I still feel it is too short. Second is the fact that you pretty much can’t lose. Similar to BioShock, you are respawned nearby when you die and all the enemies that you killed before your death are still gone. This takes the feeling of danger away when you know that you aren’t really making progress by staying alive longer. I actually won a battle against a tank by throwing a grenade, dying, throwing another grenade, dying, throwing another grenade, and the last blew the tank up. Occasionally, there is a mission objective that must be accomplished and if you fail, you must restart at a checkpoint, but most of the game has no penalty for death. The final problem is that there is only one multiplayer game mode. It is a fun mode that is a twist on the ‘attack or defend’ games, but the Battlefield series is know for it’s online and only having one choice is lame. There are rumors of new modes being added in free updates, but shipping the game with only one is…well, very typical of EA, actually.

Graphically, the game looks amazing. The character models may be just a step behind the likes of Rainbow Six: Vegas 2, but there is one addition that makes this game stand out: dust. There is dust or fog in the air all the time. Explosions throw debris that takes a few seconds to clear. Helicopters kick up dirt when they are low enough to the ground. Many games have better graphics but are so spotless that they don’t look real. This one thing makes Bad Company look like the most realistic FPS I have ever played.

Just about everything was done right in this game and the end result is some of the most fun FPS action I have had in a long time. I would go as far as to say I liked it more than Call of Duty 4. This outstanding game more than makes up for EA’s last botched war game attempt that I played; Medal of Honor: Airborne. If you are a single player or multiplayer fan, you can’t go wrong here.

EA continues their streak of shoveling out crap and major game reviewers continue their streak of not seeming to notice. If you get a chance, check out Game Informer’s review. They didn’t say a single good thing about the game but gave it an 8.5 and ‘game of the month’ honors. I firmly agree with everything their reviewer said and have no clue where they got the final rating from. There is not one aspect about this game that isn’t done much better in countless other arcade racers (including previous entries in the series).

New to the series is the open world environment. Every event takes place in a fairly small city and races are started at most intersections. The setup is much like Test Drive: Unlimited but has far less options. There is no way to move quickly around the city; you must drive everywhere. This is fine in the beginning, but later in the game it feels like a complete waste of time. There is also no way to see where the races are without being at their exact location. For example, if there is one particular race type you enjoy, there is no way to find out where all the events like it are. You must simply wander the city until you spot one. This game lacks most of the basic features that are commonplace in nearly every other open world racer.

The races play out like any typical arcade racer. When you are behind, your opponents drive like beginners. When you take over the lead, they race like gods. I realize that this is done to make the game more action packed, but it is dumb that the best way to win a race is to hang back out of first place and boost past them on the final stretch. The cars control well enough, but the hand brake is totally unpredictable and useless. This is especially disappointing because arcade racers usually rely on the handbrake to pull of sharp corners. The boost system that the series is known for is completely ruined in this game. In past Burnout games, boost was built up by driving in oncoming traffic lanes, near misses, causing your opponents to crash, and other similar actions. This added a new aspect to the races where you were forced to create action packed sequences in order to keep the boost meter full. In this game, it is still done the same way but the boost is much easier to get. Mildly agressive driving will keep your boost gauge maxed for just about the whole race, making the above mentioned actions pointless to attempt. Also, every race is open at the beginning of the game. There is absolutely nothing new to see or do (other than unlock cars) that isn’t available right from the start. This game is guilty of the one thing that I absolutely hate when a racing games does; if you don’t finish first, you completely fail the race. To make matters worse, there is no option to restart an event (like you can do in any other racing game). If you know you are going to lose, you can quit the race but then must drive back to the starting line if you want to try again. This would have been a minor addition that could have greatly improved the overall flow of the game.

In a monumentally moronic decision, EA decided to remove the crash mode that was the favored aspect of the series by many players. It was replaced with the ability to start a crash at any time by pressing the top two shoulder buttons. The problem is that you have far too much control over your car while it is rolling through the air and with a minimum of effort, the crash can be extended almost indefinitely. The action is always viewed from the normal racing view, so you don’t get a good look at the aftermath of your wreck. There is also no option to view a replay of the accident, like in past versions of the series. Add to that the fact that there is basically no reward or point to these crashes and this gameplay aspect quickly looses it appeal.

The only part of the game I enjoyed was the Takedown mode. In these races, you goal is to force a set number of other racers to crash while they try to do the same to you. There really is no challenge to these events because I regularly got more than four times the number of takedowns than the event required, but it is still a blast to play. I really liked this mode until I remembered when I played the version of Burnout on the PSP that came out over a year ago. This version of the game had the same exact Takedown mode but with more variety in the ways you can make your opposition wreck. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that the old PSP version of the game is far superior to this version. EA strikes again.

Most arcade racers make up for their lack of depth by having more bells and whistles, like car customization. Not so here. There are absolutely zero options to customize or upgrade your car. You do have the option to unlock a second version of every car, but many times the new version isn’t even as good as the old one. Every car comes with one decal set and that can’t be changed or even removed. There are even a couple of cars that are covered with rust and have taillights out. No amount of repairs or paint jobs will fix them. You can paint your car different colors, but the procedure for this is fairly stupid. You must drive through the paint shop and a color is randomly chosen for you. If you don’t like the color, you must turn around and drive through again and again until you get the color you want. Since the color is random, it could take a while to find the one you want. I have even managed to get the same color multiple times in a row. Back at your garage, you can choose among the colors that have already been applied to your car, but there is no way to unlock all the available colors without driving through the paint shop over and over with every car you own. Each car has a performance rating in only three categories and none of them is handling. The cars handle very differently and the only way to know is to drive every one. With 75 cars in the game, it is impossible to remember how every car drives. There is absolutely no reason why they couldn’t have put a fourth category for handling the way nearly every single other racing game in the history of the world has.

The graphics are fairly good. When crashing, the cars crumple far more realistically than I have seen in other games. During a wreck, the game goes into slow motion and the mayhem can truly be enjoyed. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t wait until the car comes to a rest to reset the action. The more spectacular accidents will be cut off right in the middle, far sooner than in past games of the series. In takedown mode, your opponent’s wrecks are even shorter, so you can’t really enjoy causing them to crash. There are also no drivers in the cars. I’m sure this probably had something to do with the ESRB rating (although it is EA, so they may have just been too lazy to put them in) but it is very disappointing to so plainly see driver-less cars all over the place.

This title is another example of EA removing features and releasing half a game for full price on a yearly basis. All this game made me want to do was dig up a copy of the last Need for Speed: Underground or Midnight Club. If you want some trademark Burnout action, save yourself some money and buy an older version of the series. Don’t waste your time with this.

This game is going to fall victim to bad timing. It is a fun FPS that is going to be overshadowed by the more polished and popular Call of Duty 4. If they had sacrificed their pre-Christmas release date and spent more time touching up the few rough edges, the buzz from COD4 would have died down and this game would have had a shot at being the next big shooter.

This is the sequel to the often overlooked, but still awesome, Area 51 on PS2 (no, not the arcade rail shooter, the FPS). Unfortunately, this game doesn’t have the same level of polish as it’s predecessor. It is a very well done game but could have used some more work. There is no animation for characters exiting a vehicle; they just appear in front of you. Occasionally, you will find a door that is larger than the door frame and the two will overlap. Vehicle controls feel like an afterthought. Even with all of this, the game is a blast from beginning to end.

The gameplay itself doesn’t contain anything you haven’t played before. It follows all of the typical FPS rules. You can zoom in slightly with any weapon for better accuracy. Human (or humanoid) enemies can be taken down more quickly by head shots. Alien enemies have clearly marked weak spots. Most bosses are vulnerable only in one location. Nothing about this game is truly original, but a good FPS doesn’t have to be. The action is intense and never gets old. The levels aren’t too memorable, but do enough to keep you interested. It actually took me until the last level to realize that I had been using the same gun for 95% of the game. Sure, I was disappointed once I caught on to this fact, but the game was still fun the entire time. It says something good about the game that it took me that long to notice. You can issue simple orders to your squad by pressing the assigned button (the right bumper on Xbox 360) while looking at where you want them to go or what you want them to do. It works well and they usually are pretty good at following orders. The game boasts it’s squad morale mechanic. If you perform well, your squad is supposed to perform better. If you do poorly or one of them falls in combat, the squad performs worse. I never really noticed a difference, but I may have just not paid enough attention since I was usually the one doing most of the killing. I do have to say that my squad mates did save my butt a few times when I had to reload and still had enemies coming after me. They aren’t as disappointing as in many other games, but not as good as the guys in Republic Commando.

The boss battles are a little disappointing. Upon coming across a boss, your squad usually tells you exactly how to defeat it and most of the time it can be done in a single try. One boss in particular was extremely frustrating, but only because your squad’s information on defeating it is completely wrong. The boss is a large turtle like alien that is only vulnerable on it’s back. Your squad tells you they should split up and will drawn the enemies attention while you work around behind to shoot at it’s weak spot. If you try this, the boss will never take his attention off of you and defeating him is completely impossible. I died so many times that I actually considered never playing again. After looking it up online, I found out that all you have to do is run to the top of the tallest building and shoot two rockets at the enemy. Now, I can win this battle every time without fail in roughly thirty seconds. The final boss is also disappointing, but for different reasons. He doesn’t fight any differently than other normal enemies. He just can take more hits and has a more powerful gun. The room you fight him in has four pillars. All you have to do to beat him is stand behind one and move slowly to the right until you can hit him but he can’t hit you. Most of the time he will just stand there and take the hits. He does move around some and will probably get some shots of at you, but this strategy will work almost every time.

The story is simply enough to push the game forward, but not much more. If you are expecting a plot about aliens and government conspiracies, be prepared to be disappointed. There are hints of conspiracies, but there is never any indication that aliens are involved in the game in any way. All the strange creatures you fight are just results of scientific experimentation that isn’t explained fully. The characters are likable, but I never really got truly attached to them. Because of this, I didn’t really feel bad when something happened to one of them. I actually sympathised with the main enemy of the game. If I had the choice, I probably would have joined with him. It made it a little difficult for me to really be drawn into the game because I was forced to fight someone I really didn’t want to. On a side note, I have no idea if this supposed to be a continuation of the last Area 51’s story. It seems like it might be, but there is no real connection.

This game continues the streak that all new shooters have had going. It is so short that I actually finished it in one sitting. This is good if you rent it, but paying $60 for one day of fun is ridiculous. Three difficulty levels can extend the game, but nothing new happens once you complete it the first time. It also has hidden packages around the levels that can increase the replay value, but this is almost expected in games these days. It also is another game that has no ending. The story just stops and nothing is really accomplished during the course of the game.

Graphically, it looks very good for the most part. The levels look nice, but can be rather sparse in some areas. The character models aren’t top of the line, but are above average. The weapons look and feel believable. Much of the environment is destructible and will break apart realistically when under fire. If an enemy is hiding behind a concrete barricade and won’t come out, it is awesome to be able to shoot the barricade until it crumbles and reveals the enemy. Just be careful, because the same may apply to anything you hide behind. Several of the bosses kick the game into slow motion momentarily when they enter, which looks really cool. Especially when they bust through a wall or smash into the ground and debris goes flying. Many of your squads animations, like opening doors, look great. Others of their actions look bad or are non-existent. You can almost tell when they started to have to rush the game to have it out by Christmas.

You won’t be blown away by Blacksite. It is fun from beginning to end, but never really takes it to the next level. It is definitely better than games like Soldier of Fortune but doesn’t compete with top tier games like Call of Duty 4. My advice is to take it for what it is and enjoy yourself. If you don’t have too high of expectations, you won’t be disappointed.

This game is spilt into two sections. The first part of the game is absolutely amazing and revolutionary. The second part is repetitive and mind-numbingly boring. Unfortunately, the second part is the longer part. Never before had I gone from being so engrossed in a game to wanting to quit playing and never start again. The game is labeled as a FPS/RPG but I have yet to run into any real RPG elements.

The first level begins with a fairly impressive plane crash sequence. Immediately after, it becomes readily apparent that the player’s character is one of the stupidest people on the planet. After his plane crashes and he get to the safely of a nearby island, does he wait patiently for a rescue? No, he climbs in to a strange sphere he knows nothing about and pulls a level with no idea what will happen. Maybe I could believe this if he was stuck on the island for days and needed to search for food, but not within minutes of the plane going down. Shortly after this impulsive decision, he makes an even dumber one. He finds a giant, glowing vial with a syringe attached to it and without hesitation, injects it into his arm. There were no instruction to do so, no one telling him to do it. I can’t imagine anyone ever thinking that would be even a remotely good idea. It almost feels as if the developers were rushing through the introduction of the game in order to get to the main gameplay faster. While I can respect this decision, it takes me out of the game when I have to watch my own character do such idiotic things.

Once the game gets going and you start getting you biological powers, the choices you have to dispatch your foes are impressive. Do you electrocute him and smash his face in with a wrench while he is stunned? How about snap you fingers and light him on fire. Of course there is always the trusty shotgun to the chest. The problem is that you receive these powers so quickly that by half way through the game, I had already chosen my favorites and the action was getting repetitive. It is also a waste of time to use any of your supplies since you can’t die. That’s right, you never die. If your health runs out, you are warped back to the nearest Vital-Chamber with all your equipment and the enemies you were fighting have just as much health left as when they took you down. This completely took me out of the game. I never felt like I was in danger. It is conceivable to complete the game with out firing a shot. Just whack everyone with the wrench until you run out of health, respawn and repeat. Do this for about 10 hours and you will get extremely bored.

Anyone remember the game Pipe Dreams on Windows 3.1? I hope you liked it because the hacking (if you can call it that) is a version of this lame game. You have to organize sections of pipes as fluid flows through them. I’m not really sure what this has to do with hacking, but it is actually fun to do from time to time. Unfortunately, you don’t do it from time to time. You do it every 30 seconds. Robot on the ground? Hack it to join your team. Turret giving you problems? Hack it. Vending machine too expensive? Hack it. Vending machine right next to the one you just hacked too expensive? Hack it. Near the end of the game, you will spend just as much time hacking as you do playing the rest of the game.

Everyone talks about how amazing the story is and I can’t for the life of me figure out why. Here is the premise. Some rich guy named Andrew Ryan wants to make an underwater utopia made up of scientists. These scientists, like they always do, end up turning everyone into zombies. Wow, that’s original. Here’s the story progression during the game. Your friend on the radio tells you to go find a specific person. Hours later you find them and Andrew Ryan kills them. Now you have to go find another person, but when you get there, Ryan kills him. So now you have to go find another person and, here’s a twist, you have to kill them. Wow, this is deep.

Anyone out there played Doom? Not Doom 3, the original Doom. Remember how in every level you had to wander around until you found the red, blue or yellow keycard? Welcome to BioShock. They try to cover it up by calling the keycards original things like ‘rubber hose’ or ‘metal spring’ but it is still the same gameplay premise that died about 10 years ago. If you weren’t bored of the constant hacking, you will get bored of wandering the levels looking for ‘key’ objects.

By now you may have noticed I haven’t said much about good about the game. It does have some redeeming qualities, but I am trying to counteract all the hype. It’s worth a rental but go buy Deus Ex if you want to see a FPS/RPG done right. This isn’t really worth the time.