I've had bugs where key items didn't spawn in a few times now, and you have to restart the entire level (not to checkpoint, the beginning of the level) to get them to work (only after wasting a ton of time trying to find the solution before looking it up online and finding out it was bugged). Although some of the traps are telegraphed, many are not and will kill you without warning. After getting killed I looked around to see if there were any context clues and if they were there I couldn't find them. Also, some areas are just hard and I'm getting through by sheer luck. I'm sure if I played through a million times that I'd be able to find an optimal course, but for a first playthrough, it's just irritating playing the same section over and over and over and over and over and over again. It doesn't help that when the enemy grabs you, you can be nowhere near them. Them starting their animation will cause you to teleport back to them and get caught, even when you aren't anywhere near them when they finally "grab" you, which is really infuriating. The fighting mechanics are also broken. Most of the times the enemy will stop to telegraph they're going to attack giving you your opening. Sometimes they just attack and you have to start over, you never had a chance, you lose automatically and there was nothing you could have done to win. Sometimes I miss a button press or mistime something, and that's on me. But when you can play perfect and still lose, then that's unfair and bad game design. Instead of having fun playing a game, I feel like the developers are wasting my limited leisure time. The atmosphere and visuals are nice, though. Don't pay money for bad game design, watch a playthrough instead.
Created my character then the lab gets attacked. Get out of my tube and leave the room and there's a hallway burning in the middle that kills you. Tried hugging all the walls, tried breaking the grate to go underneath, tried to go over it. Nope. No exit. The entire game is two rooms and a hallway. 0/10
Just bought the game, haven't played yet, but the download version is 1.7.1, so it HAS been updated. The reviews saying that's it's the old version 1.45 are out of date.
The first Bioshock is a great experience, a true example of story telling in videogames as a media. The gameplay is a solid first person shooter, gun in one hand and "spells" called plasmids in the other. Some of the enemies can feel more like bullet sponges in the late game, but it's still fun. The morality "system" is a bit hamhanded. You can either save the little sisters for a small reward now and a big reward later or harvest them for a moderate reward immediately. They make it obvious that being the good guy is the best choice, whereas I would have preferred that being good and taking the high road was less materially rewarding but gave more story rewards instead. The graphics have stood up well, over time. The environments are very atmospheric; gives the illusion that you are in an underwater city. And really adds to the storytelling. The important takeaway is that Bioshock tells a story and it tells it well.
