Well that was fun.
I took the plunge a few months ago and bought an Xbox 360; primarily to play Gears of War - but, ultimately for Halo 3. There was a lot of promise in lots of other upcoming games aswell, though. Games like Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed and... BioShock.
Since then, only Mass Effect has jumped from my list of "interesting" games to my "must have at all costs" list. Assassin's Creed and BioShock were yet to show their true colours. But BEHOLD! A BioShock demo descends from the heavens Xbox Live Marketplace!
I try not to get too invested in unproven games before release; sequels are the exception, because you'll generally know what you're getting into. But I've been burned by the hype machine far too often - a lot of games just don't live up to the hype surrounding them.
For BioShock, I was worried about the control scheme and the complexity of combat. The videos released showed how many different ways there were available to approach every encounter - and while that's great on paper, I didn't know if I was going to enjoy "modding" my weapons - and character!, hacking and the combo effects of the physics and AI. I see the possibility for a lot of "gamesmanship" - say, playing it safe and building up an army of loyal hovering kill-bots (hacking the security droids), or just luring enemies into water and zapping them (with your Electroshock Plasmid). Also - I generally abhor mini-games.
All this said, I had a damn good time in the demo. Played through it twice so far, and there's still more things I want to try out!
It starts in a style reminiscent of Half-Life; except the train ride is replaced with a crashed plane, and a submersible elevator. The same, dystopian vibe awaits on arrival to Rapture, the underwater city. More zombies, though! There's a rock-paper-scissors feel to the combat - there's always a "right way" to go about each encounter; but at the same time, there's enough variety in the environments of the limited demo that offers some minor variations here and there. An experienced player doing a speed-run through BioShock would be quite something - dispatching rooms full of enemies in the most efficient way possible, using all of the devices at their disposal (guns, plasmids, hacking, environment, AI).
I'm still a little worried that the nature of BioShock is open to gamesmanship, and may end up having very contrived environments - where each encounter has an "obvious," less efficient way to victory, and providing limited ways to the "perfect" solution (least ammo, money & health spent).
In the end, the only real justification to get BioShock, is that I will soon finish Marathon: Durandal, and it is still a tortuously long 40 days until "Halo 7eusday." Well it's better than Cartman's idea of freezing himself until the Wii was released!
