Acetone,
With all due respect, I have to admit that in my 15 odd years of playing video games I have never read a more jilted and misrepresenting review of a video game than your review of Bioshock. It's one thing to claim to be "independant" and "unbiased," however it's quite another to misrepresent a game and not even understand parts of it and still publish what you see as an informed review.
First of all, you do not control Andrew Ryan in BioShock. I have not played the game until the end but save for some incredible plot twist later on you've simply misinterpreted the facts. Even if there is such a plot twist you STILL do not control Andrew Ryan in the eyes of the player.
As far as the story, you need not do more than flip to the second page of the instruction manual to know who Andrew Ryan is. Just thought I'd point that out since you didn't seem to catch that. Also, why would you want the story to be spelled out for you from the very beginning? The game unhatches the plot slowly and nicely. The game also runs on the Unreal 3 engine, not the Unreal 2 engine. Again, just letting you know.
I suppose the AI in BioShock is stupid in the same way that Resident Evil's enemy AI is stupid: the enemies are not zombies in this case but semi-insane humans who are not in their right minds. Do you really expect them or the zombies in Resident Evil to flank, take cover, etc.?
Some of your points are just blatant examples of being biased AGAINST this game. The references to video games under fire politically, the graphics aren't that great (water effects did nothing for you huh?), the demo was scripted (I performed the same executions in the full game), the game was simply a biproduct of hype, etc. You basically trash the game for two full pages then give it an above average review. I think the positive aspects of the game in your opinion took up about two paragraphs of this review. Lastly, please tell me how one game can have a "satisfying cliff hanger" for an ending yet another game "shamelessly leave[s] room for a sequel"?
You don't have to agree with just about every other review out there that states real reason why BioShock is a great game, but please don't bash a game relentlessly without knowing what you're talking about and then subsequently give it a review just good enough to get attention. My question to you is are you grossly misinformed or do you have some sort of alterior motive to get more people to log on to you website?
Mike Kovach
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