Did you play the whole game? Because there were a number of rather direct choices you made with consequences and emotional repercussions. Of course with the game being a metaphor for free will and the way games lead players, the guided path actually had a point and purpose, unlike most other games.

Yes. You get one of three endings: Totally good (save the sisters), totally evil (you use their Adam) or totally evil with a sympathetic narrator who pities your choice but doesn't have another script to read from (save a few, use a few).

In the end, it was a mission-quest with no outcomes other than "do it or die" with a puzzle-y boss fight.

I did like the twist as to who you were, but again, it was just another linear FPS for the most part. There were no real "direct choices" other than "save or drain the little girl."

What choices were those? The only "choice" I saw in the game was whether or not to kill little sisters, and it was a pretty terrible excuse for trying to introduce some moral construct into the game.

Especially when killing just ONE little sister automatically earned you the bad ending where your character is apparently Hitler, Blofeld, and Hannibal Lecter all rolled into one.

The game was pretty bitchin, but my main problem with it was it was WAY too easy. I'm not even good at FPS RPG's, bioshock was really the first one I ever played all the way through, and I NEVER died, not even once. Friggin Mario Bros. is more challenging.

I never even got to the boss fight. The reveal that I was a hypnotized mandroid made me completely bored as hell.

Yeah, I know lots of guys who are persecuted because they killed just one little girl. Cut these people some slack!

I think I finally figured out why Bioshock (and by extension, System Shock 2) never really felt like fun:


You face nothing but random scatterings of wandering enemies all game. It felt like playing Fallout with nothing but overworld travel encounters, only without scaling with your level. What is the point of giving me all these weapons and powers to develop if I just use them on the same zombie over and over?

Why couldn't they just populate the levels like a typical FPS and have you fight your way through? It's not like they set this up as a Silent Hill game, and it certainly wouldn't have interfered with the atmosphere.



They also missed a key lesson they should have taken from SS2: having wandering enemies yell the same three scripted lines all game gets old FAST. Either just make them breath heavily or go the Blood route and have them shout at me in tongues.

"Yeah, I know lots of guys who are persecuted because they killed just one little girl."

That's not the point. The point is that the game plays up this big moral choice feature as something complicated and destiny-changing, when in reality it's just a coin-toss between Hitler and Jesus. The choice changes little about the game's path beyond how much more powerful your abilities are, and even that's not such a big deal if you have any FPS skills.

A lot of games are guilty of this. They promise you a sundae of character development and choice when in reality all you get is a single scoop of chocolate or vanilla, and the chocolate is just the vanilla with generic-brand chocolate-flavored syrup mixed in.

Another point being that in the long term you actually got GREATER rewards for choosing the good path. So much for objectivist utilitarianism vs. philanthropy.

Stars for this comment.

Hey, I played Baldurs Gate on my old phone and it was the greatest game I ever played! Keep in mind that I've only ever played Kings Quest and Q-Bert, but that doesn't make me any less "1337" than you kids with your hula-hoops and soda pop.

UnderANeonHalo needs a lesson in Lynch.

ha ha, so rad.

The cell phone game market is huge...


...for quick casual puzzle/bowling/flash games. I can't possibly imagine there being a large demographic of players who'd want to play Bioshock who don't own a console or PC.