I have just finished playing through bioshock. Bioshock is a great game, however, it is not worthy of game of the year. There are four major failings of this game that I can pick out, which all became more evident as I progressed through the game.
1. The baddies: There were essentially only two types of enemies throughout this game: splicers and big daddies. 2k games decided to spice them up, by giving them four different weapon types - guns, pipes, hooks, and grenades. I am usually not so sardonic, but didn't Wolfenstein have more than two types of enemies?
2. Vita-Chambers: Why have these, when you can quicksave/load. Moreover, how come there is no penalty for being revived? This took away any incentive for strategic gameplay, as any death could be resolved by spawning to the nearest vita-chamber, about 50m back down the previous corridor.
3. The boss. Well I won't try to give anything away, but the final battle was really lame: took me all of 2 mins and 3 of my 9 health packs to defeat him. I am struggling to think of a less-satisfying boss from another game...
4. The camera & hacking system: The camera system seemed like a good idea, but firstly, it took way too long to research things, and there was no album! You can't have a camera without an album!!! And why was the camera put in the weapons bar? It was quite annoying to try to scroll to the crossbow, only to start mistakenly flashing away with your camera at the charging big daddies.
The hacking system was... well it was creative. I mean, who thought you could overide electronic systems by changing their plumbing. Anyway, when I first started hacking, i thought that there would be a different hacking puzzle for different machines. But no. Only more and more and more pipes. Half-way though the game I just stopped hacking and either autohacked/buyout or just destroyed the machine (health/Camera/turrets). A lot of potential wasted.
The two big pros for bioshock are
1. The storyline: Brilliant. Had me completely immersed and probably was the only thing that kept me going to the end of the game.
2. The graphics. From the start, it is really evident that a lot of work went into this game. The only weird thing was the melting ice, which just seemed to shrink. Strangely reminiscent of the melting ice in OoT - 8 YEARS OLD!
Also, look at IGN Game of the Year and runner ups of 2005/6. F.E.A.R., Civ 4, Company of Heroes, and Oblivion.
I reckon all 4 of these games are better than bioshock, which either means bioshock has no hope of the 2007 title, or this year has been a drought for quality games.
If Halo3 is not as good as bioshock, then it will probably be the biggest gaming disappointment of my life. 1 on 1, hopefully halo 3 is better, but who knows for sure?
Another game that could grab the title is Crysis. Although the storyline will be much more generic, the gameplay looks like it will easily surpass the monotonous repetition of bioshock.
