Bioshock - A Defense @ Eurogamer

Now that the media adulation for Ken Levine's sci-fi FPS,
Bioshock has subsided, the vultures have gathered to nitpick it to death, according to Keiron Gillan in a retrospective at Eurogamer. Normally outside of our rpg coverage, we did follow this game due to its System Shock 2 heritage, and there's a lot of points about video game success in general in this article, so hopefully it may be of interest:

A backlash was inevitable.

BioShock is amongst the most critically acclaimed games of the year. In terms of Metacritic average, its only peers are Super Mario Galaxy and Halo 3. You'll note, bar minor sniping, their status hasn't been questioned anywhere near as much as the adventures of a man with a wrench in Rapture's. This, also, is inevitable. They're known qualities. Everyone, to a lesser or greater degree, has made up their minds already.... There's much to hate in both games, but their fans simply don't care and those who aren't fans will never throw away forty quid for something that isn't to their taste.

In other words, a BioShock backlash was inevitable as it's new. People bought it on the strength of the reviews (and the hype - always, the hype) and then, when this random selection of gamers played it and compared their response to the...reviews, a larger proportion went "I don't think so" and pointed at the flaws...

He then goes into some of the common arguments against the game:

"DUMBED DOWN SYSTEM SHOCK."

... people who throw the "dumbing down" complaints seem to have two genuine issues.

1) It's easier to play.
2) A load of interesting options have been removed so it's a much simpler game.

The first one's true. BioShock is both a more accessible and easier game than System Shock 2. But "easier" doesn't have anything to with it being "dumber", and hating "more accessible" is just petty elitism from people who'd actually like videogames to be a ghetto consisting of them - especially when some of the things to make the game more accessible can be turned off. As long as point two's not true, then the former really doesn't matter.

And the second's not true. Mechanistically, you can do just about everything you can in System Shock. What was removed was either irrelevant, actual flaws or replaced with alternative methods to allow similar expression. For example, pre-patch PC fans were angry there was no option to walk on the PC. But - y'know - walking is about allowing you to move quietly. You can move quietly through the crouch, signifying creeping. In terms of the tactics allowed by your player, you can do the same...

"IT'S JUST SYSTEM SHOCK 2.5."

This, funnily enough, is a much better argument. The plot is similar. The structure is similar. What you actually do is virtually identical - you move around, you look at logs, you explore, you try and collect bits and pieces, you follow orders of some mysterious voice in you head.

It even shares the primary fault of System Shock 2 - despite some merits I'll argue later, the final third is less compelling than it should be. Once you leave the Von Braun in Shock 2, the game loses a lot of its sense of place, and leaving you in levels far more linear than anything BioShock throws at you that late in the game. Except the escort mission, obv.

So, yeah, it's a lot like System Shock 2.

Fair enough. Shock 2 was one of the greatest games of its period. If only all games were crippled with that problem...

There's a whole lot more in the same vein, but here's a cut to the conclusion:

"IT'S JUST MEDIOCRE WITH NOTHING TO REDEEM ITSELF."

...With BioShock, the more you look, the more you see. The more you see, the more you have to think about. The more you think about, the more you understand the bloody thing. It's created, by far, the most novel setting for a mainstream videogame this year. Most importantly, while its narrative is of enormous importance to it, it never once betrays the medium. It doesn't - say - present Rapture in cut-scenes. It puts you in a room and puts things in a room and, by induction, you come to understand the place. This is what's most novel about games in relation to narrative - i.e. setting as narrative - and BioShock does it as well as anything ever has.

People who are - say - against BioShock and in favour of Super Mario Galaxy (For the record, I love both), argue Mario is a purer game. It's not true. Mario, by dumping you in cut-scene after cut-scene you have to click tediously through, features an element which is a complete sidestepping of what games can and perhaps should be. I'd accept someone making an argument that Mario's a better game - but a "purer" one stinks of some kind of misplaced fascism. BioShock is nothing but game.

BioShock believes in videogames and what videogames can be, and - if you go along with it - it'll take you to places we've never really been before.