Bioshock - More Reviews

Destructoid and AtomicGamer weigh into Bioshock with reviews scoring 10/10 and 96% respectively. Here's Destructoid on story and pacing:

From the moment you start the game to just moments before the ending, BioShock never tears you out of first-person view. No cutscenes, no camera zooms, nothing -- everything from behind the eyes of the protagonist. Similar to Half-Life, this choice serves well to amplify the atmosphere and immersion you'll feel as you make your way through Rapture -- a notion absolutely key to the BioShock experience. Most of the "action" has happened long before your arrival, which puts quite a bit of weight upon the environment and audio logs to convey the story, which it does phenomenally well. Through the audio logs, radio transmissions from a very limited cast of NPCs and the set pieces scattered throughout the city, the history of this once magnificent monument to excess is pieced together by the player, resulting in one of the most organic and effortless narratives since the game's spiritual predecessor, System Shock 2. Moreover, BioShock features one of the most compelling plots I've ever seen in a game -- a brilliantly measured story delivered at the perfect pace.

...and AtomicGamer's take on linearity:

Some will complain that it's not open enough, that you can't travel anywhere in Rapture at once and "do anything you like". But that phrase, to "do anything you like" in the context of a video game, is always a letdown to some extent or another. This is one place where I've got to take a stand and say that if BioShock were more like that, the game would have been entirely different, not nearly as engrossing as it is, and wouldn't have had the kind of unique narrative that we are getting. You do often retrace your steps throughout any given level, but I never found that the backtracking done was in any way boring or tedious.