Unchallenging Work of Art
Bioshock was praised as a big step in the "game-as-art" movement, something the game absolutely should get credit for. It really is a beautiful game, great atmosphere, and gorgeous both technically and artistically.
But you've heard all that before, I want to talk about my huge problem with this game, which really just made the game feel completely broken to me. Why make such a fantastic game, that gives you so many choices to make, but leaves out the essential obstacle of dying? For a such as this to have aleast some sense of challenge and difficulty, and in my book to be the least bit fun there has to be some sort of death-penalty.
I was really loving the experience until this problem started to become more apparent, I was really into the experience, it triggered all the emotions it should, and it saddens me to see such a great game being gimped by such a minor issue to fix. A WoW-comparison is in place: Image you could solo down an elite mob without and skill at all by just slowly chipping away at their health, die, res and repeat.
If they are going for the death penalty-less system they should at least make it so the enemy resets their health when you die.
To sum it up, this was something that really killed the mood, and completely removes the nerve of the game when you know that taking down an enemy is more a matter of patience than skill, you no longer have the survival instinct.
Note: This review is based on the game as it was on release, any patches to address this problem is not taken into consideration.
