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DO not purchase

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 22 / 30
Date: September 14, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Because of the copy protection used avoid this product to make a statement. It is a bogus system. limited reinstalls and securom features that are making the game crash often.

POS copyright protection means no sale.

This game won't get anywhere near my system.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 20 / 27
Date: December 07, 2007
Author: Amazon User

After I heard from a couple of friends and read some reviews on other sites I decided that this game is worth a try and to buy it. After I decided to buy it I wanted to see some more reviews and found out about the draconic rights management and protection issues. In my opinion if after I pay about $50 the game needs to connect to the Internet to allow me to play it then that game won't get near my system!!! Plus all the other stories I've read about unreliability, limited activations and files that cannot be deleted from your system. LIMITED NUMBER OF ACTIVATION!!! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! Games like Unreal Tournament, Warcraft II or Warcraft III (which I still play). I bought them and installed those countless times after I bought new machines or reinstalled for whatever reason the operating system on an existing machine.

It may be argued that it is unfair to write a review about a game that I did not play but I think that is not so in my case. I have all the data that I need to decide not to buy and play the game and that makes it fair to express my dissatisfaction in a review.

This game won't get anywhere near my system.

Research before you purchase!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 17 / 22
Date: December 14, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I already had Bioshock in my shopping cart, when I learned about its 'copy protection scheme' and how it requires its installation to be verified through the Internet. This process prevents the game from being installed more than 5 times, which is something unnacceptable in my opinion. Buy at your own risk.

SecurRom is not for me

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 24 / 36
Date: August 25, 2007
Author: Amazon User

As much as I enjoyed the Bioshock demo, (Which installed SecurRom in C:\Documents and Settings\...\Application Data and my registry) I won't be buying this game. If I buy something I won't be told how I use my property. Sorry.

YOU NEED INTERNET CONNECTION FOR PC GAME

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 23 / 34
Date: September 19, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I bought this for my husband and we'd love the say that the PC version of the game is excellent. However, I saw no notation on Amazon stating that you needed an internet connection in order to install this. Hence the low overall score.

Like I'm going to hook up a land line and download an internet program just to install the game. Who at 2k thought this was a great idea?

I looked on the 2k website (at work) hoping there would be a patch that I could download on to a flash drive to install on the home computer but NOOOO...they didn't even think of that.

Now, we have two options...to take apart the home computer and install our board in my mom's computer, which has an internet connection - who thankfully lives across the street. Or I can send the game back to Amazon and get a refund.

AMAZON - please note that the PC version of Bioshock NEEDS an internet connection to install.

Too many problems

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 13 / 15
Date: November 29, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Beware if you have an overclocked system. This game will blue screen. Game also has very weak support for Nvidia 7 series cards. In particular with High Detail Shaders which also causes the game to blue screen. I can't speak for everyone of course but I know that myself and many others have these issues still (10/29/07) and there is still no patch. These problems are highlighted on most tech forums including the 2k games forum.

Now for the game.

My first impression was WOW! Graphics were impressive albeit somewhat grainy as AA is not supported. Lots of very cool water and blur effects. The atmosphere is somewhat original. Has a 1940s/50s art deco thing going. Victrola playing in the background, Nazi scientists, surgical theaters... the whole shebang. That aspect of the game was very well done. The rest of it though, I can only sum it up as "sensory overload". Like many games of this sort (The Suffering 2 for instance), all the "psycho-physics" eventually start to numb your senses and the attempts at "shock" just become tiring. The swearing, screaming, brutality, and sexuality, it all just gets boring after a while.

When you couple all that with the really weird copy protection - this game is NOT worth the aggravation.

Would of rate it higher but hate the online connection required to activate the game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 11 / 12
Date: September 25, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Bioshock's game play is excellent though the game is not that hard overall. What annoyed me was that you need an online connection to activate the game. This is one of the most annoying problems with modern games. Not everyone has access to an internet connection. Namely those of use currently in Iraq. Due to this I will not be buying anymore games from this company just as I won't purchase anymore of the Half Life series.

miserable experience trying to get the game to run!

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 27 / 44
Date: August 24, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This is not a review of the gameplay, because I can't play the game!

The "online activator" application does not accept the serial number printed on the back of the manual. I sent email to their support department yesterday and still do not have a response. I called their USA tech support number (800)638-0127 and receive a strange phone company message "this number can not be reached from where you are calling".

This is ridiculous. I don't expect to pay almost $50 for a game and have it not work.

Stop the hype, please

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 17 / 24
Date: August 27, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Have you ever felt really stupid, being punished for buying a brand new game off the shelves? I did, more often than not. I'm really tired of being a paying beta-tester. As many others, I had the same trouble with online activation, it was really tedious and reminded me of the trouble with HL2 and Steam some years ago.

Despite new drivers and a 3 months old machine (AMD 64 X2 5000+, 2GB RAM, GeForce 7600 GS), the performance and framerate on 1024x768 wasn't exceptional, it felt tiring for the eyes after a while. Actually I'd read announcements about "performance optimization even for mid-range-pcs" and I thought, well, perhaps they should ask the Valve guys how to do this...

Now, what is it like to actually play it? Be forewarned, this is no System Shock 3, it's more like DOOM 3 with LOTS of eye candy. The gameplay is very linear despite the astonishing variety of weapons. Personally, I'd prefer less gore. And evil little girls are *really* nothing new (remember Project Eden?). Compared to the nice athmospheric setup, after about 10 hours of play, the storyline feels conventional and a bit of a letdown. Ask honestly yourself, apart from the Art Deco design and nostalgic soundtrack, concerning the AI and variety of foes, the physics, the actual gameplay, do you still feel this is a major breakthrough in computer gaming? I don't know. At least it's not another WW II-stealth-rambo-clone.

My recommendation: Try the demo, and then wait another year to let these guys sort out their securom, hardware and gameplay balance issues, and then buy it at 75 % of today's price ;-)

Beautiful, fun... and a bit disappointing

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 10 / 11
Date: October 05, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Bioshock is a beautiful game, a well-polished game, with the production values of a Hollywood blockbuster. I had a lot of fun playing and beating this game, yet when I was done, I uninstalled it and moved on. Why? Bioshock is ultimately undermined by the very thing that makes it good in the first place: its carefully crafted storyline and well-planned first player campaign.

The GOOD: Terrific graphics, especially the water and fire effects. This game is not lacking for eye candy, IF you have the hardware. The sound is similarly stunning, and used very, very well by the developers. The art direction (the whole art deco concept) is masterfully executed. The concept--alone in an abandoned underwater utopia gone wrong--is also creative, fun, and used to the full extent. There are some genuinely scary moments, though F.E.A.R is still scarier than this game. The plasmid powers are the equivalent of magic in Role-Playing games, and the Tonics function like experience points. The U-Invent machines are a nice touch, though the whole vending machine bit was overdone. Overall, there are some genuinely fun moments in this game.

The BAD: The story is ultimately pretty weak and trite as well as very, very linear. At the end I didn't care what was going on, I just wanted to finish the game--that's never a good sign. There is zero replay value. I don't care about the lack of multiplayer, but having been spoiled by wide-open, living universes such as Oblivion, the linear, level-to-level design of Bioshock felt limiting and dated. You don't ever explore Rapture as much as you are guided through it by game designers. I also feel as if the half RPG/half shooter aspect of the game hurts it. The plasmid powers are scaled so that you are never really more powerful than your enemies. That's right, one of the most fun aspects of RPG--leveling up and beating up on baddies--is negated by the scaled difficulty. The Big Daddy fights are also repetitive as anything, and nowhere near as fluid and inventive as advertised. The alarms and alarm bots are as annoying as the cliff racers from Morrowind, and a regrettable inclusion on the part of the developers.

BOTTOM LINE: This is a beautiful game that was very, very well executed. Yet, as always, the innovation and novelty was exaggerated by the media, and at the end of the day, this is essentially a linear, scripted shooter with a predictable story and some half-baked RPG elements thrown in. I loved System Shock 2 (the ancestor to Bioshock), and I kept waiting for Bioshock to wow me as much as that game did...

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