Finger on the pulse of gaming as ever, I’m playing Bioshock about 10 months after everyone else. Heck what can I say. it was a bargin.

So depending on who you talk to; Bioshock is either the pinnacle of next-gen FPS gaming with a intelligent and well told story and stellar visuals or a over-hyped, repetitive, badly thought out pile of dung. Quite a Marmite game this one.

Firstly, the art style and graphics are astounding. I’ve been playing for 2 days and I still spend a significant amount of time just gawping at stuff. Not only is it pretty - lots of games do pretty, but it’s a cohesive, designed and interesting kind of pretty. The art-deco styling and 1920’s future-retro feel to everything is breath of fresh air compared to the tedious brown/grey/biege grrrrritty style that seems so prevalent in gaming now. The story is different from the run of the mill too, I’m getting quite drawn into the world they’ve created.

It also has probably one of the best intros / opening sequence I can think of, it really does have an amazing start. Can you sense a “but” coming? Yeah so here it is, shortly after the opening bit it goes downhill like a shot. The problems for me started a few hours in when I encountered the first couple of Big Daddies (the heavily armoured, diving suit clad mega bastards that are on the games cover). It’s a difficulty spike; correction it’s a difficulty spike of mountain like proportions. I understand they are supposed to be hard and feared but they just take the piss. To cut a long, teeth grindingly annoying story short I had to drop the difficulty down to easy. Fighting the same enemy repeatedly for over 1 hour and not progressing is not my idea of fun.

Now on easy difficulty things are fun again (yeah remember that’s the reason I play games - fun) but the challenge has gone. Gone as in totally; it’s now so easy a blind gibbon with no thumbs could play the game. Come on guys strike some balance here!

A Big Daddy - bane of my life