I recently tried Bioshock, was not impressed.
The storytelling was more fluid than most other games, but I don't appreciate the "oh lets just ditch the protagonist in a situation without explanation" method. I came to see an exciting undersea city, ravaged by civil war and haunted by a solemn few; I didn't come to see Lost in which the entire premise of the show is not knowing what the forget is going on.
The atmosphere was well done, the water effects were the best I have ever seen and the characters appeared natural. The inventory system was horribly unintuitive and the whole "lets forage through trashcans to survive" element wasn't very interesting, better than random healtkits lying around I suppose.
Last time I checked, hacking didn't involve racing to reveal and place tiles using a confusing and clunky interface in order to get a some unknown fluid to flow from one pipe to another.
To me, Bioshock's ultimate flaw was being to be predictable. Dark hallway? flashing lights? maniacle laughter? oop..that means an enemy is around the corner. Shotgun surrounded by heaps of ammo...what could that mean? possibly an ambush? no way!
And then they had to throw in a handicapped kodak moment minigame. If I wanted to keep the memories of Raptures mentally corrupted occupants I would take a screenshot and I'd hardly consider a grainy dark image of a person to be a sufficient indication of any particular trait, nevermind completing some kind of research project.
/rant
