Here's a game for which I had high expectations. But overall, the experience was rather underwhelming.

There are some known problems with this game in Vista: no sound and no full-screen. Perhaps this is a joke on the part of the programers but the way I was able to fix it in-game is to actually turn sound off, turn fullscreen off!

You start by surviving a plane crash. The fire on the water looks very nice. Then you swim to a lighthouse and take an elevator down. Now you're taken to the underwater city of Rapture where a character convinces you to fight against the ruler of the city. The voice acting is absolutely superb. The story is overall good. I found that there are too many characters though. There are some twists in the story and surprises. There are also too many goals to accomplish: there's the main goal of the story, the minor goals of each "mission", and two additional overall goals of collecting souls and blood, so to speak. Then there are the tasks of upgrading weapons and yourself. One of the twists I found particularly touching and that is who you become toward the end. And that splits this game really into two as your character changes dramatically (and graphically for the worst). I'm surprised they didn't leave the second part for a sequel. This game is somewhat long.

I was not all that impressed with the graphics. Sure, there's some neat water effects but it's overdone. And I didn't find that the overall look was all that impressive. But I really disliked the style of this game. Some people like that sort of thing, I didn't: the art deco retro style. Then there's that aweful music from the 30s or so. The cartoonish aspects are kind neat and in that regard the game has a lot of personality. I also dislike the darkness of the settings. Ever since Doom I all action games have emphasized darkness and it's tiring.

But it's really the gameplay that is disappointing. As a shooter this game is just horrible. I'll grant that the movement of the enemies is neat; they jump and flip and crawl on the ceiling. But shooting at them is not at all fun. Neither is constantly picking up stuff and listening to long monologues. There's only so much fun in pressing the "E" button every other second. The mechanical weapons are boring, the biological ones more interesting. You'll mostly walk through hallways or corridors as opposed to large expanses, which is what one would expect of a recent game. I didn't like most of the scenes: wharf, rotten garden, which does become nice once you save it; theaters, lots of rooms, hospital rooms, etc.- quite a bit of variety. But they are all dark and dull-looking which nullifies all the variety. Gameplay itself and graphics don't make it very immersive.

I rate it high in personality and audio but poor in graphics, entertainment value, and replayability.

Then there's of course all the annoying "security features" that companies make us pay for and that limits what we can do with the game for which we paid.
Here's a game for which I had high expectations. But overall, the experience was rather underwhelming. There are some known problems with this game in Vista: no sound and no full-screen. Perhaps this is a joke on the part of the programers but the way I was able to fix it in-game is to actually turn sound off, turn fullscreen off! You start by surviving a plane crash. The fire on the water looks very nice. Then you swim to a lighthouse and take an elevator down. Now you're taken to the underwater city of Rapture where a character convinces you to fight against the ruler of the city. The voice acting is absolutely superb. The story is overall good. I found that there are too many characters though. There are some twists in the story and surprises. There are also too many goals to accomplish: there's the main goal of the story, the minor goals of each "mission", and two additional overall goals of collecting souls and blood, so to speak. Then there are the tasks of upgrading weapons and yourself. One of the twists I found particularly touching and that is who you become toward the end. And that splits this game really into two as your character changes dramatically (and graphically for the worst). I'm surprised they didn't leave the second part for a sequel. This game is somewhat long. I was not all that impressed with the graphics. Sure, there's some neat water effects but it's overdone. And I didn't find that the overall look was all that impressive. But I really disliked the style of this game. Some people like that sort of thing, I didn't: the art deco retro style. Then there's that aweful music from the 30s or so. The cartoonish aspects are kind neat and in that regard the game has a lot of personality. I also dislike the darkness of the settings. Ever since Doom I all action games have emphasized darkness and it's tiring. But it's really the gameplay that is disappointing. As a shooter this game is just horrible. I'll grant that the movement of the enemies is neat; they jump and flip and crawl on the ceiling. But shooting at them is not at all fun. Neither is constantly picking up stuff and listening to long monologues. There's only so much fun in pressing the "E" button every other second. The mechanical weapons are boring, the biological ones more interesting. You'll mostly walk through hallways or corridors as opposed to large expanses, which is what one would expect of a recent game. I didn't like most of the scenes: wharf, rotten garden, which does become nice once you save it; theaters, lots of rooms, hospital rooms, etc. - quite a bit of variety. But they are all dark and dull-looking which nullifies all the variety. Gameplay itself and graphics don't make it very immersive. I rate it high in personality and audio but poor in graphics, entertainment value, and replayability. Then there's of course all the annoying "security features" that companies make us pay for and that limits what we can do with the game for which we paid.