Bioshock
Finally got around to Bioshock and I was completely caught off guard. I went into this very blind apparently, because I had gone in with certain expectations that I kind of just conjured up on my own based on the little I did know about the series. I had absolutely no clue the game was so Borderlands-esque. It was really throwing me off too because I was expecting tighter first-person gameplay, polished visuals, and a linear adventure, so the floaty movement and economically crafted environments that suit the cooperative and massive nature of Borderlands, didn't match my idea of this highly acclaimed story driven single player game. But after getting used to the reality that this is really no different than Borderlands, I finally started to click with the game.
Unfortunately, these false expectations weren't the only thing hampering my experience early on. The button mapping for example could benefit from some streamlining, but after enough time with the game, switching between the insanely large arsenal of weapons and plasmids does become second nature. But the worst offense is how action prompts and looting share the same button, which can lead to accidental purchases from looting too closely to shopping stations, and more annoyingly, cause you to miss certain audio logs by not activating them fast enough because your screen is filled with a bunch of looting prompts.
Also, maybe I missed something, but I don't recall the Big Daddy/Little Sister dynamic ever being properly explained in game, because it was nothing like what I thought it'd be. Which is how I ended up on a fool's errand when I came across the first Big Daddy and Little Sister. After killing him and saving the girl, more just kept spawning, so I kept killing him until it became too much, only to find out online that you can just leave Big Daddy alone or wait for him to retrieve a Little Sister from a hole in a wall.
This is not a perfect game by any means nor is it even as impressive in 2020 as it once was, but there is still a lot here to hold any player's attention, even one who started the game in a haze over false expectations. The gameplay loop of shooting, looting, and upgrading is a winning formula in any game. The survival horror undertones and intimidating encounters with Big Daddy are refreshing for the genre. Even the constant ramblings from the game's colorful cast, that while hard to follow, gives the game tons of personality and keeps it entertaining while you're aimlessly exploring and looting, much like Borderlands.
But the biggest highlight is easily the city of Rapture. Similar to the Mansion in Resident Evil or the Asylum in Batman: Arkham Asylum, the dark and mesmerizing underwater city of Rapture is so wonderfully realized and brimming with personality that it almost becomes a character itself, with its otherworldly 1950s stylings evocative of Batman: The Animated Series.
As a Borderlands fan, it's definitely been interesting seeing where it all kind of started, but it's also very easy to see how Bioshock got the reputation it does. During a time where first-person shooters were being dominated by war games, Bioshock stood apart from its contemporaries and offered something unique and stylistic with one of gaming's biggest twists, which was so big that even I knew about it going in, so I was robbed of that revelation. However, the big role reversal at the end I wasn't aware of and I thought was really cool.
8/10