BioShock....Meh.

After all the praise lauded on the game, the great reviews, and several friends telling me how amazing it was, I was looking forward to playing BioShock once I got the XBox 360. A co-worker loaned me his copy awhile back, but it sat idle while I fought my way through all the Half-Life 2 episodes on the Orange Box (which, I must say, were just incredible).

So I started on BioShock recently, and, well, I'm not really enjoying it that much. And I just can't really put my finger on it. The story, characters, and retro-design environments are all pretty cool. The mix of weapons and super-powers (called plasmids) are fun. So what don't I like?

Death in the game is just a very minor inconvenience, and nothing resets when you die. Instead, you are revived in the nearest Vita-Chamber booth, with everything you had on you when you died, and yourself at half health. This means you can go right back to what you were fighting and keep hammering away at it, dying and returning repeatedly until it's dead. I literally have had a few of those "Big Daddy" guys right outside the Vita-Chamber, killing me seconds after leaving it but not before I got a few shots in.

Maybe it's the overly-noir environments which hide any graphic details of those crazed "splicers" that attack me wherever I go. Every place in the game is dark and shadowy, and while what lighting there is never fails to impress in creating those shadows, the cumulative effect is just an irritating hodgepodge of nooks and crannies that often make it hard to see enemies and objects in the morass.

Or perhaps it's just that, if I wanted to play Pipe Dream again, I'd break out my Game Boy version. Dozens of different objects in BioShock can be hacked, from vending machines to security cameras, by playing a mini-game that is, quite simply, Pipe Dream. While certain powers can assist in this so-called hacking, or shortcut it altogether, I've still ended up playing more Pipe Dream than I have in years.

BioShock is nonetheless a decent game, but for me personally - and I admit my gaming tastes are a little out there - It's just not living up to the hype. I've made it to the area called Arcadia, though, and will probably finish it soon. Maybe the ending will make me a believer.