Review: Bioshock (spoilerly)

I had a long an detailed review in my head about this game, but I've only gotten about ten hours of sleep in the past 48, so I'm going to cut to the chase.

Summary: Ann Rand was an ass.

Graphics/Design: Pretty. Nice art deco feel (even if Rapture was constructed post-WWII). It ate processing power on the older computer though. All those detailed walls and ceilings, never mind the water effects, were a killer. Get more than one enemy in an attack, plus a couple of hacked gunships, and the frame rate came to a screeching halt, even if the game never actually crashed.

Plot: If it wasn't obvious, you weren't looking at the POV character's wrist tattoos. Subtle foreshadowing there. [/sarcasm]

Oh, and the much touted "morality" system, that decides which ending you get? Doesn't mean much. I mean, you can't accidentally kill the Little Sisters, and if you can bring yourself to basically murder a six-year old girl to harvest her for ADAM, then you're either a sociopath (like pretty much every other named character there) or an experienced pen & paper AD&D player from around 1980.

Ending: The final boss battle was pathetically easy. OTOH, the "good" ending was enough to bring to tears to this jaded gamer's eyes.

Conclusion: If you haven't bought it now, you're probably waiting for it to hit the discount bin. Expect a long wait.

LMB on story action

The reader-response from the skiffy crowd so far has been exactly as my hypothesis predicted -- once the focus shifted back to the political in Book 3, they perked up and decided it was really a story after all. Except for the usual holdouts, who only process action as significant when it takes the form of "guys hitting each other", who are likely not the audience for these books in the first place. Although I am reminded of Jacqueline Lichtenberg's tart description of action scenes, roughly paraphrased: "The story is going along, but then stops while guys hit each other. Guys hit each other for three pages, then stop. The story starts again." (I've been watching a bit of shonen (that is, boys') anime lately, and I must say that describes those episodes to a T.)

Which might be more interesting if you are a guy, true. I'm reminded of all those nature specials showing mountain rams madly bashing heads, while the harems of ewes stand around in postures of unutterable boredom. They'll get the good genes regardless; they don't have to care. But I digress.
-Lois McMaster Bujold, 2008 Worldcon GoH speech

That explains better than I can why I hate writing fight scenes. There's violence, but in the end nothing actually happens in the character's story arc until the fight stops and they pick up the pieces.