BioShock Demo - Does It Live Up to the Hype?

Ever since BioShock was unveiled last year, I have been extremely excited to play this unique FPS. After leaving my Xbox 360 on all night (yep, it literally takes hours to download a single demo) to download the newly released demo off the Xbox Live Marketplace, I finally got to give this highly-anticipated title a try. So is it the astonishing, ground-breaking shooter most of us expected or was it merely just another over hyped, third-rate FPS?


I can safely say that BioShock lives up the massive amount of hype surrounding it - and then some! When you first boot up the demo you experience a plane crash, find yourself in the middle of the (rather beautiful-looking) ocean, and must find a way to get onto land. Once you find a place to go and explore it a bit, you hear the sounds of some very interesting Big Band music. Hmmm... hearing this was a nice change of pace (when's the last time a game featured this type of music?), but perhaps an orchestral score would have been even better.

Anyhoot, you eventually run into foes, and you can combat them with either a wrench or a gun, and you have the ability to electrocute them or stun them (depending if they're in water or not) with another weapon (which is also used to enter some pathways). The demo lasted a good half hour, and I couldn't wait to see what comes next - this is the type of game you'd play until the wee hours of the morning.

The character designs are very well done, and the visuals are marvelous. Beautifully animated, I'd be suprised if there's a better looking game than BioShock all year. The environments are some of the best looking I've seen in any game ever.

Although Halo 3 will certainly be a tremendous mainstream hit (and will probably have the best multi-player on Xbox Live once again), if there's one FPS I'll be putting my money on the rest of the year BioShock will be it.