Discount BioShock

Bioshock is a FANTASTIC game. I would give this game four and a half stars if I could, but I definitely don't feel like it deserves a full five stars. The first 95% of it is about as enjoyable as video games can get, and I could not put my controller down for two straight days until I finished it. I know this game has been out for quite some time and there are many other well written reviews about it, but I thought I'd take a moment to point out its many strong points, and it's very few weak spots.
First of all, the premise to this game is such an original and fresh idea that it's impossible to not get sucked into its unique world. I love the idea of a city existing under the sea, and the art direction to the levels in the game are beautiful to look at. I found myself stopping in the middle of gameplay to just check out the surroundings. The level of detail in the graphics is painstaking and beautiful to behold. Another hugely entertaining touch is the music. How often do you get to run around in a nightmarish world with "Danny Boy" playing in the background? Bioshock avoids a lot of horror game cliches by leaving out the cornball fright music and using authentic 30's, 40's and 50's music. It's a very odd juxtaposition that keeps you on your toes, and it really adds to the depth of the game. Another cool aspect of Bioshock is that I never felt strapped for ammo or weapons. One of my pet peeves about games is leaving you without ammo or supplies that are necessary to move forward. It's more of an annoyance to go searching for stuff that should be made available in the first place. There is tons of stuff to search through, and I always felt that I was collecting something worth while whenever I searched through a barrel, corpse, safe, or whatever. Another thing I particularly enjoyed was the voice acting. It isn't out of this world, but the little audio diaries you collect throughout the game really draw you into the levels you're roaming in, and hearing these broken people and their isolated voices talking about the city of Rapture makes the game that much more tense. The idea of Big Daddy and the Little Sisters is great as well. It's such an original idea, and it never got boring fighting the Big Daddies and then rescuing the little girls.
The length of the game was decent, I'd say I put between 10 and 15 hours of gameplay into it. Load times weren't excessive, and the game allows you to save anywhere which is always a bonus.
I have one very minor and one major quibble about the game, and I hope they fix them for Bioshock 2. The minor quibble I have concerns some of the battle scenes. There are several points during the game where they send four or five "slashers" after you, and deciphering what is going on can be difficult. I don't mind being disoriented in a video game, after all, this is a horror title, but there were times it was more annoying than challenging. I would get stuck in tight spaces and I'd have the slashers on all sides before I had a clue what was happening.
My bigger complaint, though, concerns the ending. The ending to this game was terrible! The final boss battle was incredibly short and easy, and then the game just ends with hardly any fanfare or closure. It's frustrating because the developers did such a great job of writing during the entire length of the game, and then at the end they just seem to give up. Take my word for it, once you get to the final boss scene don't even bother fighting him. It isn't worth your time, so you should just consider getting to the final boss as enough of an ending. There needs to be a payoff for your efforts, and I feel that far too many video games don't put any thought into the ending of games, and Bioshock is no different. They don't even leave anything open-ended in case they wanted you to think there would be another game. Of course, we all know that Bioshock 2 is almost here, but still, they need to take the time to come up with a satisfactory conclusion to the story.
All in all, I couldn't stop playing this game. It's definitely one of the 25 best games I've ever played, and I would whole-heartedly recommend it to any gamer out there!Get more detail about BioShock.