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There, now that we got the good out of the way, let’s spend the remaining bit of this review talking about the bad. The one thing that was really disappointing to me about BioShock was the variety of the enemies, more specifically, the splicers. It would have been nice to have a couple of different types of Big Daddies as well, but those fights are so intense that I’m willing to forgive it. However, there are only five types of splicers throughout the entire game that each have the same general method of attacking.

Thuggish Splicers rush at you to hit you with a blunt object, Leadhead Splicers shoot pistols, shotguns, or machine guns at you, Spider Splicers either rush at you for a melee attack or jump on the ceiling and throw hooks at you, Houdini Splicers like to teleport around and throw fire or ice at you, and Nitro Splicers simply throw grenades at you. With all of the various types of plasmids there are in the game, why couldn’t we see a greater variety of splicers?

I personally would have loved to see a splicer with electrobolt that was actually smart enough to shock the water should I ever step in a puddle while fighting him. Or a splicer that had some kind of manipulative plasmid that could cause my character to hallucinate for some Eternal Darkness-like effects. With such a huge variety of powers that you can use, it’s somewhat of a disappointment to see the bulk of the enemies in the game break down into only five types.

I also hope you absolutely love to play the old game Pipe Dream, because you’re going to be playing it every single time you want to hack something and don’t want to spend precious cash or autohacking tools. It’s not that the hacking minigame is bad or anything, it’s just that it gets so repetitive because hacking things like security bots, vending machines, and safes is such a huge component of the game.

Aside from those two gripes, and the occasional freezing which is most likely something that can be fixed by clearing your 360’s hard drive cache, the only other possible negative that I can think of for BioShock is the fact that there is no multiplayer. Yes I know, some games just aren’t meant for multiplayer, and BioShock definitely is one of them. However, the fact remains is that once the game ends, it’s over. The replay value is solely dependent on how willing you are to do multiple playthroughs, and though BioShock is an immensely replayable single player game, the magic is only there for so long.

All in all, while BioShock may not utterly redefine the FPS genre, it definitely sets the bar extremely high for all future single player focused first person shooters. The atmosphere, the way that you’re able to use your weapons and skills to interact with your environment and even use it as a weapon, the fantastic storytelling and smart writing are all things that I would love to see implemented in future games of this genre. Halo 3’s single player campaign has some Big Daddy sized shoes to fill if it plans on competing with the brilliance that is BioShock.

(Editors note. When this article was posted, I left out the Nitro Splicer when I went into detail about the different kinds of splicers. Sorry about the mistake.)