Hmm, just played through the game.
Here be spoilers!
The Good!
-Probably the best RPG/FPS hybrid of the latter part of this decade (2 full years left to see what's gonna pop up, though). Certainly a lot better than FEAR, Prey and STALKER combined together and otherwise just better than HL2.
-The setting and atmosphere were awesome. The archi's awesomely detailed and the texturing's gracious. I don't know if they call blending sci-fi with 1950s stuff steampunk, but it most certainly made the game awesome and unique.
-The plot was awesome, I didn't expect any "Would you kindly?"-like thing to emerge. Even though most of the characters seemed distant, Andrew Ryan was pretty badass with great ideas (a shame you had to get rid fo him...) and Sander Cohen was hilarious. The gameplay was smooth, everything was clear and thank god there weren't any DX2-esque brainfarts like "universal ammo". The plasmids also kind of reminded me of FF7's materia (good thing).
-While I'm not the person who waits for new games, expecting something revolutionary (I guess I'm just a cynic, or a realist, or a whateverist), besides beautiful graphics, I don't think there really was anything mega-advanced in it. Old and good things made shinier and neat. The graphics were outstanding, and the way they ran smoothly on my computer with High settings was outstanding (even though the FPS started to get tacky at big gunfights, but I don't think it even went under 25). Nothing bad about that, really.
The Bad
-It was still more like a standard FPS. If I was the stealthy kind of a player, I suppose trying to stealth through this game would be insanely hard or impossible.
-While the archi was unique, it also suffered from the Post-HL2 Repetitive Architecture Syndrome. I was impressed by the archi in the first levels, but I honestly expected it to change as the game went on. Yes yes there was the Doom 3'esque Hephaestus(sp?) level, but still. Also, at a lot of times it seemed like all the rooms were insanely tall. While it suited the bars and outer areas, inside the apartments it just looked unprofessional.
-While the plot was neat, I still think it was left a bit too open. The ending I got (the bad one, I guess, since you harvested yet another little sister in it) was rather disappointing, didn't reveal much. Or something. Also, I wonder if I was just dumb enough to miss some radio diary which explained why the little sisters had to be saved (if they were made to be gather Adam and be accompanied by a Big Daddy) and why the hell did they appear strangely fish-like if you harvested them? Also, Andrew Ryan's death seemed a bit stupid. I guess he had lost his will to live but he should have remained a magnificent ******* to the end. Also when you approach the Smuggler's Hideout, there's this weird female splicer who gives you that gun at some point... and then she just disappeared. Of course, perhaps I was just dumb enough to not find some wacky sidequest related to her OR maybe it was just that :|
-What really bothered me, though, was the megalinear gameplay. For a game that was hailed as the spiritual successor of System Shock 2 (thus heavily Deus Ex-like), the contrast between the FPSness of SS2 and DX is as stark as the contrast between the FPSness of DX and DX:IW. What also annoyed me was the lack of sidequests. Not in the sense that "A GAME MUST HAVE 5092502 SIDEQUESTS TO BE GOOD", but in this game the sidequests were practically totally absent. Even though aiding Sander Cohen wasn't really relevant to the main plot, it was still obligatory to be done in order to move forward. Yes, the main plot was neat but the lack of sidequests really made it blatantly more FPS-like. Yet considering its setting with all splicers and stuff, I guess there wouldn't have been any sense to make sidequests like "yo dood im not gonna atk u if u steal ryan's pants for me" since you can't interact with anyone in the game.
The Random
-While hailed as a spiritual successor for System Shock 2, Bioshock reminded me of Deus Ex way more. That is, when it came to little details. Andrew Ryan was extremely Bob Pagesque and so was Fontaine in the end (yet he actually became a superman instead of poor Roberto). The treehouse poison thing at Arcadia? Finding a cure? Grey Death! And what about Smuggler's Hideout?
I noticed a lot more than these, though, but I guess they'll pop up into my mind someday.
-I guess after Deus Ex, Bioshock reminded me most of Lost. Plane crash in the beginning, a place with mysteries :P, polar bears (stuffed though) and most notably, the music sounded so Lost-like I thought it was the same composer! Even though he wasn't, well, all the Lostesque trumpets and other elements were there.
-What would be extremely neat would be a prequel. Don't know storywise, but the setting could be in Rapture before any splicers. It could be more RPG-like with a chance to interact with people (Deus Ex-style) and make the city feel more like a city instead of a level where you do stuff X and Y.
Since I just beat the game none of my thoughts are really clear and I'm forgetting millions of things, but shortly: Awesomest game in a long time. When I get a better computer, thus rid of the longass loading times, I guess I'm gonna play the game again to get the second ending. Even so, I guess I still have to wait for the new awesome, beautiful and thoroughly impressive new Deus Ex (won't be DX3, I'm sure of that).
