I'm surprised no one has yet posted with regards to Bioshock's release. I bought the limited edition version of the game today for the 360, new and sealed for £34.99 in Blockbuster. I've only played it briefly, but from what i've seen it certainly lives up to the hype!
It's awesome, even though I've been sick, I've nearly beaten it already (I don't even own an Xbox360, I jacked my nieghbors ). Fucking awesome game. No other way to say it.
Course, I've been all about this game since Day 1 (Being a huge System Shock 1 and 2 fan) truthfully, I'm still kinda pissed that Irrational wasn't allowed to make Shock 3 {Which is what Bioshock was originally going to be} due to EA. Who then saw how excited everyone was about BioShock and decided "Hey! Let's cash in on the hype and put an untested team (The Godfather Team [that game was mediocre at best]) on System Shock 3! That's the ticket!"
Screw you EA. I have lost all faith in System Shock 3. I hope SHODAN invades your systems.
I downloaded the Steam demo and was very unimpressed. It screamed Doom 3 albeit in an underwater "hell", as people are calling it. The mouse seems to run through 2 phases, my 360 controller had lag, widescreen was broke.
The demo pretty much is crap compared to the way the full game looks. It plays from the start, all the way up to the point where you get trapped in the medical room and a video starts playing. I really look forward to buying the full game though, looks amazing.
I'm gonna buy it when my new (non-Alienware) computer is built sometime this weekend. It's only the second game I've seen that PCZone gave 97%, the other was Half-Life 2 which is pretty much my favourite PC game at the moment.
Half-Life 2 was mere hype and nothing but, the graphics and physics were something to be desired, but were ultimately hindered by a linear plot and frustrating load times.
Bioshock looks to be everything stated and more, I haven’t seen such an enticing first person since Call of Cthulhu, an underrated game but original nonetheless.
HL2's loading times were shockingly long, yeah, but I enjoyed the actual gameplay so much I was prepared to wait. I don't care about hype for games, I judge them on my own entertainment, same for all media.
I'm sure Bioshock will be the same, I usually trust IGN and PCZone's opinions, they seem to be pretty spot on with reviews. Haven't played the demo, my once-good current PC is dying and would just cough in its face if I tried to install Bioshock, I need to wait a couple of days till my new one is built.
I don't know about the full game, but the load times in the Bioshock Demo are very long too. Even a minute is long, but these feel like they're at least 3 minutes long.
The only thing I didn't like about Half Life 2's loading though, was it always seemed to load in the worst spots. If I'm driving a boat down a river, I don't want to suddenly STOP when my adrenaline's is pumping, and sit for long load.