Walpknut said:
Bioshock games are like Lost they both suck they depend too much in making you think the story is being mysterious because the writter had great ideas while not actually giving any kind of pay off to it, all the while trying to give pseudo philosophical drivel wrapped in a very linear experience and pretty but empty visuals.
I can't speak for other games, since, like I've said, I'd only played the first one, but I don't think I can agree with you on this.
[spoiler:fc55d5577d]I never felt the story was trying too hard to be mysterious (like Lost did), driving me, a player, deeper and deeper into the abyss of incomprehensibility. It was just slowly unfolding, and a player has to be thorough and meticulous when going through Rapture in order to have a grip of all small connections and traces left my other characters, audio logs, ghost sightings and very surroundings.
Piece by piece, and in the end, you have a fine picture (aside from the ending as I've mentioned).
Pseudo-philosophical?
I suppose you could label it as such, but I personally find it more as showing how ideals in ideal environment can give rise to something lot "lesser" in man. A strive for dominance. A collateral damage. Plain vanity. And blind idealism which all brought upon the downfall of what could have been humanity's greatest achievement.
So, pseudo-philosophical...maybe. It is far from perfect, but still better than most games out there, and far more interesting.
As for experience being linear...it is a shooter. Set in an underwater city. Which is collapsing. What are you expecting from it? Open-world gameplay?
It gives you enough freedom to explore levels while many of those levels don't present an necessity of being fully explored, but are still a rewarding experience. Most of the time.
As for visuals, I'm inclined to ask what exactly do you mean by "empty visuals"?
The environment is interactive enough, and there is great usage of light and shadow effects to create atmosphere. The way Rapture is designed is beautiful, and levels vary to show its many faces, and after, what 6 years after release, the game has aged pretty well.
Only thing I could maybe label as "bad" (I'd rather say underwhelming when compared to the rest of the game) are character models, which are too cartoonish for my taste, and there are very few of them too, with little or no variation to them. [/spoiler:fc55d5577d]