I spent the last two days playing Bioshock non-stop. Dock lent me the game along with a couple of others I’m dying to try. This morning just before work, I played the final scene and was able to finish the game :D This game is enthralling as it is poetic!

The scenery, the atmosphere, the attention to the tiniest details, even the story itself, are all just amazing. My one criticism would be that they could have paid a little more attention to the characters facial expressions. At times, they felt far too static, especially when they died XD Of course, their faces aren’t meant to look quite human any more either, as they’ve all been ‘spliced’ or ‘sliced’. You’ll only understand that if you’ve played the game.

It was the kind of game/story I’d have loved to create. I’ve had a thing for the 1940′s and 1950′s for quite a while, in terms of architecture. There won’t be a sequel to this game, but gosh how I wish there could’ve been. The opportunity to revisit the city of Rapture with a fresh twist? The thought makes me giddy. Shame it’ll never happen.

I’ll just have to play the game again from the start instead and take in whatever details I missed the first time round. I’m pretty sure there’s some kind of alternate ending, as the game does challenge you morally. It’s not strictly ‘play it as a hero/villain’ either, it’s more, make a choice that aids your survival and then live with it.

After playing this, I’m really looking forward for the release of Assassin’s Creed :)

There’s lots of cool bits in Rogue Galaxy that aren’t part of the larger plot. Stuff like, breeding insectors so you can train them and have them fight against other insectors in the great tournament. But first, you need to catch these bugs and then breed them, feed them, train them and so forth. When the mini instructional menu came up regarding the mating rules, I laughed XD

There was a bloody postal strike for the past week and I only just today got my copy of Rogue Galaxy. It arrived just as I was leaving for work! Typical!! I was trying to keep myself busy all day so that the time could pass faster so I could go home and give it a go ^^

I’ve been playing it for a couple of hours now. It’s really cool. In terms of graphics, I really like the cell-shading style on it, it works really well. The dialogue is pretty good too. The thing that caught my eye the most though, is the animation flow of the cut-scenes. They’re really well animated, greatly directed, very entertaining and the action felt believable, even though it’s a bit over the top. It was mainly the pacing that helped. Nothing is rushed. It felt like I was watching a movie, one I could interact with.

It’s an action RPG but it still requires you to think and keep an eye on your health and allies. It keeps a lot of the original features of a regular RPG game, in that you level up, have to equip items, you have to choose what abilities you want to use during the fight, all done via a menu option that pauses the game while you select what changes you want to make, but this doesn’t take away from the action aspect of the game. You still need skill to know when to block, when to move, when to slash with your sword, or shoot with your gun, when to jump and how to aim for the weak spots.

The voice acting is spot on too, it’s really weird hearing the mix of accents in the game (American and a few random English accents), but after the initial ‘wtf?’ the voices grow on you and they really do suit the characters.

Over all, so far, I like the balance and I’m really enjoying the story and role play. Definitely a good buy!