I had an absolute blast with the story and gameplay of this game. I found the atmosphere incredible, the characters fascinating, and most importantly the gameplay was a lot of fun, with tons of ways to approach each encounter with the variety of weapons and powers available.
The start of the game was super creepy, and it was very satisfying to upgrade the different systems and feel yourself getting dramatically stronger as the game progressed. The combat was always the perfect amount of challenging, and never got tedious.
I loved the visuals and audio in this game. Rapture is one of the most immersive game worlds I've seen - even the fairly repetitive level design didn't draw back too much from the fantastically realised world. The mission structures were linear enough that it was always clear what needed to be done, but open ended enough that there was plenty of time for exploration - which was heavily rewarded.
The audio logs were a favorite feature of mine - I loved how much of the story of the world was amongst the worldbuilding, rather than told to the player in cutscenes. It made everything feel very natural, and all of the various villains so hateable.
This game did fall off in atmosphere towards the end, as I'd become so strong in terms of abilities that any sense of vulnerability or horror was lost in the final third of the game. It's very difficult for games to stay creepy though, and it was incredibly fun using all the different abilities, so this isn't a huge downside - but thought it was worthy of note.
My main criticism of the game were the vita-chambers - dying and then being able to just jump right back in, without any consequence other than a small bit of time completely destroyed any fear over some of the more intense sequences of the game. I feel as though there should have been a higher penalty to death to make fighting the Big Daddys truly terrifying.
Can't believe I waited this long to play this game properly. I did play it once as a teenager, but didn't pay attention to any of the story, so it still felt fresh on this playthrough.
The start of the game was super creepy, and it was very satisfying to upgrade the different systems and feel yourself getting dramatically stronger as the game progressed. The combat was always the perfect amount of challenging, and never got tedious.
I loved the visuals and audio in this game. Rapture is one of the most immersive game worlds I've seen - even the fairly repetitive level design didn't draw back too much from the fantastically realised world. The mission structures were linear enough that it was always clear what needed to be done, but open ended enough that there was plenty of time for exploration - which was heavily rewarded.
The audio logs were a favorite feature of mine - I loved how much of the story of the world was amongst the worldbuilding, rather than told to the player in cutscenes. It made everything feel very natural, and all of the various villains so hateable.
This game did fall off in atmosphere towards the end, as I'd become so strong in terms of abilities that any sense of vulnerability or horror was lost in the final third of the game. It's very difficult for games to stay creepy though, and it was incredibly fun using all the different abilities, so this isn't a huge downside - but thought it was worthy of note.
My main criticism of the game were the vita-chambers - dying and then being able to just jump right back in, without any consequence other than a small bit of time completely destroyed any fear over some of the more intense sequences of the game. I feel as though there should have been a higher penalty to death to make fighting the Big Daddys truly terrifying.
Can't believe I waited this long to play this game properly. I did play it once as a teenager, but didn't pay attention to any of the story, so it still felt fresh on this playthrough.