As of yesterday morning I completed Bioshock on the PC. I was pleased with this game but not overwhelmed. The graphics are exceptional and it looks like the next UT game is going to be superb. The plasmid power-up system is pretty nice and lends an interesting touch to this game. Hacking security devices, vending machines, and door locks is fun and the old school setup of the minigame lends a great touch to everything. The story is nice and the excellent twists are truly enjoyable. There was nothing really wrong with this game at all. There were no odd play control glitches, no crash bugs, no hardware conflicts. It was a solid and enjoayable game and well thought out...if not a little too easy. That isn't really a complaint, so much as an observation. It's a great game and I think it largely lived up to the hype and deserves its critical praise and high review scores.

But...

The game just feels so hollow to me. So many video games coming out now have disappointed me, not because they're bad games, but just because they all have that "been there, done that" feel. The current wave of video games has failed to really excite me. I'm interested in getting my hands on the retail version of Skate and I plan on buying the new WoW expansion when it drops, but I'm not truly psyched about any new games. They all seem so freaking similar to me. I'm actually getting quite sick of FPS titles and I just fail to get too excited when I see that a developer has loaded another FPS round in their chamber. I was also hoping that the new generation of console technology with all of its power and storage space would lead developers to attempt to utilize the technology to try something new. Instead they've just trumped up the asthetics of and some of the physics assosciated with genres we've been seeing all along. I just want to see something new for once. The DS (which I own) and the Wii (which I'm having a monster of a time finding) offer the promise ofa temporary diversion with their unique peripherals and some calssic games from the early days of the home console wars but it still isn't enough since I'm sitting on my PC, PS2, XBox, 360, which are just horribly expensive omni-directional bilge bumps of mundane carbon copy video games. Hopefully once developers are truly comfortable with the limits of the consoles and their controllers we'll see some of them get adventurous and produce a few new things that are a bit out of sorts with the mainstream gaming community. Of course, that will only happen if the big guns (Sony and Microsoft) don't decide to get into another hardware power pissing contest and come out with the PS4 and NeXBox (or whatever the fark they plan on calling it) too damned soon.

That's another issue, I hope I'm not the only one who felt that the PS3 and 360 dropped a bit too soon. I was disappointed to see these two companies abandon their consoles when they could have really pushed them a bit harder. Developers had really begun tofind those systems' limitations and could have started trying truly new and original things. Of course then Nintendo was almost forced to release the Wii to keep up. (And I am really pissed at them for creating ademand for their product they couldn't possibly meet) I think the main reason we're seeing a lack of originality right now is because the hardware for these consoles remains virgin territory and the limits of these systems have yet to be found they are just kind of occupying media storage space with the info to trump up the graphics and make prettier games. If developers were given greater time to play with these consoles and actually aquaint themselves with the hardware and get comfortable with its limitations then eventuallyno developercould opt to just make a better looking game. This would force developers to go back to the drawing board and try to truly make better and different games to gain an edge over the competition.

And before you ask, I am NOT looking forward to Halo 3...at ALL. I am not a Halo fan. I was truly disappointed with the first game (and yes, I have played it for the PC) and while the multiplayer is enjoyable it wasn't enough for me to like it.