Looking back, I can safely say Bioshock is one of the best games I’ve played in recent memory. I could discuss the various aspects it gets right for days, but instead, I’m going to be a bit grumpier and talk about what it could have done better. For today, let’s focus on what it does with emergent gameplay.

Bioshock provides the player with a complex simulation to play around with. The opening act does a fantastic job of introducing you to Rapture as a living world which you can influence. The player is even rewarded for “thinking outside the box”, which is something a worrying number of sandbox games fail to do at all. But where Bioshock falls short is encouraging the player to think outside these bounds.

Some may argue that the reward is the encouragement. To an extent, it is. At the start of the game, players experiment to familiarize themselves with its mechanics. But once the player gets better, they get into a routine, and the encouragement is lost. This isn’t a gamer thing so much as it is a human nature thing. Once you figure out an effective way to kill Splicers, or a sure-fire way to take down Big Daddies, the rewards are irrelevant. The rewards only worked when the player needed them. Now that they don’t, the experimental aspect of Bioshock gives way to the repetitiveness of your standard-fare first person shooter. It’s a shame, and I’ll admit that I’m as guilty as the next person in this regard, but it’s to be expected.

How do we fix this?

(read on…)

This is a bit of a rare occurrence, but I’ve been listening to a couple of recent albums lately. By recent I mean “probably came out in 2007”. I’ve decided to review the lot of them. Alive 2007 (Daft Punk) lies below, followed by Costello Music (The Fratellis) and Future Future Future Perfect (Freezepop) after the cut.

Having come off a rather successful tour, Daft Punk chose to turn their Paris concert performance into their latest album, Alive 2007. So there is no new material here, but that is entirely irrelevant. Daft Punk have masterfully mixed their entire discography, creating a must-purchase album for anyone with even the slightest interest in electronic music.

As the French duo furiously throw their songs into the mix, they do so in a manner that never gets dull. Samples are played long enough for you to recognize them, but are pulled before they get tiring. My highlight moment is when the iconic Around The World sample get mixed in with Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger. There’s an amazing synergy between the two songs that never fails to stun me, even dozens of listens later. In fact, throughout the album I found myself dumbfounded by how smoothly the songs mix and how well they compliment each other. Songs that I previously didn’t like are brought alive thanks to some creative mixing.

The only thing that I hate about this album is the constant reminder that I could have seen Daft Punk live in Toronto, but somehow managed to miss that. That’s a mistake I’m not going to make twice.

(read on…)