I loved my first five hours with the game -- the novelty of discovering an entire solar system, flying around with intuitive controls which remind me of what it feels like to fly in dreams, etc. However, the game soon started to drag on -- I was basically wandering aimlessly, filling out a checklist and looking for audio logs (bits of text on the wall) which slowly filled me in on a story I really didn't care for.

This went on for around ten hours, with me feeling like I was just filling out a checklist for no reason, until I suddenly started accessing all the "endgame" areas in quick succession in the last five hours, and it suddenly felt like I was making strides towards understanding how to finish the game. Thus, I went from making little to no progress within the first 15 hours, to suddenly beating the game. In retrospect, I feel like I could have beaten it in 10 hours if I had more of an idea of where to go to look for actually important information, and I wish there was something the game would have done to help me trim down the boring bit in the middle.

The ending is a definite highlight of the experience, and is probably why this game is so overwhelmingly positive. I don't want to sound cynical, but I think everyone knows that a good ending can overshadow a boring slog in the middle part of a story, in one's memories. I just wish this game didn't force you to do the same thing over and over so much, and maybe trimmed the fat with how much unnecessary information you end up "discovering".

Overall, it's certainly a good game, but it suffers from glaring issues with its pacing and tedious gameplay loop. That's all I can really say.

For starters, the game has a strong atmosphere, an interesting setting, and an engaging narrative, delivered through audio logs. Unfortunately, (playing on hard difficulty) the game is chuck full of bullet-sponge enemies, and the act of running around these environments fighting the same enemies over and over whilst doing fetch quests which feel like they only exist to arbitrarily extend the length of the game really sucks out whatever excitement I may have had regarding discovering Rapture and the manifold stories contain therein.

It's very similar to System Shock 2 in many ways, and my experience with SS2's endless fetch quests and aimless running around is largely mirrored in Bioshock 2, though I do find that the level design is more streamlined, on top of having a more interesting setting, higher production value, and generally being more enjoyable in every way besides the lack of RPG mechanics and character building potential.

The gunplay in this game had the potential to be much more enjoyable than SS2, being a game from 2007, but it falls flat in bizarre ways — the enemies have a lot of health and brush off extreme pain such as that from being shot in the head or set aflame, so there is little to no feedback for performing well in combat; Furthermore, the enemies seem to take a second to realise that they have been killed when you headshot them, thus leading to them dropping their weapons and masks and gently falling over, as opposed to falling on the ground when they are shot. I am almost wondering if my version of Bioshock Remastered is glitched somehow, because I cannot imagine why a game from 2007 would not simply give me
le funny ragdolle when enemies die, which would have immediately improved the feeling of the combat (this does not address the core gameplay loop, but it would make experimenting with different weapons and plasmids that much more alluring).

Overall, the game feels like a glorified walking simulator — the parts that people care about are the atmosphere, art direction, story, etc; But the game spends way too much time funneling you into repetitive combat encounters to truly deliver on that promise — this could have easily been condensed into, say, six hours, so that the basic combat loop would not get so tiresome so long before the end of the game. As is, you might as well just listen to the audio logs and watch the two cutscenes people care about online, as the gameplay is just not fun.

Despite how simulated the world is, your ways of interacting with it are quite narrow — you cannot even ask random strangers about the weather... I don't really know what I was hoping for, but this game doesn't really seem to have many compelling roleplaying mechanics, and the actual click-and-wait gameplay is both bothersome and boring (micromanaging troops can be interesting enough, but is also frustrating due to all the usual issues you encounter when managing a group in games).

At the end of the day, most of the game seems to be spent running to and fro, or reacting to the world in fairly uninvolved and predictable ways. Maybe I just don't get it.

It just kind of sucks. It has simplistic stealth mechanics and level design, hardly any content, and basically no reactivity or room for creativity in the world. The enemies seem braindead, and when you get spotted, it feels unfair because I lack the kind of spacial awareness and precision in VR that I would have with a fixed, solid body in a flatscreen game. I did not enjoy completing the 1.5 hours of content this Early Access title had to offer, and it has not gotten any updates in over a year now, so...

This game has a very immersive and well-realised world, with gritty realistic environments forming utterly nonsensical architectural layouts. The format of the protagonist's quest is quite formulaic, but it is helped by the steady introduction of more and more powerful weaponry throughout. The pathfinding on display here is very impressive, and the firearms generally feel quite satisfying to use (the gunplay is reminiscent of the studio's next title, Return to Castle Wolfenstein). The difficulty can be a bit steep, but it shouldn't be much of a problem if you quicksave before every encounter.

Overall, this game is just simple immersive fun. It's like if Deus Ex had the gameplay of Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Would recommend.