The Lorerunner

Premieres 4


Bioshock

I will admit, while the game has some legitimately cool ideas and concepts, it fell flat on the gameplay axis. That being stated the game absolutely holds up on the story axis, and is worth a playthrough if you never have (or if you have only once, to catch what you might’ve missed). Big recommend.

Total Story Score: +19
Total Gameplay Score: +3
Golden Number: 48.69
Cheats: No
Total Play Time: 1 Days // 11 Hours
Time Reviewed: 10-20-2020

Spoiler Pluses and Minuses +

Story Positives:

  1. Storytelling Mechanic: The design of the audio clips and voice samples and ‘audio cutscenes’ are great
  2. Intro: The Intro quickly and efficiently establishes much about all the major players, sets the scene, and gets its hooks into you very well
  3. Storytelling Mechanic: Audio logs are not automatically a positive… but really well done audio logs are, and this one has some fantastic audio logs
  4. Doodads: Posters, adverts, world building, atmosphere are all over the place
  5. Plot: The big twist with ourselves, our father, and our master is very well done and still holds up to this day…
  6. Moment: …along with the reveal scene of Andrew Ryan and his final triumph
  7. Voice Acting: Is good stuff, especially with the major characters
  8. Character: Ryan himself is a fascinating character with plenty to discuss and dissect
  9. Character: Atlas/Fontaine are, similarly, an interesting specimen of a villain given that he is (ultimately) just a thug but a two-bit thug was the perfect piece to smash the Rapture glass
  10. Doodads: Doodad placement and utilization is good and helps add to the atmosphere
  11. Character: Sander Cohen is a fun and very well voiced character, and his section was probably one of the more memorable story segments of the game
  12. Foreshadowing: The game is quite smart with its foreshadowing, not going overboard but not too limited either, and bothering to leave the details everywhere
  13. Outro: The good ending is brief but quite heartwarming
  14. Character: A good supporting cast of memorable characters (Suchong, Tennenbaum, Steinman, Sullivan, Peach)
  15. Atmosphere: Atmosphere and…
  16. Tone: …tone are excellent throughout
  17. Dialogue: Dialogue is quite well written throughout
  18. Story Sequencing: The story sequencing is tight and well structured
  19. Visual Continuity: Good visual continuity as you navigate the city
  20. Brickwork: And the city itself is easily half the story by itself, visually

Story Negatives:

  1. World Building: The vita-chamber is just kind of ridiculous and never properly explained in lore, and just introduces problem upon problem the more you think about it

Gameplay Positives:

  1. Encounter: Environmental encounter design and placement of what enemies where is usually well thought out
  2. Minigame: Hacking minigame is fun and rewarding (turrets, cameras, more stuff, and cheaper stuff)
  3. Alternate Leveling: “Researching” people with camera to unlock bonuses against them as well as unlock plasmids
  4. Kit: Kit is good, with plenty of possible builds and combos and a decent variety of abilities
  5. Core Combat: Combo attack options (shock then hit, freeze then smash, fire then shoot, bees then burn, etc.)
  6. Tutorialization: Nearby tutorialization elements for each new upgrade, weapon, or item
  7. Pacing: Aside from a few moments the gameplay pacing is quite good
  8. MSQ: The ‘curing yourself’ section of the game is quite good, giving you randomized Plasmids without overwhelming you and functioning as a good way to try out a variety since it will equip plasmids you don’t have equipped (or have even found)
  9. Enemy Variety: Pretty good overall
  10. Animations: Animations help you deal with enemies
  11. Save: Good, quick, efficient save system

Gameplay Negatives:

  1. Minigame: Hacking is way over-used, despite the fun
  2. Padding: The health values of the enemies by the second half of the game, honestly, are just too much
  3. Audio Spam: A bit of audio spam from vendors and the little sister “The circus of vaaaluuues!”
  4. Padding: While the pacing is mostly okay, there are a few long sections of what feels like padding as you go gather quest items to progress (and by the third time it’s just old and dragging the game on)
  5. Outro: The final boss commits the worst sin of a boss fight; it’s boring. He has two attacks, it takes too long, there’s no real effort to give you options like they could have (environmental, adds, turrets), and the repeated voice clips are just old
  6. Bug: Minor bugs here and there, mostly repeating or interrupting dialogue (plus two crashes)
  7. Unskippable Cutscenes: That old chestnut
  8. Outro: Honestly, the entire Outro has a lot of issues