After playing through the demo a few times, I must say that I’m impressed. Until I played the BioShock demo, I gave credit to The Darkness as having the best console FPS graphics to date. I must say that BioShock’s (BS) graphics beat out The Darkness by a decent margin. The gameplay is intense, the story is told in real time through varied methods, and the game is also kinda freaky. The magic-like “plasmids” used in the game are fun and accompanied by good effects all around. The enemies all actually talk (minus the Big Daddies), which I wasn’t expecting, so that was kinda cool.
On the down side, I have to say that the game didn’t feel as free-roaming as it has been purported to be. This may be because it was only a demo, and let’s hope that it gives the player a better sense of exploration when it comes out on the 27th. I also found the very, very hyped-up water graphics to only be “quite good” instead of “mind blowing”. A lot of the time you can tell where they’re using sprites instead of polygons and the water doesn’t bounce of your character at all. With that said, I was impressed that (for the most part) when water is pouring somewhere, the place will actually start to fill up with water as opposed to the water magically disappearing like it does in most games. I have to say that I was at least equally impressed with the graphics and water effects in BS as I was with the Black Site: Area 51 demo.
I am still very much looking forward to this game, and I already have a Collector’s edition pre-ordered. If the demo is any indication, this game will be an FPS to be remembered for a good while.