Bioshock PC Demo – Amazing!

Ok, ok.  There’s a lot of hyperbole going around the web about this game.  But each person brings their own justification for their comments to the table, and ultimately their justification is more important than their one-liner.

As a side note, it’s pulling great reviews, currently averaging 9.49 (I’m assuming that means the same thing as 94.9%) on gamerankings.  That’significantly better than the New Super Mario Bros and marginally better than Gears of War.

But why did I think it was amazing?  Because of the hardware I have at home.  I’m running a nearly two year old PC with an AMD Athlon 64 3200+ (overclocked) and an Asus 6600GT.

I figured I was wasting my time on the 1.8GB download after negative experiences with a bunch of new games including Dirt and World In Conflict which didn’t scale at all well.  I’m not a graphics junky but if the game performs so badly that it looks worse than Total Annihilation or some rally game from the nineties then I’m not going to pay any attention.

Bioshock was different.  I’m not going to give any spoilers, but after the initial cut scene, when you’re given control I sat staring at my screen for a full minute refusing to believe that those were in-game graphics.   Everything else that has been said about the demo is all true, the sound is great, the timing reveals just enough to keep you wanting more and the fighting scenes are intense.

I hope Bioshock for the PC sells millions of copies.  Companies need to learn that there are a lot of people out there with machines slightly less powerful than the Xbox 360 and significantly less powerful than today’s machines who still want to buy new games and be blown away.  It really is worth tweaking your game to get the most out of our machines, we’ll thank you with our wallets.

I’m not usually a horror fan and so I was just playing the demo to be ‘part of the crowd’ but now I’ve been converted.  I’m definitely going to be playing this game, and if you have a PC which was a good gaming PC within the last three years, I think you should download the demo and give it a go.