I'm in the midst of playing Bioshock 2. A decent successor to Bioshock set 10 years after the events of the previous game you play as a Big Daddy wandering the depths of Rapture fighting off Splicers, Rosie, the new Big Sister and adopting little sisters to help harvest ADAM for you to buy new Plasmids and Gene Tonics.
The game is good, the story is very well written, I just wish that they would have improved the graphics more and cranked up the pace of the game a bit. Overall I'd give it a 7 out of 10.
I also just finished Aliens vs. Predator from Rebellion studios. While the first stage of single player missions is just a boring FPS, with very few scares or make you jump in your seat points in the game, the one thing that really impressed me was twofold - the attention to detail was outstanding both in terms of texture mapping and character design, but also all the little things that make you think back to the Alien and Predator movies - the second thing is the fluidity of the graphics - during one part of the Marine campaign, you get stuck in a tunnel, with only flares, a dim flashlight and muzzle flashes from an movement tracking machine gun for illumination. The eerie red glow of the flare illuminates a swarm of Aliens coming towards you, crawling up the walls, across the ceiling, pulling themselves out of air ducts. It's so fluid and full of detail, for a moment you find yourself thinking that you're there in James Cameron's Aliens.
The Alien missions are pretty cool and simple. Kill or harvest the humans, free the Queen and wreak havoc. You have the ability to walk on any surface, have multiple attack modes and your vision automatically adjusts to being in the dark.
The Predator missions were my favorite. As you progress through the campaign you start as a juvenile Predator on his first hunt, collecting your weapons along the way, and honoring your fallen brothers, as you leap from tree top to building top. At one point most of your weapons are one shot, one kill type weapons, which does take some of the fun out of the game, but lends perfectly for stealth stalker mode.
In the end the game definitely could use improvements - more levels instead of the same 6-10 that you repeatedly go through during the course of all 3 campaigns. More ALIENS vs. PREDATOR! Very rarely does the aliens encounter a predator, and when the predator encounters aliens there needs to be substantially more aliens. Most of the time you're simply killing humans who stand no chance against alien acid or a predator combi-stick. Controls. While fighting the game flows smoothly - until you have to interact with a control panel, sever a security guard's head, recharge your power, pickup a battery etc, at which point you need to stand in exactly the right spot, hold the "E" key and wait for the cutscene to end, during which you're open to attack AND taking damage.
On a scale of fun-ness I give it a 8/10 on the first play through.
But because of the improvements needed I have to give Aliens vs Predator a 6/10
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