By Pentadact

It’s almost hard to believe that game critics aren’t taken seriously as writers.

Dan and I spent last week in muggy Boston reviewing Bioshock. I can’t say anything about the game until the magazine comes out, but I can leave an encrypted message about it here, then provide you with the key when it’s out, so you’ll be able to see that I really said what I said now and not then, which by then will be now and this will be then. Encrypted message follows, do not attempt to decode.

OMFG

I’ve reviewed everything about the trip except Bioshock itself over on the PC Gamer blog, and I’ve just today finished my review of the game itself, which’ll be in the mag on August the 2nd.

As with the Oblivion review, I reworked it obsessively, and I was up till four last night tinkering with the final sections. And it occured to me today, still redacting, that actually producing an entertaining article is fairly low on my list of priorities when I’m doing this. I seem to always be writing with the developers in mind, which I suppose is not a bad way to ensure you justify your thoughts adequately.

Edit: I stopped writing this, not because I’d reached the point, but because I was half-watching Angel at the same time and got distracted. I think I was going to say that this was actually a terrible way of doing things and I should try the other one.

As for the game, I’m in the amusingly contorted situation of being able to say anything I like about the three hours I played in London a while back, but nothing about the full game. Of course I wouldn’t say anything about those three hours that I’d later discovered to be untrue of the game as a whole, so the very act of saying something would itself be revealing about the full game and therefore disallowed, even if I’d already thought it beforehand. So… I think I can say it has guns?

The latest video shows some great stuff, although it’s being played on 360 so the combat looks a bit rubbish there, if you ask me, a person who’s played it on PC. INFER WHAT YOU WILL.

‘Dean’ is the Irrational guy playing it, not your character. I say this because for a long time everyone thought you played someone called Joe, because it was always designer Joe Faulstick being referred to in the demonstration voice-overs. Your character is, it pains me to reveal from my first three hours with it, called Jack. If you wish to make the logical leap to assuming he’s called Jack for the entire game, I cannot stop you.