BioShock is a great game. With that out of the way let me explain why I own two copies of this game. It began with the Minimum System Requirements:

Operating Systems: Windows XP (with Service Pack 2) or Windows Vista
CPU: Pentium 4 2.4GHz Single Core processor
System RAM: 1GB
Video Card: Direct X 9.0c compliant video card with 128MB RAM (NVIDIA 6600 or better/ATI X1300 or better, excluding ATI X1550).
Sound Card: 100% direct X 9.0c compatible sound card
Hard disc space: 8GB free space

And then the Recommended System Requirements:

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo processor
System RAM: 2GB
Video card:
DX9: Direct X 9.0c compliant video card with 512MB RAM (NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT or better)
DX10: NVIDIA GeForce 8600 or better
Sound Card: Sound Blaster X-F series (Optimized for use with Creative Labs EAX ADVANCED HD 4.0 or EAX ADVANCED HD 5.0 compatible sound cards)

So my pc is somewhere in between the Minimum and the Recommended. The game was released on the 21st. The pc demo for the game came out a day before release. The 360 demo came out on the 12th. So naturally I panicked and preordered a copy of the limited edition for the 360.

As it turned out I can run the game pretty good. Far better than I had honestly expected. On the demo my fps were at the lowest in the 20’s, the highest I saw was in the 70’s. So of course I was mad that I had preordered (and prepayed) the game for the 360. So I decided I would fire up Steam and preload the game, in case I decided (as I did) to buy the game twice.

When I did buy the game off Steam I was confident because I had preloaded it. All I had to do was wait for the designated time and I could play the game on the pc. As soon as the game unlocked I tried to fire it up, only to get the game to crash (the dreaded msvcr80.dll error) before even getting into the actual game.

My fix was to delete the local content for the game in Steam. Which meant I had to download the game again. I let it download while I was at work and when I got home I was happy to find out I could play. This is not a definite fix for the msver80.dll problem. It worked for me, but other claim no dice for it fixing the error.

Here is two screen shots followed by some more info important to anyone who either picked it up or is thinking about getting it. And don’t let these issues stop you from getting this great game.

Despite many positive reviews. There are a number of well documented issues. Including (but not limited to) issues with the widescreen support and the presence of SecuROM copy protection (even on Steam) which limits you to two installs at a time.