The problem I have with audio logs that, conjoined with some bloody writing on the walls and a few bodies, they're the ONLY things that people have left behind them.
In the ruined remnants of shooter-world, it seems, there were no posters, no diaries, no sketchpads, no graffitti, no emails, no sticky notes, no footprints- the strange inhabitants appear to have communicated solely through the only medium they possesed: the five-minute storage tape recorder.
And it's so predictable, too. They record down their every thought, making sure to leave adequate context about where they were and what they were doing before pouring out their hearts, making sure everything's set up for the hypothetical future listener. You never find the kind of random indeciferable nonsense you'd see in a REAL audio log. Unless you count the "Nothing but screaming" variant.
I'm all for leaving chunks of story around the place, but not in convienient tape recorders. Let's have books, posters, old records or TV shows on infinite loop, arty sketchpads with scribbles in the margins, ancient memos. All of that kind of thing builds up to far more of a sense of place than some scattered messages. Harder to implement, though, of course, which is why they don't.
Bioshock did pretty well at everything OUTSIDE the audio logs, which is why they were good- you're not just walking down a generic video-game corridor before a story thrusts itself in your face without warning.
I heard Silent Hill: Shattered Memories had a really cool Phone audio-log-style device: You have a supernatural phone that picks up past phone calls from the area. The sound comes in through the crackly wii-remote speaker.
