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PC Bioshock Demo Now Available
Dr. Eggman writes "Valve announced today that their digital distribution system, Steam, is now hosting Irrational Games-turned-2K Boston's soon to be released title, Bioshock. The game will appear on Steam and the US August 21st and in Europe on the 24th. If you don't enjoy pipes, perhaps you'd like to utilize the tubes at 3DDownloads, Worthplaying, FilePlanet, or Gamer's Hell."
I think I can manage to wait another 18 hours to enjoy the game as a completely fresh experience.
P.P.S. I'm doing Science and I'm still alive.
ok it is weird.
A very immersive and artful environment. Water effects are indeed beautiful, but beyond that the graphics remind me of Doom3 (even though the engine is Unreal's). The combat is classic FPS like DoomIII, but the devious AI and funky weapons give it a sandbox-ish twist. You can hack (via mini-games) other drones and shit to get them to help you.
Kind of a freaky story though... kind of encouraged to kill zombified 10 year old girls as part fo the struggle you are dropped into.
I can honestly not comprehend why they would delay the game for days in different regions when the delivery medium is online. What possible reason could they have for making the rest of us wait? What harm is it to release the game on the same day everywhere?
No comments yet? I guess everyone is downloading it.
Why isn't anyone hosting a torrent yet?
I never really bother with game demos, but I will make an exception here. There are far too few atmospheric games, far too few quality PC games, and I love to see people harken pack to PC classics like System Shock 1 and 2, which this would have been a sequel to if they had the rights.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Project Offset is also going to be interesting.
Legal. Breaking street dates is bad juju.
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
What a messed up story submission. The headline and the last sentence suggest the article's about the demo, but everything else is referring to the retail game itself. To make it quite clear: the full game's available on Steam and will be unlocked on the release date. The demo's out in the wild and is available at the mirrors listed. I'd suggest waiting for the full version. All indications point to one of the best games every made.
Against stupidity the Gods themselves contend in vain.
TPB showed that BioShock was released "2007-08-20 05:26:09 GMT". Add in -5 hours for Central Time Zone, and you have the torrent available on the 20th, just after midnight. That's what, 20 something hours ago?
Another great release for BT.
BTW, I downloaded it a few hours ago and just about maxed my 15MBPS connection.
I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
Maybe they can't handle all the inevitable tech support calls from the entire world at once? You also gotta figure that any internationalization teams are automatically always lagging the main version a bit during development.
Secondly any calls would be distributed throughout the day due to timezone differences.
Thirdly there have always been international call centers handling tech support,so I doubt they would be overloaded.
Fourthly the internationalization would have been well and truly complete before the DVD's were pressed.
I was reading the Ars Technica thread - one person asked if the demo would run on XP; no answer yet. Another mentioned that he had downloaded the demo from Steam, but it wouldn't run; didn't mention his OS. Does anyone yet know if the demo will run on an XP and/or 2K system with DX9?
Yes, but does it run on Linux? Yet?
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
The "Matt" in WhereTheHellIsMatt just downloaded and blogged about this demo, and he loves it:
"Two days ago, a demo went out on Xbox Live for a game called Bioshock. It's the best demo I've played in years. The game is actually literate, which is a quality I stopped hoping for long ago. The situation they drop you in is absolutely riveting and the quality is at a level that no amount of money can produce. Having worked in games, I know all forms of bodily fluid were excreted in its creation. A lot of people put a lot of passion into making this game great.
"One of those people is Garry Schyman, who makes the music for my dancing videos.
"Playing Bioshock makes me really glad I don't work in games anymore, as I wouldn't be able to derive any pleasure from it. Just envy and self-loathing."
If they release everywhere at once, they get one big burst of publicity in magazines and on the web. If they stagger their releases, they get publicity in different regions at different times, and some of the publicity from one region may bleed over into regions that haven't had their release yet. "North American gamers are having a great time playing game X, European gamers can't wait to get their hands on it!"
Great looking game, Runs great on 2 year old hardware amd 3700 and 7900gtx with 1gb ram, also runs great under XP. I haven't updated the NVidia beta drivers likey they suggest but i get very playable frame rates without it. As soon as i get cash, it's going into this game.
The BioShock demo is also available on Steam. I'm getting it now.
Loved it, because it confirmed my PC won't be able to run Bioshock, as I suspected. Hope those neat water effects were worth my $50 (and the $50 of everyone else who doesn't have a "100% Directx 9.0c compatible" video card.)
I assumed it was because they didn't want the world to login and start downloading all at once and kill their servers... kinda like what happened to the Skype network...
If you go into the bar where the 1959 party was being held and listen to the voice recording by the big "1959" neon thing, listen to what the people are chanting in the background. Then look at your radio.
I can't wait to consume this game:P
This is probably tied into highstreet store release dates and sales deals. For reasons connected with the distribution chain, most US games releases happen on either Mondays or Tuesdays, while pretty much all UK (the most important European market since Germany effectively closed its borders to many games) releases happen on Fridays.
Obviously, retailers would kick up a fuss if online vendors were selling the game in their region before they had it in their stores. For this reason, they tend to insist on contractual obligations ensuring that "online" releases don't pre-empt titles hitting their stores. Of course, given how easy the region-checks on most online sales of games are to defeat, I'm not really sure that this policy is getting them very far, with the generally technically savvy PC gaming scene.
Now i see where the complaints about the unreal engine come into play. Even with the demo's heavily handicapped graphics, it plays on my 3 Ghz 1Gig 6800 like Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries did years ago on my 100 Mghz machine on 640 x 480 mode. True I left shadows on, but thats a large part of the atmosphere. Then it locked up my computer after that confusing part with the alarms and such. Guess I'll have to get the 360 version even though I prefer FPS's on the PC.
I was pretty skeptical about the game before I tried the demo, I thought it looked like Doom 3 meets Half-Life 2 meets F.E.A.R, but I was wrong. I really like the 1950s theme mixed with an underwater world. I like the fact that you can loot corpses among other things, it gave the game more of a RPG feel than a straight FPS to me. Of course there's also the plasmids which is a nice touch. Before playing the demo, I thought it was just another over hyped FPS, but I now see what everyone else was talking about.
I was a bit worried about performance before hand, but it ran very well on my year and half old system (AMD X2 3800+, 2 gigs of ram, Radeon X1900XT 256mb). I had it running at 1680x1050 with maximum detail settings and 4xAA/8xAF and I only noticed a brief frame rate slow down at one point near the end of the demo.
The demo was good enough that I plan on buying it tomorrow (PC version of course). I think this is probably the first demo that I've tried all year where I actually want to buy the game instead of just uninstalling the demo and being thoroughly disappointed afterwards.
There are numerous issues with the game's demo that are probably present in the launch copy. For one thing, the game crashes for most people (all people?) with nVidia cards unless the newly released BioShock-specific driver is installed (or high quality shaders are disabled). That alone will probably cause a ton of confusion among less technically savvy users.
For another thing, the widescreen modes don't change the FoV, so going widescreen means the top/bottom of the screen are chopped off instead of the image being extended on either side. There's a lengthy thread on the official forums demanding a fix for this. It affects the 360 version as well.
Many stores released the game at midnight tonight, having held midnight launch sales (or being 24/7 stores). But for some reason, the game requires "activation" online (even for retail boxed copies), and the servers aren't up yet, so there's a ton of people complaining that they can't play the game that they bought legitimately on launch day.
The game is awesome, but this is definitely a rocky release. A patch for the game is already desperately needed. At the very minimum, if the game detects you're not running the newly released drivers (only released tonight at 7PM), it should disable high quality shaders entirely and inform you that you can't enable them until you upgrade your drivers. And, obviously, they need to fix the FoV issues.
Very nice game indeed, but I am not going to get the full game...
I also got to play it tonight (I actually had free time and not in crunch mode?) for about 40 minutes (yes, it is short). The previews, screen shots, video clips, and trailers didn't excite me for this game. I kept hearing and reading very high scores from Xbox 360 port (demo and the full game that was sold earlier). Everyone was raving how scary, addicting, and pretty the game was. Now, I know why. The audio, graphic, special effects, etc. were very nice.
POSSIBLE SPOILERS: This 3D surrealistic first perspective shooter (FPS) game and story theme was an issue for me since it didn't hit me to excite me. It takes place in 1960 in an underwater city (it reminds me of Atlantis, Titanic, Blade Runner movie, etc.). The demo started out with an introduction that reminded me of Lost's Oceanic Flight 815 jetliner crash in the sea/ocean, but at night time. Wow, looking at the water was LOVELY and seeing the water splashes and droplets on my screen! While swimming to the lighthouse near by, I heard the flames, explosions, me coughing out water and breathing, etc.
The fun start begins in the lighthouse when I travel down to the underwater city named Rupture. At the same time, I met a guy helping me over the radio. You can hack robots to be on your side and protect you, security cameras, sentry guns, etc. There are various life spawn spots if you die. If you played System Shock 2, then you would recognize that this is the same people who worked on this game. The whole game system is based on it, but on a different game engine. The game still had scary parts, beautiful graphics and effects, objectives/missions, etc. It also reminded me of American McGee's Alice 3D FPS game for the surrealism and weirdness.
Check out the game if you have a decent gaming system or a Xbox 360 (heard it was good on the console as well and there's a free demo). Enjoy the graphics, special effects (check out those neat water falls, leaks, etc.), cutscenes, sounds, music, and horror. I was surprised it ran well on my not super fast system even without the beta NVIDIA driver that is supposed to be supported for this game.
Circuit City weekly ad/advertisement shows it for $39.99 for this week. So one extra copy for you to buy since I am not buying it due to above reasons and lack of free time (got other games to play and finish). If it was a sequel to System Shock 2 game, then I would be all over it just for SHODAN (I miss her harassing me like saying "Look at you, hacker: a pathetic creature of meat and bone, panting and sweating as you run through my corridors. How can you challenge a perfect, immortal machine?")!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
http://www.ausgamers.com/files/details/html/30227
I was able to play the Xbox 360 demo a few days ago at my brother in law's and I enjoyed it. I'm not really a fan of creepy little girls (ala The Shining) but it was fun and the atmosphere was intense. I wasn't able to play on an HDTV so I didn't get the full beauty of the game, but it looked wonderful on SDTV, which definitely says something. Too bad my PC is old and I don't own a 360, won't be playing this game for a long time...
Reviewing just the first hour of video games.
Here's the torrent
(posted AC to avoid karma whoring.)
...found out i was playing it a lot like i did system shock 2. creep around corners. check every nook and cranny for items. horde crap. on easy mode, there is too much stuff and not enough need of resourcea use to be a problem. on medium, that evens out. on hard, dunno, disabled on the pc demo.
;)
i will say it ran pretty decently on a E6400 (2.13GHz per core), with 2GB ram, 7900GS vid card (my only possible stumbing block for a full graphic experience), 1440x900 reso, on XP. a few frame skip issues here and there, but nothing drastic that made it unplayable.
ZAP 'EM THEN WHACK 'EM!
"Of course, given how easy the region-checks on most online sales of games are to defeat, I'm not really sure that this policy is getting them very far, with the generally technically savvy PC gaming scene."
One doesn't need region locks. Simply delay the online game till it's available in all stores.
I'm not a huge gamer, and had stopped buying PC games because none of them support Win2k anymore. Seeing as how I almost never use Windows much anyway, I wasn't about to pay hundreds of dollars for XP just to play the occasional game, not to mention all the EULA garbage.
I didn't realize there was such a simple fix - Looks like I will be picking up a copy of Overlord after all.
Dang, EA/Dice also has the same issue with FOV for wide screen monitors in their Battlefield series, and they claim fixing it would give an unfair advantage to widescreen users, which is a rediculous stance. If you go to Frys right now, judging by the LCD offering on their website, roughly 90%+ of their monitors are 16:10. It's the ones who can see the upper and lower parts of the image who have the advantage!
And if you're a photo professional who has a dedicated 4:3 monitor for photography, surely you can afford a cheapie 16:10 game monitor.
This is the spiritual successor to System Shock 1 & 2 by Looking Glass, while you are talking about games by iD and Bungie. Especially the iD Quake game says a lot about you.
System Shock and Doom came out roughly at the same time. Now be ready for a shock, Doom was inferior in EVERY aspect to System Shock, save one. Sales. Except that they never really competed except in the eyes of shallow people that label every FPS game a FPS.
The simple fact is that System Shock NEVER was a FPS like Doom/Quake/whatever. It just used the First Person Perspective to show you the game. It was in many ways a solo/horror/survival game, a closer sibling in many ways to the third person survival games like Resident Evil.
You are talking about firefights. That was never what System Shock was about, if battle was hard that was because it was supposed to be. Doom: Wade through a see of enemies as an untouchable hardcore marine. System Shock: You are weak and everything is out to get you and they will.
IF you want a pure FPS, then you are right, Bio Shock is NOT for you. Basically you are telling an audience of Star Wars fans that Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back is just old fashioned Star Wars and we should all be for the new Battle Star Galactica. Sorry, no. Go back to your mindless shooters kiddo, leave the real games for the adults.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Even though it's relatively trivial to run under windows 2000, officially supporting Windows 2K would require re-qualifying the game for that platform. Basically, that would mean repeating all the testing preformed on Vista/XP on another platform.
Remember that testing a game requires considerable time with different drivers, and video cards.
When you consider the cost and time required, putting a 2K stamp on the box might not make sense.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_Deco
BioShock is a single-player game, though. There's no question of certain players having unfair advantages.
> Firstly I doubt they would seriously get that many tech support calls.
Not tech support, but sales support. "Dude, where's my order" kind of stuff. 2K is a pretty darn big company though, so I imagine they can handle it, but it can really screw your supply chain if you don't stagger shipping dates properly.
My guess is it's largely about marketing -- you get more buzz if you have lots of releases than just one big one.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
What does it say about the FPS genre when the greatest villain ever, was actually on-screen for, what, ten minutes across two games?
Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?
I have an AMD X2 4400+ - the game used about 90% of first CPU and about 60% of the other. It ran beautifully on my 6800GT with 2GB of RAM.
(S+C) x (B+F)/T = V
i just grabbed this for 360. incredible. i put in a good 3 hours tonight and i can't wait for another block of free time to burn.
FOXTROT UNIFORM CHARLIE KILO
...and you have only played the demo. There is more you haven't seen. Perhaps they know something you don't?
Still, far be it from me to tell you what to like.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Someone's created an unofficial FoV fixing patch for this demo apparently. Link about halfway down this page.
R Tape loading error, 0:1