Slashdot Mirror
BioShock Review
BioShock, the moody drama-driven FPS for the Xbox 360 and PC, was released last month to rave reviews from the major gaming news sites. Since then the internet has been ablaze with outcry about the game's high rating scores. It's hard to understand why. The work of Ken Levine and Irrational Games on the spiritual successor to System Shock 2 is sublime. It's incredibly atmospheric, the game's story is well written and compellingly told, and the first-person shooter gameplay is a respectable, tightly crafted experience. It's a really, really good game. I'll tell you now: it's a 5/5. So why all the angst? Why the backlash? Read on for my review of BioShock, and a few comments on the dangers of 'merely' being a good game.
The setting is gripping, but it's also the least of the player's worries. It can frighten, but the remaining citizens of Rapture - they can kill. And they'll kill cheerfully, too, all the while singing songs and muttering enthusiastically to themselves. These people are lumped together under the generic term 'Splicer', implying their extreme genetic modification. From low-powered thugs in masks through to fire-tossing, teleporting madmen, their strength when wielding a pipe is far outweighed by the impact they can leave on your nerves. Far more threatening than this group of variously-powered miscreants are the iconic monsters of the title: the Big Daddies. Acting as patrons for their ADAM-hording Little Sister companions, these creatures are just as tough as you've been lead to believe. While much of a given level involves stalking from room to room dealing with the slicer infestation, the most memorable moments you'll have probably come from one-on-one combat with the diving-suit clad behemoths. And they are completely memorable. Even taken out of context the Big Daddy is one of the creepiest enemies ever to grace a videogame. Everything, from their low groans, to their thudding footsteps, to their cries of rage when they attack, gets across to you that when you face down a Daddy it's 'for real.' Game on. I particularly like how, as they become more and more damaged, steam escapes the Daddy's suit. The implication seems to be that there's something deeply wrong under that helmet.
You're driven through the narrative by the whims of your mostly-unseen benefactor Atlas, who plays the part of the down-to-earth everyman paired with Ryan's soulless venture capitalist. He provides a great deal of information about Rapture's background ... but hints all throughout the game indicate Atlas may be more than he appears. The subtext of 'shades of grey' is laid on throughout the game. Though Ryan is clearly a madman you're given hints of his original intentions, which seem quite benign. Likewise (as has been highly publicized), the ghoulish Little Sisters can be either slain or saved as you desire. Nothing is as it initially appears in Rapture. This moral ambiguity never seems forced, but probably isn't everything the BioShock team hoped it could be. It's very enjoyable to have options, but you're not even making as dramatic a choice as the good and evil options in Knights of the Old Republic. Whether you're a sinner or a saint, you're going to end up at roughly the same place in the end. The great writing and characterization throughout the game stands up much better than any moral overtones.
That's extremely similar to System Shock 2, of course. In keeping with the spirit of that game, your ability to customize your avatar is expansive. There are actually four tracks of powerups to choose from: plasmids, physical tonics, engineering tonics, and combat tonics. While it might sound like you will be engineering a carefully constructed 'build', I found during the course of play that a particular style just emerged based on what I found most useful. Engineering tonics were the upgrades that most appealed to me, and so I made an effort to gain slots in that area. There are far more tonics than slots available, so even as you bump up your character's potential you'll never find yourself wanting for powers. Making use of these powers in the 'emergent gameplay' style is also equally effortless. While it sounds like work from the outside, when you're playing through the game encounters happen so quickly that you rarely have time to realize that you're doing cool stuff before it happens. That was another reason I particularly enjoyed engineering; emergent gameplay can even happen when you're not around. I regularly returned to an encampment I'd made out of hacked turrets to find that they'd been clearing the stage without me. All I had to do at that point was loot the corpses.
From a graphical and audio perspective, BioShock is a work of art. Rendered by the Xbox 360, the world of Rapture is awe-inspiring to behold. Everything looks so good, it's hard to point out any one thing in specific that stands above the rest. After playing the game, the best thing to do is try to pull out moments that stick with you: water as it slides over bare rock, the endless wood paneling of nicer spaces, disturbing altars lit only by an open flame, the obvious fury of a Big Daddy wreathed in flames. The sound design is the same way, with a combination of eerie vocal performances blending into a background of music that could really have come from the 40s. Every movement, every gesture in BioShock has an associated sound. From the 'clunk' of entering the hacking menu to the squeal of radio static when activating the Security Bullseye Plasmid, the sound experience in BioShock is equal to the task of rendering a world from the rich images on the screen.
All of these elements probably seem very familiar to veteran gamers, and they very well should. You've probably played a handful of games that had many elements similar to BioShock before. What sets this game apart and above other offerings, though, is the way the title brings it all together. There's almost nothing out of place here. There's no "but the story could have been better" or "the weapons didn't feel right", or "the enemies got boring" to mar the experience of playing this through for the first time. Is it the best game that will be released this year? Possibly. It's certainly the best FPS to be released since Valve's Episode One hit last year.
So where has all the hate come from? Why are there so many posts and protestations on message boards, all claiming that BioShock 'isn't all it was promised to be'? Even Zero Punctuation's analysis of the game (which you should really seriously check out because it's hilarious) takes some cheap shots at the game's purported low difficulty level. It's all for laughs, of course, but it shows up in the review because it's a common complaint among players. The issue is that the restoration capsules scattered throughout the game, which allow you to respawn right after your death, apparently remove the 'challenge' from the game. Others have said in response, "just don't play it that way, that's why there is a quicksave option." That also seems like a strange argument, because it's essentially telling someone they're 'playing wrong'. I don't really think anyone can play a game incorrectly.
Instead, look at it from the designer's point of view. What happens when you die in an FPS, normally? You reload from your last save. Why bother? Why not just respawn and get right back into the fight, ala the spirit world of Prey? Commenters then complain that it's easy because injured enemies on the level still have reduced health. By the same token, any resources you have expended in the fight up to that point (medkits, ammunition) are also still gone. To my mind, the vita-chambers are only there to make your play experience as seamless as possible, not to make it 'easy'. Ultimately, BioShock can be as hard as you want it to be. The variable difficulty rating along with several save options and the vita-chambers means that you can play through the game in a multitude of ways, with several 'steps' between simply easy, medium, and hard. BioShock is not a brief game, either, clocking in probably around 20-25 hours for most players. Anything that ensures you will move through the game as quickly as possible would (I think) be appreciated.
The real problem, I think, is that hype has made game players disappointed with games as they're actually delivered. When a game is unexpectedly good, we all marvel over the 'sleeper hit.' There comes a point in a game's marketing, though, when more hype is just too much. The result is that when the game is finally delivered, there's almost no way for the real product to match up with player expectations. After Halo 3 launches later this month, odds are there will be a lot of people in forums nitpicking the slightest flaw or perceived imperfection. The lesson, I think, is that as gamers we need to learn to manage our expectations. I'm really looking forward to Mass Effect, for example, but I don't think it's going to change my life. Really, what can we expect out of a game other than a few hours of enjoyment we might not otherwise have had? Just getting that much out of a game, I think, is a big win for the publisher, the developer, and (of course) the player.
- Title: BioShock
- Developer/Publisher: Irrational Games (2K Boston/2K Australia) / 2K
- System:360 (PC)
- Genre: RPG/ FPS Hybrid
- Score: 5/5 - This game is a classic title. It transcends genre, is certain to be a part of many serious gamers' collections, and is definitely worth purchasing.
The setting is gripping, but it's also the least of the player's worries. It can frighten, but the remaining citizens of Rapture - they can kill. And they'll kill cheerfully, too, all the while singing songs and muttering enthusiastically to themselves. These people are lumped together under the generic term 'Splicer', implying their extreme genetic modification. From low-powered thugs in masks through to fire-tossing, teleporting madmen, their strength when wielding a pipe is far outweighed by the impact they can leave on your nerves. Far more threatening than this group of variously-powered miscreants are the iconic monsters of the title: the Big Daddies. Acting as patrons for their ADAM-hording Little Sister companions, these creatures are just as tough as you've been lead to believe. While much of a given level involves stalking from room to room dealing with the slicer infestation, the most memorable moments you'll have probably come from one-on-one combat with the diving-suit clad behemoths. And they are completely memorable. Even taken out of context the Big Daddy is one of the creepiest enemies ever to grace a videogame. Everything, from their low groans, to their thudding footsteps, to their cries of rage when they attack, gets across to you that when you face down a Daddy it's 'for real.' Game on. I particularly like how, as they become more and more damaged, steam escapes the Daddy's suit. The implication seems to be that there's something deeply wrong under that helmet.
You're driven through the narrative by the whims of your mostly-unseen benefactor Atlas, who plays the part of the down-to-earth everyman paired with Ryan's soulless venture capitalist. He provides a great deal of information about Rapture's background ... but hints all throughout the game indicate Atlas may be more than he appears. The subtext of 'shades of grey' is laid on throughout the game. Though Ryan is clearly a madman you're given hints of his original intentions, which seem quite benign. Likewise (as has been highly publicized), the ghoulish Little Sisters can be either slain or saved as you desire. Nothing is as it initially appears in Rapture. This moral ambiguity never seems forced, but probably isn't everything the BioShock team hoped it could be. It's very enjoyable to have options, but you're not even making as dramatic a choice as the good and evil options in Knights of the Old Republic. Whether you're a sinner or a saint, you're going to end up at roughly the same place in the end. The great writing and characterization throughout the game stands up much better than any moral overtones.
That's extremely similar to System Shock 2, of course. In keeping with the spirit of that game, your ability to customize your avatar is expansive. There are actually four tracks of powerups to choose from: plasmids, physical tonics, engineering tonics, and combat tonics. While it might sound like you will be engineering a carefully constructed 'build', I found during the course of play that a particular style just emerged based on what I found most useful. Engineering tonics were the upgrades that most appealed to me, and so I made an effort to gain slots in that area. There are far more tonics than slots available, so even as you bump up your character's potential you'll never find yourself wanting for powers. Making use of these powers in the 'emergent gameplay' style is also equally effortless. While it sounds like work from the outside, when you're playing through the game encounters happen so quickly that you rarely have time to realize that you're doing cool stuff before it happens. That was another reason I particularly enjoyed engineering; emergent gameplay can even happen when you're not around. I regularly returned to an encampment I'd made out of hacked turrets to find that they'd been clearing the stage without me. All I had to do at that point was loot the corpses.
From a graphical and audio perspective, BioShock is a work of art. Rendered by the Xbox 360, the world of Rapture is awe-inspiring to behold. Everything looks so good, it's hard to point out any one thing in specific that stands above the rest. After playing the game, the best thing to do is try to pull out moments that stick with you: water as it slides over bare rock, the endless wood paneling of nicer spaces, disturbing altars lit only by an open flame, the obvious fury of a Big Daddy wreathed in flames. The sound design is the same way, with a combination of eerie vocal performances blending into a background of music that could really have come from the 40s. Every movement, every gesture in BioShock has an associated sound. From the 'clunk' of entering the hacking menu to the squeal of radio static when activating the Security Bullseye Plasmid, the sound experience in BioShock is equal to the task of rendering a world from the rich images on the screen.
All of these elements probably seem very familiar to veteran gamers, and they very well should. You've probably played a handful of games that had many elements similar to BioShock before. What sets this game apart and above other offerings, though, is the way the title brings it all together. There's almost nothing out of place here. There's no "but the story could have been better" or "the weapons didn't feel right", or "the enemies got boring" to mar the experience of playing this through for the first time. Is it the best game that will be released this year? Possibly. It's certainly the best FPS to be released since Valve's Episode One hit last year.
So where has all the hate come from? Why are there so many posts and protestations on message boards, all claiming that BioShock 'isn't all it was promised to be'? Even Zero Punctuation's analysis of the game (which you should really seriously check out because it's hilarious) takes some cheap shots at the game's purported low difficulty level. It's all for laughs, of course, but it shows up in the review because it's a common complaint among players. The issue is that the restoration capsules scattered throughout the game, which allow you to respawn right after your death, apparently remove the 'challenge' from the game. Others have said in response, "just don't play it that way, that's why there is a quicksave option." That also seems like a strange argument, because it's essentially telling someone they're 'playing wrong'. I don't really think anyone can play a game incorrectly.
Instead, look at it from the designer's point of view. What happens when you die in an FPS, normally? You reload from your last save. Why bother? Why not just respawn and get right back into the fight, ala the spirit world of Prey? Commenters then complain that it's easy because injured enemies on the level still have reduced health. By the same token, any resources you have expended in the fight up to that point (medkits, ammunition) are also still gone. To my mind, the vita-chambers are only there to make your play experience as seamless as possible, not to make it 'easy'. Ultimately, BioShock can be as hard as you want it to be. The variable difficulty rating along with several save options and the vita-chambers means that you can play through the game in a multitude of ways, with several 'steps' between simply easy, medium, and hard. BioShock is not a brief game, either, clocking in probably around 20-25 hours for most players. Anything that ensures you will move through the game as quickly as possible would (I think) be appreciated.
The real problem, I think, is that hype has made game players disappointed with games as they're actually delivered. When a game is unexpectedly good, we all marvel over the 'sleeper hit.' There comes a point in a game's marketing, though, when more hype is just too much. The result is that when the game is finally delivered, there's almost no way for the real product to match up with player expectations. After Halo 3 launches later this month, odds are there will be a lot of people in forums nitpicking the slightest flaw or perceived imperfection. The lesson, I think, is that as gamers we need to learn to manage our expectations. I'm really looking forward to Mass Effect, for example, but I don't think it's going to change my life. Really, what can we expect out of a game other than a few hours of enjoyment we might not otherwise have had? Just getting that much out of a game, I think, is a big win for the publisher, the developer, and (of course) the player.
Why no mention of the copy protection or the limited number of times it can be installed?
PC version is horribly unstable even after installing the NVidia drivers that where Hot Fixed for the game.
I believe the issues folks are having with Bio-Shock has nothing to do with the gameplay or it's
:)
environment at all. Rather, the SecuRom DRM, the online activation and restrictive number of times
it can be loaded on a PC.
The console variants do not suffer from any of this, thus those folks would not have been exposed to it.
I've long been of the mindset that if the console folks would wake up and give me a keyboard and / or a
mouse / trackball interface, I would switch to consoles for all my gaming needs tomorrow.
Just absolutely hate the controllers the consoles come with today
Something's likely amiss with your brother's PC, then - I managed to get all the way through it, twice, without a single crash, let alone a BSOD...
I have it on the 360. Not a bad game but they should really have called it "System Shock 3: Underwater Metropolis". There's a terrible sense of "been there, done that" with this game. Yeah, it's a successor to SS2 but there's no shortage of ammo, things are easy to hack, it's not creepy like SS2 was... In short, I'll be replaying SS2 before replaying Bioshock.
Trolling is a art,
I played through the game twice on the PC version, and I've not had one crash of any sort, let alone a BSOD.
And to this point, I'd recommend that if you DO play the 360 version, DO NOT LOOK AT THE ACHIEVEMENT LIST. There are tons of plot spoilers, all the "secret" ones are like, "Shock a guy while he's in water".
"Who is Bill Gates?"
- Microsoft Shrugged
Bioshock was definitely overhyped in my opinion. The atmosphere and art direction were good, no doubt. But gameplay was nothing new from other first person shooters. In fact, I'd say it was even more limited than System Shock 2 or Thief. Stealth as an option? Not really. You pretty much had to fight your way through the game. There were no conversations with decisions to make (ala Fallout). Just recorded conversations you could pick up through the game much like the goofy notes found in No One Lives Forever. There was very little interaction in the game other than combat. No vehicles. Not much in the way of object interaction, either.
Also a much hyped feature was the ability to create your own items like ammo. Well... not really. It was just a collect-the-crap thing that allowed you to sort of unlock extra ammo. It wasn't on the level of, say, the spellbuilder in the Elder Scrolls series.
Finally, there were a lot of plot discrepancies and things that pulled me out of the storyline. Like if I were a plane crash survivor, discovering this underwater city, why would I just inject myself with a syringe I found on a table? There are a lot of things like that which caused the game to simply fall back into the vanilla FPS genre. I find it comparable to Heretic / Hexen, with modern graphics.
The work they did was definitely polished but it's disappointing because there is SO MUCH MORE they could've done with the storyline and gameplay.
You're also focusing entirely on the PC delivery issues and glossing over the console version. There are no difficulties that I've found with running it on my 360. Reviews are content after all, and most of those bugs will be worked out I would imagine. Lots of great PC games have had buggy releases that get fixed with good patching.
"Life's short and hard, like a body building elf." -- The Bloodhound Gang
That's not about the game, is it, that's about the copy protection, which is a whole other subject.
While it is annoying, it has to be said that copy protection only got so nasty because of the virtually unrestricted internet sharing of games. We've all done it at some point or other, so we're all to blame.
The argument 'but I just want to see what the games like' doesn't cut it either. I still know people who say that, but when it comes to my saying 'hey lets play a game online', I get an all too familiar, 'my copy won't work because I don't have a valid key', because their 'review' turned into them not actually buying the thing. It gets real tedious, especially in one particular case, when the game in question was only ten pounds in the local shop.
Hence the outstanding success and praise of games like Gears of War. Granted, GoW had its own following of hype before the release, but nothing like how Mass Effect and Halo 3 are at the moment.
With GoW, gamers all around expected it to be a good game, but never quite had that "OMG! I'LL DIE IF I DON'T GET THIS!" feeling until after it was released and everyone realized how well made it was.
Yet, with Halo 3, we have the popularity of the series plus the teaser of a multiplayer beta pumping steroids into every fanboy's wet dreams. You made a great point in predicting how critical people will be with the game, but that's to be expected. We're human, we live in our minds and hope for the absolute best.
BioShock is an amazing game, even if it is considered easy to most gamers.
Making the low difficulty level is purposely done to help entice new FPS users. Also, so you don't end up with a controller lodged in your television.
I use sudo in my everyday conversations so I can gain root access.
Your point about the hype is well made. This game was hyped to all hell with hyperbole like "revolutionise the genre" and such being bandied around. I suspect that rather a lot of slashdotters (myself included) tend to immediately raise the review bar when something is hyped as hard as BioShock was.
In terms of answering your question of why some folks have complained about overly superlative reviews:
There are invisible walls everywhere, many of them extremely obvious.
There are a a multitude of doors that are locked but mysteriously unlock at precisely the moment that the current radio-message-from-an-NPC that you're listening to actually finishes.
Regards much vaunted "moral choice" aspect - do I harvest or rescue the little sisters? I have to say that after being locked into a windowed box and forced to watch an exposition of exactly how extremely tough the "big daddies" are, right at the start of the game, then being told by some random radio voice whom I have no reason to trust that "you need to kill big daddy and this small child he's protecting in order to take her "Adam", (which appears to mean basically drinking her blood) my response was to just avoid them completely. This produces, just before you try to exit a level, a preposterous peice of fourth-wall-exploding nonsense - a dialog box pops up and tells you "you haven't either rescued or harvested any little sisters on this level - you should go back and do this otherwise the game will be very difficult later on". I mean - seriously - this is what counts for great writing these days? You give me a situation where I appear to have a free choice on how I react to the events you put infront of me and then when I come to what appears to me to be the completely reasonable conclusion that screwing with "big daddy" is a lot of trouble for no recognizable value you tell me "no, you're not playing it right!". Give me a break!
Now, I'm not saying there aren't some worthy things about BioShock. Graphics are obviously fairly awesome, there's a good variety of equipment and environmental toys to play with, but on the whole I don't think it lives up to the hype.
OMG!!! Ponies!!!
Since then the internet has been ablaze with outcry about the game's high rating scores. It's hard to understand why.
I think he means to say "It's hard to understand why there has been controversy (outcry) on the internet over this game receiving high rating scores."
I will agree thought that it could have been written slightly better, but it does make sense.
...but after one playthrough I shelved it and I really doubt I'll every try it again.
As much as there are a few neat gimmicks (plasmids etc.) and one interesting plot twist, the experience was in my opinion ruined by a complete sense of claustrophobia in terms of player choices: I haven't played in so long a game where you are so railroaded in doing a, then b, then c with absolutely NO flexibility whatsoever (invisible walls and locked doors abound). That and the crappy AI of your opponents (honestly, the mobs were as intelligent as the ones in doom in my experience) makes for a very, very, very boring experience.
I started playing on normal difficulty, but about 1/3rd of the way through I switched to easy so I could just get over with it, since it was boring me to tears to have yet another errand to do (listen to this, do that, go there, etc.) before being allowed to go to the next level. I really wish I could have my $49 back.
Technically the game has run great for me (without upgrading the nvidia drivers, I have a 7900gto), no crashes, no bugs, just perfect, but it was not even 10% as good as the original system shock, which in my opinion was a masterpiece, and much more so than the blah-ish system shock 2 and, even worse, bioshock: the 95%+ review scores are way out of line, this game is maybe an 80%, heck, I had more fun playing Prey than bioshock, and pray had way worse reviews.
-- the cake is a lie
Gahh, I so wish wish wish I could just TURN OFF achievements. Know that GamerZone I'm in? It says "casual"! Shouldn't that mean "I don't care about stupid score stats that really just track how many games I buy"? Nothing takes me out of a game quite like those stupid little achievement popups. Worst feature ever.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
As I have mentioned above it appears that the "buggy" aspect is not a general problem but a specific hardware setup issue. Meaning that the game itself plays fine on a large range of machines without extra patching. It was not shipped "broken" so that no one could play it. In the realm of PC gaming, with it's multitudes of hardware configurations such problems things are not unheard of, but rarely do they effect everyone or the majority. I, among many, have had no problems installing and playing the game. I have had one crash, and could not replicate it in 15+ hours of play. I would not by any means call it "buggy".
"Now you know, and knowing is half the battle!"
Unreal Tournament 3 on PS3, will have mouse/kb support in order to keep its old hardcore fanbase happy and hopefully the trend will continue. For what its worth though, they took the copy protection right out of the last PC UT game so I doubt that the PC port is going to exactly redefine evil.
My PS3 is the first console I've had since my childhood SNES, and being a PC gamer I've also had a little bit of trouble getting used to the Playstation's FPS controls. With Sony's dual analogue control schema (left thumb moves/strafes, right thumb aims. essentially congruent to mouse in right palm, wsad under ring, middle and index fingers of left), things have improved much since the last console FPS I played which was Goldeneye in 1997 (left thumb moves/turns but aims when a button is held). It's still not quite as good as the PC controls, but once you get used to it and you realise that the controls are all part of the game, consoles FPSs become almost as fun.
Bioshock isn't exactly the twitchiest game out there anyway, we're not exactly talking about hitting an adversary midair with the railgun or anything in this game. Guns tend to be inaccurate like shotguns, chemical throwers, grenade launchers and sub machine guns. Plasmids (the kinda psychic powers in this game) tend to fudge the aim a little to hit the target. The only weapon that could benefit much from the mouse's precision is the crossbow, which never has enough steel bolts for a direct attack anyway. I've only played this on PC, but I'd wager if either one of us were to buy a 360 and learn its controls we'd be every bit as happy with this game on console and even more happy because one can lie on the lounge when one does not need a mousing surface.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Your anecdotal evidence is hardly convincing of a "very buggy" game. For example, I've never BSODed in the game. If there were widespread reports of huge bugs in the PC version I'd be more worried, but I have a hard time calling a game very buggy that works perfectly on my machine. Instead I'd say that, like many games, there are bugs and some users will have trouble; but unless you can point me to the masses of people having the same troubles as you I'm not going to blindly believe its bugginess from one report.
Good point about the moral choice thing. There are many other games that have offered morality choices with bigger consequences than "should I kill or rescue a little girl."
I still can't forget the effort it took -- in game and in my own mind -- to willfully corrupt my party members in Knights of the Old Republic to the Dark Side. Or the things you can do in Planescape: Torment to change your alignment and the effect it has on your party members. Even Arcanum offered a wide variety of moral choices and their effects.
This isn't new ground for FPS games, either. Granted, the choices are a little bit more limited, but there were a few moments in the Splinter Cell games which challenged the player to make a choice. Playing on the hardest difficulty level, to get 100 per cent, you cannot kill anyone, which is pretty difficult in some levels. I can't think of any others off the top of my head but I know Bioshock isn't the first, or best example of adding moral choice to a game.
SPOILER DON'T READ IF NOT PLAYED TO THE END
SPOILER DON'T READ IF NOT PLAYED TO THE END
YOU WERE WARNED !!!!!!
Finally, there were a lot of plot discrepancies and things that pulled me out of the storyline. Like if I were a plane crash survivor, discovering this underwater city, why would I just inject myself with a syringe I found on a table? There are a lot of things like that which caused the game to simply fall back into the vanilla FPS genre. I find it comparable to Heretic / Hexen, with modern graphics.
This is well explained at the end or nearly. "Would you kindly..." (or some phrase like that), you are genetically programmed to do any command with this bidding. So this is why you were on the plane , and it was most probably intentionally crashed. But bottom line is that the alpha/fontaine guy just forced you to do everything with those keyword. Including injecting yourself with anything found on a table. This is also how he try to make you suicide yourself.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
I'm not a big gamer, but have been completely swept up by the hype of this game. Is it worth buying a 360 over?
This decision has been rambling around in my head for weeks. Some people seem to give an enthusiastic "yes" but I dunno. Reviews like this makes me think otherwise.
could also be incorrect memory timings, bad hardware, or issues with overclocking. ahh pc's :)
Frankly it wasn't over-hyped to me. I mean, yeah, there was a lot of hype, but for me the game was sold as soon as it was announced. I was a huge fan of System Shock when it was first released and while I had issues with System Shock 2 initially it was a really great game as well. Deus Ex just continued the winning streak for this loose group of games. Bioshock, though, is where they dropped the ball.
First off is the fact that it all feels dumbed down for a console audience looking for fast, simple gameplay with a few nods to complexity and story thrown in. There's no inventory so everything is just thrown up on your screen like any other shooter. No stats, because everything is handled through the plasmids. In fact, just about everything that would normally be mapped to a sub-screen is now handled in a very limited fashion by wall-mounted consoles (e.g. gun upgrades, plasmids, invention, etc.).
The game is far more linear and yes, the Vita-Chambers do make it too easy. From a console/FPS point of view getting back in the action might be desired, but this isn't a deathmatch here. Dying should feel like it has some consequence. SS and SS2 both had regen machines, but they never felt cheap or easy because there was only one per level and you had to go out and find it and activate it first. As a result dying was a concern. Until you activated the regen there was real tension and once you did, it meant that you weren't totally out of it and back to your last save, but you'd still have to trek across the entire level through hordes of enemies and with very little ammunition. Not just pop out of the chamber and go back to shooting the same enemy.
It's not a terrible game. The graphics are pretty (albeit, on a PC running at Maximum settings, not that much better than what we've gotten used to in recent years) and the setting and theme are novel and interesting even though the art direction seems to have stolen a page from Fallout more often than not. It's just that it was heavily hyped and arrived to glowing reviews when really it's more of a 7/10 sort of game. It's a low point for the series where they tried to transition into a simpler console audience and treated the PC version as the port rather than the other way around. I guess if this is the first game in the series you've ever played it might seem great, but if you've been along since the start then you'll know that it's just no match for it's deeper forebears.
with your life... that's why I manually masturbate caged animals. ( clerks )
I think gaming is finally starting to suffer from the same thing. To the typical new gamer Bioshock may seem like a wonderful, revolutionary game, but to be honest other than the graphics there is nothing in the game that I haven't in a dozen games over the last 15 years I've been playing then on the PC. It's not a bad game, but it's no 10 out of 10, at least not from where I'm sitting.
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When the installation will not even complete because it has to download a patch, that it refuses to install correctly thus making you go through the entire installation multiple times - then it has bearing. I was not able to play the first day I bought it because I spent the entire time debugging the installation issue and downloading DLL's (which it turned out in the end I did not need - the true problem was that doing a custom install where you choose you own section in the start menu to place the game).
And of course general bugginess means the several crashes I've encountered lost an hour or two of play. That too has bearing.
Gaming on Windows? Never again. This was the first time I had tried to return to that realm in years, and found I was not welcome there by the very software I bought for my own use.
I loved the game, but it was only just marginally worthwhile to use it on Windows. I would not advise people to buy it unless it's on a console they already own.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I see the game as a 4/5 it is not perfect or particularly pushing any boundaries.
AI
Non existent the see you they chase you, you are behind them or over a certain distance they have no idea you are there.
Plasmids
At this time there is no reason to really ever use anything other then the electrical plasmid and sometimes the telekinesis plasmid. This system should have been genre changing see level and monster design for more info. The telekinesis plasmid should be as great and as effective as the physics gun in HL II but ends up being a poor imitation. If I pick up a table or a metal object why is it not an effective bullet shield?
Level Design
You would think that the level design would force and encourage the use of other plasmids some levels the ice or fire would be more effective, then just using the electrical one. This would have been a great way to encourage the use of other plasmids. Physics puzzles for bonuses anyone? HLII used physics puzzles effectively, and so far no one has done it. Bioshock has the mechanic to do it but strangely did not.
Monster Design
For the most part there are 5 monster types in the game that just gain more power or a few abilities to make them more difficult. This would have been the easiest way to make the plasmid system way more effective some monsters have different resists. Why are there only 2 variants of Big Daddies? There is no technique or skill needed to kill them they are just damage tanks, put enough damage into them and they die. Why do they not have different weaknesses on different levels? Why does level design not encourage anything more then a run and gun to kill them?
What was done right
Great looking game, with a great story arch. The game feels very non-linear (while it is.) Sound and VO is excellent. The over all art direction is unparalleled in FPS's. Oh and a blast to play! Which is the most important. Do not get me wrong Bioshock is a great game, but they set out to change the way FPS's are done with the plasmid system and just did not fully realize the implications of this feature set.
---In a time of Chimpanzees I was a Monkey.
Ha, awesome. I had a similar situation in my home. I played through the demo and was really impressed with the story, though I was a bit burned out on FPSes so I had no intentions of buying it. But I wanted to show the wife the graphics and story. So she watched me play through the demo one evening, then told me "You should buy this game, so I can watch you play it." Mmmm, could it be this easy? Seems like there must be yard-work hiding somewhere...
This thing is WAY over-hyped. The best thing it has going for it is the scenery and overall atmosphere, which are simply awesome. Beyond that, it's just a first person slog-fest. Despite claims to the contrary, there is no choice in the game. There is a fixed path you have to follow, invisible walls, locked doors, the whole cliched bit. You can't even choose to not interact with the little sisters - you're FORCED to make a choice between letting them go and harvesting them. Creating your own ammo and gadgets from parts found in the game? - boring and only semi-useful. Hacking? - Let's just say I'll never do this again if I ever replay it. Way, way repetitive. Auto-hack tool FTW. Hell, you only need aiming skill until you get telekinesis - then you're pretty much set. You hardly even need ammo after this point - just toss bodies around (which is admittedly, fun to do.) There is little replay value, the big boss fight is laughably easy, the "ending" painful to watch, and everything from beginning to end so damn predictable and trivial to master it .... well, it's fucking pathetic, let's leave it at that.
I have finished the game on my PC without a single crash of any kind. The only bug I experienced is that the game dis not restore the color settings when it exits, so I had to go into the NVidia control panel and fix them (or reboot) I did get rid of SecuROM and the unskippable crap when the game starts, but that's it.
I liked the game, but I was definitely underwhelmed by the graphics (16x12, all settings on maximum) The models look a bit too simple, and while some twitching bodies add a lot to the mood, sometimes the physics engine makes a foot or hand wave for much too long after the enemy has died.
I consider the money well spent... I think System Shock I had a better atmosphere, Far Cry better graphics, and Deus Ex a better story, but I am sure that some people will disagree. It's very subjective. I truly enjoyed the ending movie. I felt quite sad for the Big Daddies, the little sisters' parents, and Rapture itself. Hell, the more I think about it, the more I realize that I really liked the game.
Was it easy? Yes. Too easy? Maybe, but I am about to replay it without using any Adam unless it is required for to progress (I do not think it is, but I may be wrong)
The only things I really hated about the game is SecuROM, and after AVG raised Hell about it, it took less that 15mn to get rid of the damn piece of shit.
No good deed goes unpunished...
It's a very solid FPS, but that's all it is. It's gorgeous, and the seamless storytelling is all excellent (like it was with Half-Life), but it's basically it's a zombie shooter. That, to me, is what is disappointing about it because the hype surrounding the game made it seem like it would be more.
For me, a game like Jade Empire does a better job of introducing something new. For example, there's a moment in that game where you have to pose as an actor and say certain lines in a certain order to get the palace guards to understand what's going on. It's different, funny, and just really entertaining in a way that BioShock never is. BioShock, for all of its underweater beauty and flawless execution, is a standard FPS.
Whatever you do, don't ever play Metroid Prime 3...
Because after having played a refined Wii/Nunchuck system, you'll NEVER want to go back. I was so incredibly skeptical of the control scheme before I played, that I actually started writing out my own control setup, in hopes to send it out to developers. After having played MP3, though, I've completely abandoned it. It's litterally better than a keyboard/mouse... I didn't think I'd ever say that. I'm really reluctant to buy any FPSs for systems other than the Wii, now.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
"in the meantime I will do the thousand-and-one things I do anyway (and that my laptop can handle if I'm patient), like making music/working on programming projects/doing artwork/writing stories & novels, etc."
So let me get this straight, you're posting to Slashdot about how productive you are with your time?
Are you serious? The Big Daddies were a joke. Sure they had lots of hit points, but their fighting technique was easy to figure out and exploit. Once you get the freezing plasmid, you can keep Big Daddies frozen indefinitely while you shoot at them or hack away at them with your wrench.
Even though the game was easy, like walk in the park easy, it was still really fun and I'm glad I bought the PC version. The story is awesome and it's one of the best first person shooters I've played in years. I never played the original System Shock series, but from what I've read, Bioshock is basically a clone of System Shock 2.
I recently finished the game and I'm glad I bought it. Even though there are numerous flaws, the art direction, theme, etc.. was very well done.
I loved how when you light guys on fire and there was water nearby, they'd sometimes jump in it to douse the flames. As soon as they jumped in the water, I'd pull out the electric plasmid and electrocute them, fun times...
This is the worst review I have ever seen anywhere. I mean that. It's not that it's poorly written, but it's poorly thought out by someone who obviously gets no joy from gaming and is trying to fit Bioshock into a tiny, preconceived box. Some things that jumped out at me:
Many of your points directly conflict each other ("not enough story, but the game would be better as DOOM") And of course, ("And yeah, the enemies are already boring. I haven't finished the game, but fighting so far is mostly tedious." and yet "(the game would be better if you) just shoot the baddies and get on with it."
Your criticism are mostly invalid (the "magic" of the game is spelled out as a by-product of genetic modification; the fact that it is basically magic is irrelevant because the game takes great pains to remain in the science fiction genre)
My personal favorite: choose absolutely trivial and bizarre shit to bitch about ("And is there a setting to turn off the wave distortion when you look out a window? You wouldn't see anything like that looking out the window of an actual underwater city unless there were severe temperature gradients flowing past the window."...what the hell? who the fuck honestly cares about this? We're not oceanography nerds, we don't care.)
Your total lack of trying to appreciate anything the game is trying to do ("And the Little Sisters? There was no dilemma. I get more ADAM, you say? Fuck 'em. They're harvested.") Even more hilarious is that there actually is a reason to let them live, but I guess you missed that in your hurry to totally disregard everything about the game that wasn't shooting things.
My advice? Stick with Missile Command, Doom, and Prince of Persia, because this whole "game that tries to do something different and also tells a somewhat interesting story" thing is way beyond your comprehension. Enjoy your tired old tropes and paradigms, you freaking mole-man, because I'd hate for you to get distracted by the wavy water outside your window.
These anti-piracy measures only cripple ligament users. Cracks crack EVERYTHING. The life of piracy protection on a piece of software measures its existence in hours. In the end, the pirates pirate what they will without being slowed down in the slightest by the copyright protection. In the end, consumers who actually pay for the product get the shit end of the stick. They either suffer massive system slows downs like in Morrowind, spyware and system vulnerabilities like with Sony's CD protections, or simply get an inert hunk of data should they end loosing their CD key... all the while, pirates play perfectly functional versions of what consumers bought. The only people who can't break the copy protection are the poor suckers who are least likely to violate it.
Don't have anything to add to this, just thought you might be interested in seeing just how much of a self-righteous jackass you are.
It is inconvenient to have to pay for airline tickets just to travel to another part of the country.Nobody's complaining that it's inconvenient to have to pay for a game in order to legally own it. A better analogy would be that it's inconvenient to be strip-searched every time you want to travel to another part of the country. After all, some number of people smuggle drugs by jamming them up their arse, and drugs are bad, so it's quite reasonable to strip-search everybody and stick your gloved hand up their arse just in case they happen to be trying to smuggle drugs. Every single time they travel on a plane.
Now Joe, he enjoys being anally violated, so it's not an inconvenience for him. You don't like it? Well, tough, because Joe's okay with it, and your opinion is unimportant in the grander scheme of things. Of course, if this happened, then people would stop smuggling drugs on airplanes, so they'd have to incorporate not just an automatic breath tester in your car, but also an automatic invasive drug search, just in case you're trying to smuggle some drugs to your friends place. Then people would stop driving if they're smuggling drugs, so they'd have to add it to your bicycle as well. Then have cops to search you when you're walking down the street, just in case.
Is it that hard to understand that there's different people in the world who are okay with different levels of inconvenience? Having to enter a serial number when I install a game doesn't bother me too much -- I don't like it, and I think it's a pointless inconvenience, but I'm okay with it. Having to enter the serial number every single time I start the game would bother me, and I'd try to find a crack for it, or failing that, not bother with it. For some, having to have a CD in the drive to play the game is too much inconvenience, so they find a workaround.
Having to have the CD in your drive isn't an inconvenience to you. Fine. Will it be inconvenient to have to be connected to the internet every single time you want to play the game, because it verifies you're authorised to play the game each time you run it? Will it be inconvenient that you have to wait for it to download 2 gigs of data every time you play the game, because it removes itself from your drive after you've finished playing it? Will it be inconvenient when their auth servers are down so you can't play the game when you want, or will you be fine with that because it "helps stop piracy"? Will you still think it's fine and dandy when you're only able to play the game on overpriced "certified" PCs which are tightly controlled and prevent you from running any software not signed by one of the manufactures which has purchased, or will you be happy because consoles are already like that?
Just because you're happy with the current measures doesn't mean that anyone who isn't happy doesn't matter. People need to voice their opinions on these things, or else the manufacturers will have no idea when they've gone too far. Every anti-piracy measure is going to piss off some number of legitimate customers, and they need to be able to weigh that against the benefit it provides to them in terms of increased sales. Furthermore, the fact that people who legitimately buy games do feel inconvenienced enough by the copy protection mechanisms that they go out looking for cracks should be a concern to publishers. These people may have otherwise never considered pirating a game, but since they have to go looking for cracks for it anyway, they might end up discovering that it's actually easier to pirate it in the first place rather than go to the store and buy it.
- ...that you are content with...
- ...that you didn't pay for (abandonware), and...
- ...that have such low graphics requirements that you can run them in DosBox.
I mean, wowwwww.... You're just their ideal customer, aren't you?If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
...and I'm here to ask you a question.
Is a man not deserving of enjoying a good PC game without being thought a shallow tool?
No, says the gaming industry. Only the crap sells.
No, says Roger Ebert, no game can be art.
No, says half the posters in this thread, you're a lackey of SecuROM.
I rejected these answers. Instead, I came up with something different. I chose... HAPPINESS.
HAPPINESS. A state where we enjoy good games when they come along, which is rare. Where the gamer is not bound by an understandable but crippling nostalgia for old LGS games. Where great design is not belittled to death.
And with the sweat of your brow, HAPPINESS can become your state as well.
So for those still seeking out the gaming utopia you seem so fondly to desire, would you kindly go jump in the ocean, or better yet, make a better game.