BioShock Receives Record-Breaking 12 AIAS Nominations

dampeal writes "The Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences today announced the nominees for the 11th annual Interactive Achievement Awards. The nominations for the peer-based awards have been dominated by two blockbuster first-person shooter games, BioShock (2K Games) and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (Activision) by receiving an astounding 10+ nominations from industry leaders and members of the interactive entertainment software business. In addition, finalists in close lead with top nominations include: The Orange Box (Electronic Arts and Valve Software), Rock Band (MTV Games) and Super Mario Galaxy (Nintendo of America), all up for the Overall Game of the Year Award."

Comments

I wasn't that impressed with Mass Effect

[Blakey Rat]

I wasn't that impressed with Mass Effect, or it's heavily promoted conversation system. Conversations could sound natural if you select options fast enough, but more often than not they ended up still sounding as stilted as ever. In addition, even the longest lines were unskippable, and one of the alien races spoke with an annoying e x t r e m e l y s l o w voice mod that made me want to pull my hair out. (It even used the cliche "reverse the audio, add an echo, reverse it again" effect, ugh.)

As for the game itself, it's pretty much standard Bioware. And like every Bioware game, there's one point in the game where, once you reach it, it's impossible to go back and complete previous quests. That really peeves me off, they could at least warn you that "hey when you land on planet X, the game's on a path to finishing and you won't be able to freely roam anymore!"

The controls were clunky and unintuitive, especially the lunar rover. (It has two weapons, one bound to right trigger, one bound to right shoulder, making it impossible to fire both at once! Meanwhile, the left trigger does virtually nothing.) Equipping mods to weapons and armor was always a pain, and I went through the game confused about when to use X to go back and when to use B to go back. (Getting into the galaxy map, then mistakenly hitting B instead of X wastes a whole lot of loading time! I did that probably a half-dozen times.)

However, it does get kudos for actually allowing my character (with a high personality stat) to talk the villain into killing himself. That's something I've never seen before. 7/10

Re:am I the only one

[Pojut]

I am one of those "twits" that loves Half-Life 2 but despises Halo. With a couple of rare exceptions, most of the people I have talked to that claim to not like Half-Life 2 have never played it...Just because a game is a shooter doesn't mean it can't be really engaging and pull you into the atmosphere. Also, playing Episode 1 and 2 make Half-Life 2 a much more complete experience (since by playing only HL2, you are only getting a portion of the story)

I don't know about you, but the first 15 minutes of Bioshock was EASILY one of the best openings to a video game ever.

Re:am I the only one

[snowraver1]

I think that your comment really hits the nail on the head. Bioshock is creepysauce. I remember one part i'm looking down at a desk, collecting a tape recorder I think. Lightning momentarily lights up the room and throws a shadow on the wall directly in front of me. I look at the shadow for the moment that it is there, but something about my shadow looks a little... off. At that point I turn around and there is someone standing like a foot behind me. I almost browned my pants.

Bioshock was one of those rare games that can really creep you out. If you did not play this game in HD with a good sound system, you completely missed out on this game. Hearing screams, but not seeing things...