Why is no one talking about Bioshock?

[Marcus]

The reviews are starting to pour in and it's pretty much all pointing to one thing; game of the year (if not the decade). So far, the lowest score has been 95% and the game has an average of 98% on metacritic based on 12+ reviews (the last time I checked two days ago). I've been harping about this game on this website (and in real life) for the past 4 years and my prayers are finally being answered!

For those that don't know what BioShock is... shame on you. It's a first person adventure game by former developers of Looking Glass, the same guys who made the fantastic but overshadowed System Shock series. Now with a big budget and plenty of hype, their game is finally getting the attention it deserves.

Anyways, BioShock takes place in an underwater city called Rapture which is in a state of collapse after a civil war. You play as a treasure hunter who must contend with the local mutated monsters and creepy little demon children called Little Sisters (and their gigantic guardians, Big Daddies) as you learn what caused the city's collapse. You can use conventional weapons such as a handmade pistol or shotgun (as well as more unconventional weapons) or you can use plasmids, a sort of liquidfied energy that emits from dead bodies you can eject in your arms to utilize special powers (read: MAGIC). Or you can use technical experience to hack the systems and take over security bots and remote traps. The levels are supposed to be really interactive and videos have shown people luring monsters into mines or security turrets, pouring water on monsters and electrocuting them, removing planks they're standing on causing them to fall, or alerting Big Daddies (who are nearly invincible) to join the fray.

The game retains the same feel as the System Shock series in that everything is experienced through the eyes of the main character (er, you). The game features a hauntingly life-like atmosphere, amazing art deco, an interactive game environment, and an excellent story. In true Looking Glass fashion, the game is played at your own pace; if you don't care about the story and want to kill things, then go ahead and do so. IGN even said that the game's plot twists was one of the finest story moments ever in videogame history. Pretty big opinion, yes, but the dozens of other PERFECT scores can't lie, can they?

Basically, BioShock combines the best of RPGs, adventure games, and first person shooters all into one slick package. If you like any of those genres, you'd be pretty stupid to pass it up. The demo is already out and for 10 minutes of gameplay it's pretty damn amazing. 48 hours left until the game of the year hits store shelves. Don't be that fool who passes it up!

 

[arcthemonkey]

Because if I talk about it, the suspense will overwhelm me, and I'll go postal.

I simply must own this game, and Tuesday is to far away! ARRGGGG

Funny though, I was only passively interested in the game until I played the demo. I'd seen a lot of video, but they were all overly cinematic (and, looking back, they still are - how cool would it be if you could actually look out your body and behold the damage you've taken?) and I figured they were covering up a game that was otherwise not very special.

Then I played the demo.

As soon as it was over, I preordered the limited edition immediately.

WAAAANT

I HAVE LIGHT IN MY BELLY

 

[Marcus]

You're talking about the video where the drill goes through the guy's chest? Yeah, that would be pretty awesome.

BUT STILL 48 HOURS MAN FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

I can easily tell this will be a game that I have to finish in a single sitting. No other way around it.

 

[Mega Flare]

yes this game looks awesome... sadly not PS3 version...

 

[syvkal]

I really want this game. I played the demo and watch the trailers and can't wait (can't wait for Eternal Sonata possibly more). I'm guna love making weapons out of random crap ^_^

 

[Kraft]

??? I am guessing you need a kick butt computer to play this game... (not mine, mine is not AMD...)

I will look at the videos though, and see what this is all about. ^_^

 

[holloway]

http://www.sonydefenseforce.com/?p=83#comment

Best review EVA!

And Kraft, it's on the 360 too, but yeah you do if you want it on the pc.

 

[Venetia]

I DO have a kick butt compy and I WILL have this b!tc# maxxed out, baby!

*Turns cooling system on high*

 

[Kemuri]

Nobody is talking about it because we're busy salivating at the demo o.o;

 

[Venetia]

Oh man, I just played the demo. My computer runs it perfectly (only dropped below 60fps once).

That is one magnificent stallion of a game.

 

[arcthemonkey]

*Ahem*

So, I've been playing the game, and I should say right away that I haven't beaten it yet. It's good. Great, really - but I think people are overreacting to the goodness!

Yes, that's right, I have some serious complaints about Bioshock! How in the hell?

(Note: I'm playing on medium)
#1 - Hacking is obnoxious. Tedious. Infuriating. It's like every other room has SOMETHING to hack, and while it's not necessarily difficult once you get the hang of it, it's still time consuming and completely ruins the pace of the game. I swear, every single 3 frikkin minutes I'm hacking SOMETHING. This problem is further complicated by #2 and #3:

#2 - Harder difficulty hacks are, 25% of the time, nearly impossible. I happen to know that I'm not bad at the hacking mini-game, and the speed of the flow or that amount of shorts they throw in usually do nothing to impede my victory - however, there is this bizarre, entirely too common occurence of the puzzles being absolutely impossible barring precognition. You know the ones - three peices revealed at the start, a curved tube near the source, a straight tube hugging the wall, and a another curve leading back to the wall (or into a short). You start quickly revealing peices, trying to find the right piece (or figure out where the bend is leading) only to find out, far too late, that the only possible move you could have made was to replace the very first piece with a straight tube, because every other hidden piece was a short or alarm. Of course, you walk away from the absolutely unsalvagable hacks with basically no health. Hurray!

Normally I wouldn't complain about them basically making luck a factor, but when it's such an integral, constant part of the gameplay, it's not acceptable to me. So we have tedium that is also frequently more harmful than helpful, regardless of your skill or loadout of plasmids. If the difficulty is anywhere in the last quarter of the meter, I just pass (or autohack, if it's a safe or a door lock). This is largely because of problem #3:

#3 - A good 75% of things you can hack are worthless unless you are going for the "Hack a bazillion things" achievement. Note that I count a turret that only has occasion to kill a single splicer worthless. If it kills two, that's slightly better, and goes in with the 25%. The majority of hackable turrets that fall into the "can concievably kill more than one enemy" are placed as centerpieces of scripted attacks. The bots are just as bad, but in a different way - they don't attack an enemy until you've hit them. I don't know about you, but with the exception of big daddies (see #4), if I land a single shot on a splicer, they are going to be dead before my bots will react - and oh how they react. Security bots primary objective seem to be to fly behind you, and shoot at enemies just as you kill them, but since they are behind you, the only thing they hit is you. Invariably. Same thing goes for big daddies, where they actually have the opportunity to be helpful. Your friendly security bots are awesome at finishing you off after getting hit by a bouncer's unblockable/undodgable shoulder tackle that reduces you to the Bioshock equivalent of 1 HP regardless of how much Adam you've invested into extra health or damage reduction.

The small number of immobile turrets that actually do get the chance to shoot at some splicers usually spend most of their time shooting walls, or, just like the security bots - you. This is most noticable when you make the grand decision to hack one of those grenade launching turrets. Yeah, real smart. Either your hack the turrent and duck behind something for 20 minutes while it shoots a wall, or you try and lure the splicer out or kill it yourself, and take your turret's shots to the back of the head.

This would be worse if the turrets did more than pretty much zero damage. It seems sometimes that a machine gun turret can shoot a leadhead constantly at point blank range while they slowly blow the thing up with a pipe.

Once nitro splicers show up, friendly turrets just become a hazard. Only once have I seen a turret of any type defeat a nitro without being destroyed themselves (and nitros are anything but uncommon later on). Most often, I will be personally engaged with the nitro, using telekenesis to throw his grenades back at him, when the following will happen: Nitro goes down, his dropped grenade explodes, I move in to loot him, only to take a grenade from the back from my friendly grenade launcher. I turn around to find the launcher destroyed. What the hell? At least if you destroy the turrets outright, they are sometimes loaded with ammo.

Hacking health machines is a waste of time in most situations as well (exceptions would be when you are fighting a boss who likes to use the thing). Considering the fact that the most common loss of health and first aid kits for me are big daddies, who usually force me to use 3-5 health kits in a row, I don't have much any use for the occasional recharge. in sections with only splicers, I tend to be forced to leave health kits behind because I have too many, while big daddies (bouncers, especially), necessitate a health kit after every hit. So, I could pay 10 bucks for a health recharge I probably don't need, or blow the thing up for a chance to get two health kits.

Vending machines are a notable exception to this, but they are usually placed so close together that just one or two in a level will usually serve you just fine.

As I think I mentioned earlier, hacking things gets absolutely infuriatingly old, and more often than not just breaks the atmosphere.

#4 - (Last one!) Big daddies are just too hard - AND they respawn. This isn't so much me bitching about the difficulty, as it is me bitching about difficulty that is there every time you enter a room. Now, I realize that they aren't necessarily aggressive from the get-go, so you can just ignore them and go about your business - but things go bad when there are splicers around. SOMEBODY is going to piss the big daddy off.

Another thing is about how hard they hit. If big daddies did half the damage they do, they would still be the toughest enemies I've encountered so far. Take one or two hits from one and use a health kit, rinse lather repeat until one of you dies. They wouldn't be so bad if there was anything you could do to defend yourself. You can find limited reprieve from Rosies by using telekenisis to hold up a table, but how are you supposed to kill it if you are holding a table?

Since electrocuting the things stuns them for all of .5 seconds (just long enough to switch to your shotgun and get shoulder-tackled without getting a shot off), pretty much the only thing you can do to avoid these guys is jump off a balcony - not that that will keep you safe for long.

Armor piercing bullets do little more to big daddies than do slightly more than no damage. Electro buck is handy, but still does practically no damage. you can unload 8 grenades into one and he will still have a quarter of his health left (yeah, try hitting a big daddy with 8 grenades).

I dunno, maybe I just don't get the magical strategy that I'm sure everyone is going to descend on me with, and to be honest, I enjoy fighting big daddies - I just wish there was SOMETHING that could be done about them (yes, I know you can hypnotise them, but then they just become an incredibly lethal security bot (see above)). It's nice that they give you enough money to replace most of the health kits you use to defeat them, but if you expect compensation for all of the Eve hypos and stupidly expensive armor piercing bullets you used, you're out of luck.

Maybe things will get better once they let me start inventing things and upgrading my weapons, but at the same time, I expect the challenge to increase.

Arg!

... but yeah, fantastic game.

 

[G-man]

Oh yeah! My brother has it on 360, it's pretty cool, tho I personally like harvesting kids who tried to get Big Daddy's to kill me. Hey more ADAM that way.

 

[Kraft]

Does this game need a powerful computer?
*gets hopes up*

I would assume so, seeing as this is a new game... but there is still hope...

Also, is there any chance of this coming out for the Wii?

~Kraft

 

[Mega Flare]

it will not come to the wii. hopefully it comes to ps3

 

[Grandor]

Yes, I'm with you Megaflare, I hope it comes to the ps3.

 

[Marcus]

I agree with most of your points Arc in the beginning is seriously underwhelming. I hate how the developers worked it but there's a certain point in the game when everything just "comes together." You can start creating and upgrading weapons, you find... other "people", and the city feels much more alive. I don't want to ruin it for you because it's a monumental turning point in the game (like when you first encounter Shodan and her reality bending ways in SS2), but it's lame that the developers decided not to hook players in the beginning rather than wait 3 or 4 hours.

Speaking of which, this game is about 20 hours long according to most players which is a pretty decent length for fps.

 

[ArtBane]

Just beat the game last night. I was refraining from posting in here before because I was worried of spoilers but now that I have beaten it I can easily say it is my game of the year so far. I didn't so much play the game as experience it. I had to make sure I would only play the game after 10 at night alone to really get the full impact. I don't remember playing a game that sucked me into the environment as much as this since Super Metroid. It is one of those games you wish you could experience all over again for the first time as soon as you beat it. I plan on going back and getting the other ending as well as playing it on hard mode after I get through Metroid Prime 3.

So for those of you playing are you a little sister harvester or a little sister savior?

 

[arcthemonkey]

I'm saving them.

... This time.

Next time, it will be different!

... Stupid Bouncers...

 

[The RPG Death Pocket]

I really like this game a lot the story is pretty well done(If you find the diaries)

I'm saving the Little Sisters this time around, but on my second play through, I'll harvest them like the factories of Adam they are. Why do people complain about Bouncers? I only saw one Bouncer the whole time playing this game, and I'm like halfway until beating it.

 

[arcthemonkey]

I've fought at least 5, and I'm not very far at all 0_o