Bioshock reviews are coming in...

[Solver]

Originally posted by Quillan
Solver, on the subject of rescue vs harvesting the little sisters:

Spoiler:

you don't get the rewards if you harvest them

so I expect that makes up the difference.

Hardly. If you rescue, I believe you get:

Spoiler:

3 times 200 Adam, Hypnotize Big Daddy and some assorted stuff. Harvesting would still give you more Adam, though lose the Hypnotize plasmid.

At any rate, my point is that rescuing actually gives you a lot and isn't really punishing.

I'd leave the viva chambers in game, personally, but make a couple of changes: 1) all viva chambers but the first in a given region are disabled until you activate them, which costs 5 Adam, and 2) the first resurrection from a chamber is free, the second costs 5 Adam, the third 10 Adam, the fourth 15 Adam, and so on. Then the player would have to choose how many and which viva chambers to turn on. You could save Adam by not activating any, but a death would make you run back from the start, or you could strategically turn on one or two others per level for more convenient rezzing. Even then a progressive cost would make dying a bad thing, which is what you want.

Maybe it could be a difficulty-scaling thing. I still feel the hardest difficulty shouldn't have them at all, but the progressive-cost system is quite acceptable.


[/quote]I also agree about the final fight. That wasn't bad, and I loathe boss fights with a passion! Overall, it was a spectacular game, and well worth the money I spent on it. [/QUOTE]

You should spoiler-tag it Anyway, I liked the early boss fights - the first one is, I believe, in Medical? It's just that the final one was, well, nothing special.

[CapTVK]

I'm done as well. Seems I'm not the only one who found the final boss battle a bit odd when you consider the leadup, it seemed so out of place, more off a "where have i seen this before?" moment.

[Kassiopeia]

Whoa! I installed the demo and the nVidia beta drivers and my 6600GT managed to run it just fine with low quality at 1240x1024! I think my autumn grades have been ruined. It might even run with higher settings but I didn't try.

[DrSpike]

Nah, it's not that long.

[Solver]

An advantage of FPS games right there. Even an excellent FPS won't ruin your life for 6 months

[Kuciwalker]

Unless it has multiplayer. Which is sadly lacking in Bioshock

[DrSpike]

It's not really a bad thing - there are other MP shooters and if they had tacked on MP it would just have diverted their attention from making the SP game a quality experience.

[Solver]

I'm glad it doesn't have MP. And not just because I'm not a fan of most MP shooters.

Okay, so plasmids would be fun online. But really, what you'd have there would be just yet another take on Deathmatch/CTF. IMO, MP is best left to dedicated MP games. You only have so much money and time when developing a game - not having MP means SP gets your fullest attention.

Really, it's not like games that add MP just because that's expected tend to offer a fun and distinct MP.

[Kassiopeia]

Yeah, my impression has been that BioShock aimed from the start to focus on the single player experience, and the things that work towards that (atmosphere, puzzles, voice work and sound design, etc.) don't contribute to MP in any meaningful way.

Co-op might have been fine, maybe, but I read the other day that when making System Shock 2 the developers rushed a co-op mode in but would have rather spent the effort on working out the single player game. The co-op mode ended up very buggy.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by DrSpike
It's not really a bad thing - there are other MP shooters and if they had tacked on MP it would just have diverted their attention from making the SP game a quality experience.

Yeah, but the customizability could make MP really interesting. Give each player a certain amount of Adam to spend at the start, that sort of thing.

[Kloreep]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Yeah, but the customizability could make MP really interesting. Give each player a certain amount of Adam to spend at the start, that sort of thing.

Well, there are always Jedi Knight and Deus Ex.

[pg]

I've played a couple hours of the full game. So far it seems like a tweaked(in a good way) version of SS2. I didn't care much for SS2, but Bioshock is ok. The gameplay is just odd. There is so much stuff packed into such small areas. In 30 secs you might run across a viva chamber, 10 various items, a couple vending machines, a few turret/cameras and maybe a few enemies as well. Every section of the game just seems to repeat this over and over.

The action is ok but it's also odd. It seems to be very easy much of the time, and even when it's hard you just respawn. I've been using the wrench a lot. The gameplay just seems broken up too much. I prefer games where you can focus on a problem/task/whatever instead of doing small little things over and over(listen to audio, fight for 2mins, hack something, explore for 2mins, repeat, etc). The hacking especially I'm finding repetitive and pointless. I'm hoping it gets better but so far it seems massively over hyped. The graphics, audio, art, feel of the game, etc are all superb but the actual gameplay seems wanting.

[Guynemer]

Originally posted by pg
I didn't care much for SS2,

[Quillan]

I was flipping back through the last couple of weeks of CTRL+ALT+DEL comics, and found an interesting take they had on the city of Rapture, and what it might have been like to have lived there:

http://www.ctrlaltdel-online.com/comic.php?d=20070829

[Kassiopeia]

Well, I finished it just now.

Spoiler:

I got the good ending, but I have to agree with everyone in that it came way too soon. There should have maybe been more of Fontaine dicking around and you chasing him in the Proving Grounds, and even more escalating radio messages, so that you get the whole "Now this ends" feeling you should.

The final battle was fairly easy too since I had had ample opportunity to learn the ropes, just spray a few clips of antipersonnel into him and use the elemental plasmid that he isn't manifesting right now and you're fine. It was mostly me running around Fontaine shooting at him and leaping aside when he charged. The first time I killed a Big Daddy was far more intense.

I loved the good ending, but the damn video stopped and threw me back to the menu before I even had a chance to squeeze out a few tears (they were definitely coming). Give me a moment to enjoy the feeling, man!

Oh yeah and the Big Twist was awesome. I just could not see it coming (just the fact that the protagonist had been on Rapture, I figured maybe he was an amnesiac brother of Ryan's), maybe I subconsciously played a bit dumb so I could be floored by it. I did get a Shodan vibe off Atlas right away, however.

Still, the game was really fun and solid, and I played it in three days, partly because it's fairly short, partly because I just had to keep playing. It was almost too much exactly like System Shock 2 in so many aspects. In fact, it's possible having played SS2 kind of retracted from the experience -

Spoiler:

there are certainly plot elements that have been directly lifted from Shock 2, like the Voice in the Ether who helps you until midgame but who turns out to be a lie and who betrays you, you being a part of his grand design all along.