Bioshock

[Assault]

With all this talk about underwater stuff, and Derek's want for Underwater games. Did anyone try Bioshock?

I must say it's a spectacular game, with a nice story twist that can only work in a video game and never in a movie... especially in this game it works even better.

[p3ter_st0ry]

That game looks sweet, but mad scary! Freaking little sisters and their hypodermic syringes
But seriously, I love dystopia stuff, so I'm hoping Aquaria will have some of that too.

[Cobar]

Now, would you kindly praise this game to the heavens? (They who have completed the game will know what i mean)

[illithid235]

I'm certainly enjoying it so far, even though my computer can only run in on the low graphical setting. 

And yeah, the dystopian element is great. This is truly an example of good environmental setup.

The biggest flaw, though, is those damned Vita-Chambers. I absolutely refuse to use them. I always just revert back to my last save instead. Using them seems like cheating to me.

[Dencore]

It thought the game was grossly over-rated with it being an above-average game at best.

[illithid235]

Because? And no spoilers, please, I haven't completed it yet.

[Dencore]

Because? And no spoilers, please, I haven't completed it yet.

The gameplay itself is just weak IMO. With the level design being subpar, the lack of skill in gun wielding mixed with the tough enemy A.I. leads to the game being inconsistent, average pacing, etc.

[MisterX]

Hi there! Finally I went aboard

BioShock also disappointed me, but the weird thing is, I don't really know why. I absolutely loved the games visual design the first time I saw it and actually the design is also just that great in the game. Just somehow I didn't really "dig" it. I mostly had to tell myself "Okay, now look around, don't just overlook it. Yeah, really, looks great!" instead of just having the "feeling" that it's amazing. Also the actual gameplay was not surprisingly fun or anything. It was alright, but in my opinion it didn't seem to fit the great design, in that it's mostly just simple shooting. But again, it's different to other shooters, the enemies are pretty interesting and all - and yet I didn't have the great fun fighting in BioShock.
There's one thing about which I got a clear opinion, though, and that's the Plasmids. I thought the whole Plasmid concept would be so great, much better than typical spells like in Dark Messiah and really making the game so very varied and tactical. But what does it boil down to? You got 2 greatly effective Plasmids, upgrade them and probably use the others from time to time, but more or less they're nothing more than very simple alternative attacks. So you stun the enemy using Electrobolt then shoot him to death, or you lighthim up using Incinerate and.. shoot him to death. If you like you can also beat him with the wrench. You just mostly don't need to or can't really set up cool chain reactions and traps, anyway.
And of course, I shouldn't forget the story, which was actually nice, as you could get to understand what went on in this place, Rapture. Just again, even though there's a pretty cool twist, I wasn't really surprised any time.

Well, I definitely wouldn't say BioShock is a bad game in any way, it's definitely far above the average in most ways, but for some reason I just couldn't get the hang of it.
Because of this you can also guess I'm expecting that much more from Aquaria in terms on atmosphere and overall "feeling" Just that even though I've learned from playing BioShock, I don't have any doubt Aquaria will be the expectedly lovely experience

[Toom]

BioShock looks amazing. The art style's fantastic, it's well-rendered, the plasmid effects are fantastic, the animation is gorgeous, the atmosphere is convincing and immersive etc etc etc. I really, really like BioShock. I like it about as much as it's possible to like a prettier but much, much stupider version of one of your favourite games.

Yahtzee's right about this'n, guys. It's System Shock 2 with two-thirds of the innards ripped out and spread like varnish over the packaging to make it look shinier. What happened to the skill trees, the stat management, the inventory system? What happened to all the depth and subtlety of its ten-year-old sister? Gone gone gone gone gone. And it's a poorer game for it. It's still brilliant. It's still better than almost every other new game I've played this year. It shits on Halo 3. It's not better than System Shock 2.

[shinygerbil]

I quite liked the stripped-down-ness of it. It was more of an interactive story, but it was a damn good story, with a damn good setting, and damn good atmosphere, and that's all I really cared about. I could almost forget that I was playing a game. Extra stuff like stat trees would have felt too "game mechanic"-y, I think. It was all about atmosphere; I didn't even care that I was using a 360 controller rather than WASD-and-mouse on a first-person shooter, because it wasn't really even a shooter to me.

I really, really loved Bioshock.

edit: stat trees. *snicker* well, you know what I mean.

[Crizzle]

BioShock was great. I just grabbed the new DLC for it a couple days ago so I'll be playing through it again to get the extra 100 achievement points.

[AtomixIGN]

As great as it is, System Shock 2 was certainly better.  The presentation is outstanding, but the god is in the details.  And details were left out.  Like Hacking.



If you never played System Shock 2, Bioshock has to be one of the best interactive experience.  If you have, it's a reminder that Gameplay is more important than graphics.

[Toom]

I quite liked the stripped-down-ness of it. It was more of an interactive story, but it was a damn good story, with a damn good setting, and damn good atmosphere, and that's all I really cared about. I could almost forget that I was playing a game. Extra stuff like stat trees would have felt too "game mechanic"-y, I think. It was all about atmosphere; I didn't even care that I was using a 360 controller rather than WASD-and-mouse on a first-person shooter, because it wasn't really even a shooter to me.

I really, really loved Bioshock.

edit: stat trees. *snicker* well, you know what I mean.

I've only played it on the PC, so I didn't have to wrangle with the horrors of dual thumbsticks for an FPS. I suppose the reason I missed the stat-building and so on is that I would've liked the opportunity to develop the character a bit more, which is an expectation born of it coming from Looking Glass (or whatever they're called nowadays), and perhaps because other mechanics are so similar to SS2. Ghostly apparitions of the facility's prior occupants? Expositional audio logs? Come on. They're both cool features, but they're both directly lifted from their masterwork. And I dearly would've loved to see the inventory system make a return along with them. Stuff like this can seem pretty inconsequential but it lends a surprising amount of depth and strategy to the whole thing.

I liked the hacking in BioShock fine; my only real beef with it is that it pauses the rest of the game, unlike SS2 where you had a lot of pressure on you if you wanted to hack something with enemies around. I'd much prefer to be hacking a turret with an enemy steadily approaching, having to concentrate to get it done as quickly and efficiently as possible so that my new friend could take them apart before they did the same to me, than I would run behind a turret, hit Action, and tinker with it at my leisure (well, there's the artificial time limit imposed by the hacking system, but it's not a terribly troublesome barrier).

I am nitpicking, and I do like the game! It's just a little disappointing because I know from experience that those guys can do so much better.

[PHeMoX]

BioShock also disappointed me, but the weird thing is, I don't really know why.

Same feeling here. I do like the game a lot, but somehow it isn't very encouraging me to play any further. The gameplay feels very repetitive eventhough some aspects of it probably are not and the leveldesign is well done most of the time. I think it's because the game isn't as much RPG-ish as I had hoped.

The game looks absolutely gorgeous, but it's true ... good looks don't make a brilliant game. The art deco style rocks and is well done and totally fits the utopia/dystopia idea and feeling, but there's not much underneath that. The game's first impression on me was very good, but after a few levels you come to realize that it has some serious flaws.

The Vita chambers are a joke... it doesn't make sense at all, because you can kill big daddies just by dying and then go back at them and hit 'em with a melee weapon over and over. At some point they will die. I agree that it feels like cheating indeed.

Why are little sisters invulnerable when big daddies are around them? It would have been cool if you could trick a Big Daddy into following you and then kidnap the little sisters somehow. I understand they wanted the actual 'moral choice' to be something a player had to deserve, but then again the idea behind the choice you have is quite wrong too in my opinion.

For an action-orientated RPG/shooter I think they don't give enough ammo either. Useful items are a bit too scarcely spread too and I don't like the fact that they don't seem to 'respawn'. System Shock 2 was better balanced in this respect.

I think the game lacks in that it doesn't really provide the player with the feeling of having accomplished anything. The story is good, yes... and quite disturbing, but in terms of gameplay it's rather dull. Even by the time you've got some nice special powers and so on. The game has it's excellent moments and I loved the ending.

[Quemaqua]

Haven't read the thread extensively, but after thinking about it long and hard, I think I've nailed down exactly why BioShock does and doesn't work as well as SS2.  It basically boils down to the fact that BioShock is a much, much better shooter, but it neglects some other stuff.  This isn't entirely a problem, as, frankly, a lot of SS2's options were kind of useless or wonky or what have you, and the combat was really quite rudimentary and not always terribly engaging.  But the game was still more than the sum of its parts, and there must have been more to it than you can really put your finger on, because BioShock does seem just too limited in comparison, and for some reason that hurts it even though the combat is so much more polished and interesting.  It's an odd paradox to me, but I think I've finally reconciled it in my head.  I like the games for different reasons, and despite BioShock being more tightly developed in the end, SS2 comes out as the superior game in my mind.