Review I complain about BioShock. A lot.

[DarkUnderlord]

Tags: BioShock

Just when you thought the BioShock news barrage was coming to a halt, <a href="http://rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=172">I went and wrote up a review about it</a>.
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<blockquote>Somehow or another, one of those twisted minds eventually realised you could harvest Adam from the dead. Their bright idea was to turn schoolgirls into "Little Sisters". They live in the walls (as all good little girls should) and when people die, they jump out with their syringes, wander over to the corpse and suck the Adam remnants out of them to be re-processed. Of course, they re-process the Adam themselves by ingesting it, which in-turn makes them "near invulnerable to damage" (according to various audio diaries). Unfortunately, it seems nobody told the game designers that because they went ahead and created the Big Daddy. The Big Daddy is a giant guy in a diving suit who wanders around solely to protect the Little Sisters... and those guys are tough as hell.
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Bridgette Tenenbaum, the scientist who helped create the girls, also seems to forget that the Little Sisters are invulnerable. In the very first moment you're introduced to them, she's busy saving one of her little girls from imminent death which is funny because no matter what you do, you can't kill the litle girls. Once their Big Daddy is dead, you can "harvest" or "save" them to get Adam (once Tenenbaum throws you the special Plasmid) but you can't shoot them. Apparently, bullets bounce off their immortal child-like hides. Not even the trusty wrench will hit them which is particularly interesting considering the first time you meet one, Tenenbaum is saving a girl who's about to be killed by a guy wielding... a wrench. Apparently he hadn't been told either. Also funny is that Dr Tenenbaum shoots the guy to save the girl but then happily walks off, rather than hanging around to see if you're going to save her or not... That just seems like a half-hearted effort at saving her to me. Tenenbaum will even help you out later in the game, despite the fact you've sucked the life out of every single Little Sister you've met. Like I said, BioShock makes a lot of sense until you start to think about it a little too deeply.</blockquote>
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Think nice happy shallow thoughts though and you'll be fine.

 

[Wyrmlord]

Dude, I was following Bioshock hype, and what they had promised the game to be wasn't much different from what the game turned out. Levine once bluntly stated, "It's only a shooter".

The game never promised to be innovative. And it didn't turn out to be innovative. All they wanted to make was a simple fun shooter, which is what it exactly was.

The sort of hyperbolic descriptions given to the game pre-release were courtesy of only previewers, but not developers themselves. It was people themselves, not the devs, who had ultra-high expectations, because it was from the guys who made SS2.

Oh, and incidentally, Deus Ex > System Shock 2 :p

 

[shihonage]

Ken Levine hyped the hell out of this game. His job was to sell, I guess, as it always is, and he did a stellar job of that. He's really good at narrating shit in exciting fashion.

In the end though it turned out to be a frustratingly linear shooter with great level, graphics and sound design and mediocre everything else.

Bioshock is the kind of game where you're supposed to get a key ITEM after you get a HINT from someone regarding its whereabouts. So the second time around you decide to skip going to the HINT guy, and just head straight for the ITEM.

... which has NOT SPAWNED because you haven't gotten to that earlier place to get the hint.

 

[GeneralSamov]

In before Volourn.

 

[Jasede]

Deus Ex > System Shock 2

No.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Deus Ex > System Shock 2

No.

 

[Mareus]

I liked Deus Ex more than System Shock, and I found Deus Ex 2 even more dissapointing than Bioshock.

 

[aron searle]

They where all shit.

 

[Jasede]

What? Get the fuck out of here.

 

[ghostdog]

Deus Ex > System Shock 2 > ........................ ................... ........................... > Bioshock

 

[Tails]

Well Bioshock "protection" is good reason to avoid that game, fucking drm.

 

[Jaesun]

Well Bioshock "protection" is good reason to avoid that game, fucking drm.

The DRM is now removed.

Good review DU. I really expected you to rip them a new asshole on this, in that I thought you hated Bioshock... a lot. I think you summed it up nicely, and mirrored my thoughts on it as well.

Oh and the Shotgun with Electric ammo, does wonders to the Big Daddies, much better than the Machine gun. At least the 1st Big Daddies you meet. The later ones, the grenade launcher works well, especially planting proximity grenades. Fun!

 

[bgillisp]

I personally thought the game was too easy. If you die you respawn with no penalty and the enemies are still wounded. Who came up with that?

 

[J1M]

Well Bioshock "protection" is good reason to avoid that game, fucking drm.

The DRM is now removed.

Good review DU. I really expected you to rip them a new asshole on this, in that I thought you hated Bioshock... a lot. I think you summed it up nicely, and mirrored my thoughts on it as well.

Oh and the Shotgun with Electric ammo, does wonders to the Big Daddies, much better than the Machine gun. At least the 1st Big Daddies you meet. The later ones, the grenade launcher works well, especially planting proximity grenades. Fun!

Crossbow tripwires are what I used since I used all the wrench plasmids

 

[Volourn]

So Codex reviews non RPGs now. K.

Can I have an NHL 08 review next, please. Or better yet, Smackdown vs Raw:ECW Invades as that has 'rpg elements'.

R00fles!

Anyways, Bioshock was a good game.. at least for awhile.. then I just got bored and stopped playing... sorry.

 

[NiM82]

I think the world design is overrated in Bioshock, massively. It's nice for the first hour or so when they try and impress you with the leaking water and stuff, but after that it all get very samey.

It's a bloody underwater city, yet there's no sunken parts that need swimming through, no Jaws style attacks/scares on the glass tunnels (that would've been quite cool, no?), no excursions on the seabed in a big daddy diving suit, etc. There's a lot of cool things they could've done with the setting and didn't. SS2 had a lot more variation across it's different decks, ships and the bits inside the worm.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Bioshock was good to the point after you kill the mad surgeon. After that, it was so goddamn boring and the plot was predictable, I kept playing only because I hoped it would get better

but then...

!!!!THE PLOT TWIST!!!! (which was so goddamn predictable, only one of the grand schemes presented there surprised me) and after this superb plot twist I was like "oh fuck this shit", and I don't intend to return to this game ever again.

 

[aries202]

I don't see anything wrong with linear good shooter where combat is challenging and fun. Bioshock felt like this to me - at least when I played the demo.

Let us not forget that Ken Levine did give an interview with IGN in which he said that he heard about a guy, a game journalist, whose girlfriend had made him sleep on the couch for a few nights / or longer) after she walked in om him - harvesting Little Sisters in Bioshock. Now, there's immersion etc. for you right there... I'm sure Ken Levine didn't think og this when he made the game, but there you have it...

As for the drm question, the 3 limit activations thing has been removed along with some other stuff. You still have to activate over the internet, though. Means I can play it now

 

[SpaceKungFuMan]

Well Bioshock "protection" is good reason to avoid that game, fucking drm.

The DRM is now removed.

Good review DU. I really expected you to rip them a new asshole on this, in that I thought you hated Bioshock... a lot. I think you summed it up nicely, and mirrored my thoughts on it as well.

Oh and the Shotgun with Electric ammo, does wonders to the Big Daddies, much better than the Machine gun. At least the 1st Big Daddies you meet. The later ones, the grenade launcher works well, especially planting proximity grenades. Fun!

Crossbow tripwires are what I used since I used all the wrench plasmids

Electric Gel totally paralyzed them and did huge damage. Once you have essentially unlimited electric gel, there is no challenge at all in killing big daddies. Only the first 2 or 3 actually present any challenge anyway. I agree that the game is basically over after killing the Surgeon.

 

[Occasionally Fatal]

Deus Ex > System Shock 2

No.

 

[Gragt]

The DRM is now removed.

No, it isn't. You still need an internet connection to download the executable and verify the game online as well as the dvd in the drive while playing. What was removed is the limit of activations, you can activate it as many times as you want but you still need to do it for each installation.

 

[HanoverF]

Dude, I was following Bioshock hype, and what they had promised the game to be wasn't much different from what the game turned out.

The demo promised NO TWO PLAYTHROUGHS THE SAME!!!1 (or something like that) Which is total bullshit.

Nice atmosphere, horrid gameplay. Been there done that plot.

 

[themadhatter114]

I thought it was pretty fun and agree that the atmosphere was great. I don't at all agree with the motivation behind Vita-Chambers, but if you simply ignore their existence, then they don't have to ruin the game for you. I'm anal enough that I'm simply going to save frequently and reload when I die because I simply hate dying in video games.

The shock & whack combo was definitely viable throughout the entire game, but I'm pretty sure that you had to actually invest in it for it to remain viable. Maybe not, but I thought that the Wrench Jockey tonics and the ones that made the shock last longer and the one that helped you move more quietly were pretty necessary for that style. I didn't really find the enemy progression to be any different from any RPG or shooter. You get better powers/weapons and suddenly you run across more powerful enemies/enemies with better weapons & armor.

The big daddies were pretty hard, but the electric gel and electric buck worked well.

I did get incredibly annoyed with the splicers saying the same thing over and over.

The plot was definitely a little non-sensical, but the game was pretty fun.

Perhaps being able to craft different ammo types or having a basic inventory system is considered an RPG element. Who knows? From everything I saw, Levine stressed over and over again that it's a shooter and not an RPG.

 

[WalterKinde]

The DRM is now removed.

The drm is partly gone the activation limit remains though.

 

[Brother None]

Another game concept you should be aware of are the Vita-Chambers scattered about the place.

I believe they've apologized for this stupidity and issued a patch that makes them optional.

Not even the trusty wrench will hit them which is particularly interesting considering the first time you meet one, Tenenbaum is saving a girl who's about to be killed by a guy wielding... a wrench. Apparently he hadn't been told either.

Uh, dude, he's about to harvest her, like you do. They can't be hurt by weapons, but that doesn't mean the splicers can't do exactly what you do and rip out their spines to consume (the original harvesting animation, I believe). Hence the Big Daddies.

Speaking of wrenches, I recently replayed the game using only a wrench with plenty of wrench-enforcing tonics. It is completely ridiculous how powerful the wrench is. With big support from the tonics, it is easily the most powerful weapon in the game. Frozen Field freezes them fairly often, Wrench Jockey++ adds 550% damage, and Wrench Lurker makes you invisible until you attack 'em. Way too easy. You don't even need to shock-wack 'em, and you can even beat big daddies with just a wrench.

Sometimes, the randomly generated hacks fail to work. This
one is simply unhackable. So you'll have to fail and try again.

I don't think that's true. They always have a solution.

!!!!THE PLOT TWIST!!!! (which was so goddamn predictable, only one of the grand schemes presented there surprised me) and after this superb plot twist I was like "oh fuck this shit", and I don't intend to return to this game ever again.

The presence of a plot twist is predictable, and it is clumsily handled (the scene is laughable), but as plot twists go, it is pretty nicely set up.

Let us not forget that Ken Levine did give an interview with IGN in which he said that he heard about a guy, a game journalist, whose girlfriend had made him sleep on the couch for a few nights / or longer) after she walked in om him - harvesting Little Sisters in Bioshock. Now, there's immersion etc. for you right there...

Cheap, superficial appeal to emotion. As meaningless as you can get.