Bioshock ain't that bad...

[Carrion]

I'll just drop in to repeat that Bioshock is more of a SS1 clone, than a SS2 one and I think it's decent for what it is.

Almost everything in BioShock except for the setting is more or less lifted straight from SS2. They even copied the plot twist.

 

[Zombra]

So let's say hypothetically you have your Steam games list separated into various genres... RPG, FPS, Stealth, whatever... where do you put Bioshock? No agenda here, genuinely curious.

That would be a really weird and counterproductive thing to do - kind of like organizing your music collection by what color your mood ring turned when you listened to it. So many games would have to be filed under multiple categories, or stuck in a pigeonhole that didn't really fit it.

To be honest, if I had to pick one category to file Bioshock under, it would be Horror.

 

[Serious_Business]

If I had to pick one category it wOULD BE SHI

it would actually be the category of space. Space in itself. It takes space, put it into it

 

[DeepOcean]

Bioshock is a lame ass SS2 for consoles, dumb down to ludicrous levels,the things it has going for is the aesthetics, Art Deco was rarely used before Bioshock on games, it has a libertarian villain watching his utopia going to shit as humans are fucking assholes (not many times you see libertarian themes on games) and Fort Frolic has some pretty cool ideas, the Big Daddy fights were a really cool idea that they squandered. I dont think Bioshock is total shit, there is the skeleton of a good game in there, but it could had been a much better game if it followed the original vision instead of the dumbdown game we got.

 

[Carrion]

That would be a really weird and counterproductive thing to do - kind of like organizing your music collection by what color your mood ring turned when you listened to it.

Organizing your music collection by genres makes a lot of sense, though, even though genre boundaries are often muddled there too. I'd probably choose even mood ring organizing over alphabetical.

 

[DalekFlay]

That would be a really weird and counterproductive thing to do - kind of like organizing your music collection by what color your mood ring turned when you listened to it. So many games would have to be filed under multiple categories, or stuck in a pigeonhole that didn't really fit it.

Only category I have on Steam is "crap" where I put all the games I'll never play, so I guess I agree. I also think genres are a lost cause and almost everything outside of Kickstarter incline is a hybrid nowadays. It was just a question designed to point out how irrelevant the question "is it an immersive sim?" really is.

 

[Dedicated_Dark]

If you guys think Bioshock sucks now, I got some good news for you:

The next one is guaranteed to be worse. So the current one will look relatively better. kek.

 

[RRRrrr]

I wish they made an adventure game with Rapture or that flying city as setting. Or better yet, a thief-style stealth game. I felt the setting was wasted on these games (except for the libertarian/commie inanities).

 

[Dayyālu]

I wish they made an adventure game with Rapture or that flying city as setting. Or better yet, a thief-style stealth game. I felt the setting was wasted on these games (except for the libertarian/commie inanities).

The entire setting is pants-on-head retarded. The ambience is nice. To make a proper use of it you'd need to rewrite entirely almost everything. If you stop for an istant and apply critical thinking to anything in Bioshock it crumbles harder than space travel to Tau Ceti 5.

 

[RRRrrr]

To make a proper use of it you'd need to rewrite entirely almost everything.

Yeah, everything except the underwater/sky city and the aesthetics is retarded. But I liked the retro futuristic design.

Also, never played the original Bioshock for more than an hour.

 

[DalekFlay]

I wish they made an adventure game with Rapture or that flying city as setting. Or better yet, a thief-style stealth game. I felt the setting was wasted on these games (except for the libertarian/commie inanities).

There's a walking sim named Close to the Sun which is basically Bioshock without combat.

Also Bioshock 2 has much better combat in various ways, and Bioshock Infinite has great combat IMO. At least compared to the usual Xbox 360 shooter trash ports we got.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

I understand codex hivemind hate for Bioshock, just not why it's so strong. For a game released when gaming was literally dead it's... passable. The worst part by far is the fact that you literally fight one enemy throughout the entire game, and it's not an interesting/scary/challenging/whatever enemy in the first place. When you start and see things like electrifying guize standing in water or combining electricity/wrench attack for a moment you think that maybe the game will be a bit creative, but you just saw everything it has to offer pretty much. I don't know what the sequels were for, I finished BS1 playing on highest difficulty and respawn off, but got almost immediately bored with 2 (the fact that the intro promised you cool things like stomping on people's heads, but then it immediately becomes apparent that being big daddy is just a gimmick and a mutated grandma kills you in two hits on hardest lol didn't help).

I found Dead Space much better when it comes to slightly retarded console SS2 offspring.

highlighted by the most excessive bloom effects ever developed in a video game.

You should play some Russian games from circa the same period. Just don't forget protective eyewear.

 

[Citizen]

As far as popamole shooters go, BS isn't that bad. The problem is, the devs promised an "intellectual shooter" but didn't deliver. It was a pretty standart popamole with insulting skyrim-tier puzzles, with setting and visuals being the only memorable thing about it.

Fun thing is, many people rate Bioshock 2 the worst of the series, while it has the best gameplay of the three IMO. The missions where you needed to defend those creepy girls harvesting blood or whatever were the best part of the series, you actually needed to memorize the level layout and orginize traps in the chockepoints to hold off the waves of zombies, and utilize the variety of weapons and powers to do it effectively. Sadly, the trird game didn't even try to improve and reuse this idea, instead returning to the pure run&gun popamole formula. At least Infinity is not as painfully slow as the original game, I guess

 

[ciox]

As far as popamole shooters go, BS isn't that bad. The problem is, the devs promised an "intellectual shooter" but didn't deliver. It was a pretty standart popamole with insulting skyrim-tier puzzles, with setting and visuals being the only memorable thing about it.

Fun thing is, many people rate Bioshock 2 the worst of the series, while it has the best gameplay of the three IMO. The missions where you needed to defend those creepy girls harvesting blood or whatever were the best part of the series, you actually needed to memorize the level layout and orginize traps in the chockepoints to hold off the waves of zombies, and utilize the variety of weapons and powers to do it effectively. Sadly, the trird game didn't even try to improve and reuse this idea, instead returning to the pure run&gun popamole formula. At least Infinity is not as painfully slow as the original game, I guess

People hate BS2 because it's a massive rehash of the first game in mechanics and plot, and when it doesn't rehash it only makes things more confusing.
Finally, the DLC directly references SS2 in its plot and setting which creates a rehash-ception.

 

[Dayyālu]

The plot in both games is worthless crap.

Bioshock 2 is massively improved in gameplay and annoyances removal, and I dare to say level design. I'll steal one of my old posts.

Spoiler

Bioshock 2. I hated Bioshock 1. I mean, the art design was pretty before everyone else copied the fake art deco style. As a game, Bioshock was a extremely disappointing blend of cargo-cult elements (the only reason a shitton of gameplay stuff was there was because We Need to Copy System Shock), a frankly embarassing enemy range and some frankly puzzling graphical choices (making everything look like it was smeared in mud). It had a fairly amusing weapon&power selection, completely crippled by the need to juggle the control scheme. The setting was borderline interesting, I'd rate it as a good French BD, but the plot was beyond retarded (DO YOU EAT BABIES OR NOT? DO YOU?). I dimly remembered Roguey arguing that Bioshock 2 was far better from the gameplay point of view....

And you know, it is. It's refined. Someone took a good look at what was wrong in Bioshock and worked on it. And it shows. Useless and retared hacking? Simplified and added a ranged options, with autohacking if you need speed. You can use powers and guns at the same time, and you can simply buy special ammo. Upgrades give new life and utility to weaponry. Enemy design tries to give you something interesting to shoot at, and the level design attempts to create enviroments where you can quickly dispatch enemies with some skill, even if the firefights are in cramped spaces. Graphics have been sharpened and the art deco style now looks a tad better.

It's still not quite a good shooter, tho. The game is still....floaty, the enemies are still somewhat unfun to fight (I'll honestly admit that my enjoyment of the game went up fairly quickly when I got the Spear Gun and started focusing on headshotting everything). The enemy variety is still... meh, but i guess that for a 00ies shooter it was adequate. The plotline is ... less dumb than the original game, I must say, even if it has the sin of forcing a Committee Waifu, but hey, it ain't Alyx Vance.

Amusing to think that Infinite , as a game, is far far inferior to this, from basic gameplay to retarded plotline to Committee Waifu IN YOUR FACE. COSTANTLY.

BS2 is developed by someone who tried to make a fun shooter with (at the time) pretty graphics. It's essentially the best of the series if you go above the bells&whistles and want the meat of the thing.

 

[DalekFlay]

I understand codex hivemind hate for Bioshock, just not why it's so strong.

Sequels or other follow-ups are graded by most on an emotional curve of how it lives up to what they loved before. It skews "good" into "meh," and "meh" into "travesty."

 

[Citizen]

I'll steal one of my old posts.

Nice one. The "cargo cult System Shock" is a very accurate description of the bioshock series

 

[Zlaja]

I understand codex hivemind hate for Bioshock, just not why it's so strong

Bioshock was released in 2007 and that's basically when "the great decline" was getting into full force. Oblivion was released the year before and was proclaimed goty by the popamole horde. That honour was taken by Bioshock the year after and then Fallout 3 swooped down in 2008 to complete the trilogy of doom. This period has forever engraved itself into the codex's soul and helped shape this place into what it is today.

 

[DalekFlay]

Bioshock was released in 2007 and that's basically when "the great decline" was getting into full force. Oblivion was released the year before and was proclaimed goty by the popamole horde. That honour was taken by Bioshock the year after and then Fallout 3 swooped down in 2008 to complete the trilogy of doom. This period has forever engraved itself into the codex's soul and helped shape this place into what it is today.

Yes. Difference is though, I never expected Bioshock to be System Shock 3. I did expect Oblivion to be Morrowind 2.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

never expected Bioshock to be System Shock 3.

Out of curiosity, why? My memory is that it was pretty implicitly marketed as that.

 

[DalekFlay]

Out of curiosity, why? My memory is that it was pretty implicitly marketed as that.

Hard to remember 15 year old marketing but my recollection is that it was discussed as a spiritual successor but not really the same exact thing. It also has no 3 on the cover, which instantly makes it feel at least like a spin-off. Oblivion was literally the sequel to Morrowind. It's all semantics really in the end, but so much of the butthurt is from thrashed expectations and I'm just saying I expected Bioshock to be a shooter with some exploration and spell type shit in it, and that's what we got. I expected Oblivion to be a richly designed world with interesting lore and level/loot systems and that's NOT what we got.

 

[DalekFlay]

So... I was looking for an action game to break up the monotony of Divinity: Original Sin. The Gloomwood guy tweeted something about Bioshock being more "Doom" than he remembered, which made me decide to replay it for the first time in forever. He's right that the game is much faster paced than I remember. Your default move speed is similar to a twitch shooter, and enemies are pretty consistently mobile and aggressive. I'm not sure why I remembered the game being a very slow and deliberate affair, but it's not at all. It's also extremely easy, and the above achievement wasn't hard to get. I only ever died on big daddies, and only a handful of times the whole game (electric buck + electric plasmid for reloading = stun-locked big daddies). What about the gameplay itself? Eh, I'll always defend it based on what it is. It's no fucking System Shock, not by a mile, but Gloomwood guy isn't far off that it's Doom mixed with that formula, creating a simple but pretty fun exploration shooter. Too simple to be as good as its classic reputation, but far from the catastrophe try-hards paint it as.

A big fault with the game is the lack of motivation to use varied plasmids and even weapons. I had electricity equipped 90% of the time to stun turrets and enemies, and very rarely used anything else. The higher level guns like the rocket launcher are okay, but honestly the better ammo for the pistol, shotgun and tommy gun are good the whole game as long as you upgrade them appropriately. There's no real draw to use shit like "wind gust" because you could just shoot a couple shotgun rounds instead and end the fight. It's a pretty glaring issue.

 

[JDR13]

Happy to say I'm part of that 1.8%

A big fault with the game is the lack of motivation to use varied plasmids and even weapons. I had electricity equipped 90% of the time to stun turrets and enemies, and very rarely used anything else. The higher level guns like the rocket launcher are okay, but honestly the better ammo for the pistol, shotgun and tommy gun are good the whole game as long as you upgrade them appropriately. There's no real draw to use shit like "wind gust" because you could just shoot a couple shotgun rounds instead and end the fight. It's a pretty glaring issue.

Bioshock 2 does a much better job of having the player use different combos of weapons and plasmids.

 

[MRY]

it has a libertarian villain watching his utopia going to shit as humans are fucking assholes (not many times you see libertarian themes on games)

I found Bioshock fine and the flying island Bioshock (Infinity? I can't remember what it was subtitled) sufficiently tedious that I stopped after the second or third level. A lot of thought and effort went into constructing their settings, but in both instances, the setup largely fails because the "utopia" setting in each is so conceptually repugnant to the designers that the utopias are hideous ab initio. It's true that they get even more hideous as you go on, but look:

This is not post-fall degenerate Rapture, this is Rapture unscathed -- depicted as a sneering, hideous monster-man glowering down at you from above. It's not a libertarian dream, but a dictatorial nightmare; that kind of iconography is like a sophomoric "show how bad Big Brother is," not what a libertarian monument would look like. Here is how libertarians self-imagine:

(Looking up, looking pleasant, etc.)

There are a couple audio logs (the plumber's one, talking about how impressed he was that the bad guy wanted him to use the best piping material and do his best work) that aren't 100% thumb-on-the-scale revulsion, but by that point it's too late. The player is never given a moment to think that this was a worthy dream.

This flaw doesn't depend on one's politics; I find the utopias in Atlas Shrugged and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress pretty implausible, with the former being especially off-putting. I'm not offended by libertarians being turned into sneering monster-men, I guess, though it seems a pretty unthreatening foe to charge at full tilt. But I don't think it makes for good storytelling. Most players by default are not going to think that an underwater society of plutocrats is a noble dream; the game needs to sell them on that idea, or else the noble-dream-turned-nightmare doesn't have much impact.

[EDIT:

I want to clarify one point: obviously Bioshock's setting was wildly successful with players, so "doesn't have much impact" needs to be caveated. To the extent the designers' goal was simply to tell a comeuppance parable about libertarians really being crypofascists who should hang from gibbets, that goal was accomplished, and most players will be more than satisfied by seeing a disfavored group humiliated and destroyed. I just think the game could've been better (consistent with my overall humanist predilections) if instead it was designed to evoke sympathy for the fallen and a certain regret that, like Daedalus, Andrew Ryan constructed a mechanism that would doom, not rescue, its intended beneficiaries.

 

[DalekFlay]

Rapture didn't go to complete shit really until Ryan got spooked that Fontaine was using the free market to get more powerful than him and then sacrificed all his principles to stop that. Not saying the game is pro-Libertarian, the complete lack of regulation is shown to allow some bad shit, but the game does depict Rapture as being more or less successful until Ryan fucks it up by going authoritarian. The sequel, Bioshock 2, has a far-left commie take over and remove all individuality and control from the people, so it attacks extremism on both sides.