Yosharian
Arcane
I like all three of the Bioshock games but its undeniable that the series gradually moved away from what made System Shock 2 so good (and it was only sorta present in Bioshock 1 anyway)
-
Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.
"This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.
Bioshock ain't that bad...
- Thread starter Master
- Start date
Yosharian
Arcane
Yes absolutely, one of the series' strengths is that it shows the evil that many different political ideologies can commit
Dayyālu
Arcane
Point is, the politics in Bioshock are kind of unnecessary.
Yes yes Ryan wanted to create a libertarian paradise, it fails because people gene-edit themselves with mutant science-fiction slugs.
Yes yes in Bio 2 Sophia Lamb wants to create the Ultimate Human like some kind of JRPG boss.
Yes yes in Bio 3 Ken Levine wants you to draw hardcore porn of Elizabeth.
The political approach is clumsy at best, but also essentially meaningless in the game: it's just dress-up and ambience, arguably even less relevant to the plot that the peculiar conflict between the factions in SS2 (The Many have a point, but they're completely alien and inhuman in expressing it). I will give it a pass because we're talking about a goddamn video game. Good for what it is.
I will however give some points to Bio2 for trying to make Ryan less of a muppet, I remember clearly some logs where he laments the cult of personality he himself built, wondering if it's not ghoulish and counter-productive.
Yes yes Ryan wanted to create a libertarian paradise, it fails because people gene-edit themselves with mutant science-fiction slugs.
Yes yes in Bio 2 Sophia Lamb wants to create the Ultimate Human like some kind of JRPG boss.
Yes yes in Bio 3 Ken Levine wants you to draw hardcore porn of Elizabeth.
The political approach is clumsy at best, but also essentially meaningless in the game: it's just dress-up and ambience, arguably even less relevant to the plot that the peculiar conflict between the factions in SS2 (The Many have a point, but they're completely alien and inhuman in expressing it). I will give it a pass because we're talking about a goddamn video game. Good for what it is.
I will however give some points to Bio2 for trying to make Ryan less of a muppet, I remember clearly some logs where he laments the cult of personality he himself built, wondering if it's not ghoulish and counter-productive.
"Good for what it is" is my summary, so... yeah. It's a decent shooter in a cool setting with some okay magic/exploration elements. It's only seen as horribad by some because they wanted it to be System Shock 3 or hate how praised it was by media at the time.
karoliner
Arcane
The games had so much potential. They had all the individual elements to be great games but in the end were poorly put together. So we end up with two average shooters and one dumpsterfire.
kangaxx
Arbiter
I'm replaying it now, and it hasn't aged well IMO. The atmosphere is ok and the setting is good, but the the combat mechanics are way too shonky for what is pretty much a pure shooter.
Ghulgothas
Arcane
I found BioShock 2 to be the more enjoyable of the pair for that reason.
I think it's correct to say Bioshock is way more of a shooter than something like System Shock or Prey though. I'd say it's a shooter with very light "immersive sim" elements, but still a shooter. I was surprised in my last replay just how fast-paced and shooting focused the game really is.
Well yeah, if you're going to compare it to an immersive sim, of course it's more of a shooter.
kangaxx
Arbiter
The other thing is just how badly the game simulates sound propagation, particularly when compared to something like SS2, nearly a decade earlier. It's really disorientating and inaccurate, and not in a "deliberate game design" kind of way.
Odd, I don't recall saying *you* didn't experience it.
*Edit* Ah.. I'm retarded because I didn't experience the same bug as you? Looks like someone is a little butthurt.
Last edited:
fizzelopeguss
Arcane
2 is better.
Machocruz
Arcane
The shooting feedback in 1 is fucking terrible in both a tactile and visual way, maybe the worst I've ever come across. Even the old Shock games felt better.
The shotgun's alright, and I think the plasmids are better overall, but yeah no one's playing Bioshock because it's such a good shooter.
Machocruz
Arcane
But I can't front, I did enjoy the game, despite it paling in comparison to SS2, which I had played for the first time right before it. They built a compelling environment, I can't take that away from them. I still have backup saves I might continue some day.
Assisted Living Godzilla
Prophet
- Joined
- Nov 23, 2017
- Messages
- 4,689
The first is enjoyable, there's some nice systemic gameplay elements, and aesthetically it's very nice, (your Plasmids are still probably the best looking representation of what magic you have selected in a first person game - really, the aesthetic is the most interesting thing about the game) but the Vita-Chambers system completely breaks the game. I'm a little surprised Vita-Chambers didn't just function as normal save points as I'm sure how easily they could be gamed was pretty clear during development. I wonder if in this post-Dark Souls landscape a new BioShock would have Vita-Chambers that functioned in the same manner as Bonfires? Would have been interesting to see a BioShock game fully developed after Dark Souls had gotten big, because there are parts of its formula that would've worked well in BioShock.
It's too bad they dropped the RPG elements and lost the teleportation power they showed off in one of the first big demos of the game. The combat in BioShock still feels like a game which was meant to be a RPG, which is to say it's not up to the standards you'd expect a pure FPS to be.
Drakortha
Liturgist
I played through it once on release when I was 18 years old. I was also a retard back then. Every attempt to play the game since then I reach the gunplay section of the tutorial, realize how shit it feels --> uninstall game.
Um... the vita-chambers can simply be turned off in the options.
ciox
Liturgist
- Joined
- Feb 9, 2016
- Messages
- 1,413
One reason would be that long and elaborate hurt animations like you saw in quake/hl1/ss2 stopped being fashionable by the time Bioshock came around, another reason is you have very easy access to stuns with cheap Electrobolt, so the game would be balanced around monsters reacting to plasmid debuffs more than to being shot.
It's not designed at all for you to rely too much on weapons or plasmids separately, if you do the plasmids don't do enough damage, and the guns cannot suppress even basic splicers.
You pretty much have to use the intended "build" with lots of Electrobolt one-two punches.
Vita Chambers have support for being turned on like SS1/SS2 and support for costing money when they resurrect like SS2, those features just aren't used in the game. You can make it drain money with a mod but even that is broken as you will still resurrect once you're out of money.
The old demo was surprisingly close to SS2, they had a lot more abilities that weren't just point and shoot, teleport, sanctuary shield barrier, agility speed boost...
RPG elements were there too, the plasmid and tonics slots were your skills, they started with just one slot and unlocking more slots gave a static bonus the same as increasing a skill, one extra physical tonic slot and you'd get more health, one extra combat tonic slot and you'd get more weapon damage, etc.
If you were to compare the look of Bioshock's tracks for tonics and plasmids (5 tracks total, 6 slots each) you would see it looks exactly like SS2's stats screen, which has 5 stats (STR, END, AGI, PSI, CYB) that can be upgraded from 1 to 6;
All this stuff was not removed but rather disabled in late 2006 when the big push was made to turn the game into an FPS, it's all still there in the engine.
Why people still bitch about the vita chambers when you can turn them off is beyond me. Just flip one little switch in the options menu and the game functions exactly like Dishonored, Deus Ex or a million other quicksave based games. There are real reasons to find Bioshock unworthy of the "shock" name, but vita chambers is not one of them.
RolePlayer
Augur
- Joined
- Oct 3, 2009
- Messages
- 206
No you can't nickel and dime the customer base in single player campaign FPS.
As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.