Bioshock demo is out

[Sovard]

Hmm, just played the demo for PC ... *snip*

What the shit?

I've looked everywhere and can't find it. Torrent says it'll take 4 days, too. Hmm.

 

[Jasede]

How is the voice acting in the audio logs? Is the game still scary? Is it as scary as SS2? (Please say no, no game can touch SS2 in that regard.)

 

[JrK]

Well that's the problem with the demo: it was really too fucking(yes this angers me) short to tell anything about scariness. It was interesting in the setting department though, tempting me to let's go and find out what is going on. Voice acting is good from what I've heard, I didn't go around thinking "hey, this crappy voice reminds me of Oblivion".

As for the torrent, I found one on PirateBay and was downloading at 700 kb/s. I was done in about one and a half hours.

 

[Rohit_N]

The demo is available on Steam.

 

[Pegultagol]

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/action/ ... e=gsreview

Some of the things I read about it in the review that concerned me somewhat are the insta-regeneration system that mitigates the consequences of dying, and thereby sapping the tension away from the proceedings leading to it, the hand-holding one gets throughout the game through various visual cues, lack of enemies and any reasonable ramping up of difficulty without premise, and the seeming plethora of features and abilities that aside from a few select ones do very little to enrich gameplay depth other than their gimmicky demonstration and novelty factor. True, almost all of these are gameplay ploys that cater mainly to the console style of gaming, hopefully the PC version with its own interface presents somewhat different mechanic in terms of pace and difficulty, although I am not expecting anything drastically different other than different resolution reskins.

I have a sense that this is a game where shooting mechanics at least had to be perfect, but even that aspect does not seem to be anything special.

 

[Naked Ninja]

He had to explore the ship because waiting around would have meant certain death.

Tackling a vastly superior entrenched force on your own is certain death mate. Finding a hiding hole and waiting for the cavalry, that's plain common sense, and the evaluation anyone who isn't a 2 dimensional gung-ho FPS/action movie main character would make. It would make for crap games/movies though. Please stop trying to convince me SS2s premise was vastly more "realistic", you're failing.

The player in SS2 regained consciousness after the shit hit the fan

In a situation where my plane had crashed in the middle of the ocean, with no sign of life and no guarantee that rescuers will find me before I die, I would evaluate the "shit" as having hit "the fan" and would feel inclined to explore all available options. Doors closing is lame, but simply choosing to go down the bathysphere isn't.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

My overnight download got corrupted at 1.4GB.

All that exists is pain.

 

[Zomg]

PS/action movie main character would make. It would make for crap games/movies though. Please stop trying to convince me SS2s premise was vastly more "realistic", you're failing.

I think realism is the wrong word, but I think SS2 has better narrative coherence than it sounds like the bathysphere affair does (going by secondhand info here). For once thing in the very beginning of SS2 you get the character creation sequence, where the character is implicitly defined as a soldier (and a number of other things - a volunteer, probably urban, et cetera). Then you have the restricted move-or-die opening where you establish a relationship with another character on the Von Braun, who asks for your help and IIRC is your military superior. There is therefore some narrative-and-character sense to the fairly standard FPS progression thereafter. There's nothing wrong with a more abstract game - Doom guy is barely a character, for example; he's just the player's avatar, and Doom is a great game - but there's a difference and a continuum there.

What's funny is that SS2 reverts to a generic quasi-characterized FPS meathead in the ending, which is jarring as hell.

 

[Bradylama]

The Von Braun was also the first faster-than-light spaceship. Any reasonable person would assume that the cavalry would be just around the corner.

It's just like a plane crashing in the vicinity of a lighthouse at all.

 

[Pegultagol]

Is it any likely that the reason behind the plane crash and all would be even partly addressed during the game?

 

[fastpunk]

Man, codexers sure love their BioShock. I haven't played the thing but is it me or does the art style have something fallouty about it?

 

[sabishii]

Is it any likely that the reason behind the plane crash and all would be even partly addressed during the game?

Bush did it.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

What you appear to be saying is that you haven't played the demo (or if not you, then whomever else it was that hasn't played it) but refuse to listen to anyone's feedback from the demo and instead choose to believe that when you play the finished product, everything will be awesome, irrespective of what anyone here may say based on the demo.

Don't be a drama queen.

Hilarious. Last I checked, I wasn't the one telling everyone they might be right but then whinging about them giving their opinion anyway.

Here's the thing. Expectations can become self-fulfilling prophecies.

OHOH. AN ARGUMENT THAT WORKS BOTH WAYS. WHATEVER WILL HAPPEN NEXT I WONDER?

I've watched a lot of codexers mentally work up to hating this game long before the demo ever came out. And now the smallest thing garners scorn and mockery! What a surprise!

So first we have this. Only to follow it up with...

Noticed I haven't said anything about excessive savepoints? I don't know how they're paced so I won't comment or dispute anyone who says they're lame. How could I? Maybe they are.

Summary: Gee-whillickers, how can these people complain? Oh wait, they may be right though. I don't know!

What are you doing here? No, really? You're whinging about people who are playing the demo. They're giving their feedback on that demo based on what they've seen. The best you can come up with is "well, your critiscism might be valid but I don't know so I'll complain about it anyway". If you don't like the feedback here, go out and play the demo yourself and come back with all the awesome things about it.

But when someone says it's stupid that the main character in an FPS would choose to explore the unknown down an elevator, then I laugh. I've done that in every FPS I've ever played, including System Shock 2, and never had a problem with it. I could have used the same reasoning in that game too. I remember clearing a few areas of monsters. Why not just hide out with a pile of ammo and supplies and wait for someone to notice the loss of contact with those spaceships and come looking? Surely they are even more likely to search for lost spaceships than even planes that crash in the ocean? And few "real" soldiers would try to take on a large enemy force by themselves, most would hole up and wait for backup. It's a bit unrealistic to assume that everyone in that situation would be gung-ho alpha male hero guy.

That's a pretty horrible strawman you've got there. BioShock is meant to be more than "every other FPS you ever played":

• If we wanted to make a BioShock-lite, we could have done that; an action shooter set in the BioShock universe. I think we've all heard that tune before. And if the publisher is paying the bills from day one, and they have a substantial financial investment, it's only natural to assume they'd want to drive the product in a direction they view will be most profitable. And to make that determination, the marketing department generally becomes heavily involved early on in the design process. While that works great for an existing franchise, such as Tribes and SWAT (where Sierra brought tremendous knowledge of those brands to the table), the design goals of BioShock aren't necessarily something your average marketing person will jump at. Until Grand Theft Auto came along and proved such games could be financially successful, you couldn't even discuss terms like "emergence" and "open-ended." You had to sneak them in between making AVIs featuring hot chicks and bullet-time.
  
  That's changing now. Gamers clearly get these design principles, and that's why the reaction to the announcement of BioShock was so broad. People want to play that type of game. They crave innovation. And that's what Irrational is committed to delivering.
  
  If anything, BioShock is the deepest game we've ever made. Having real time and money to make it also means it will be the most accessible.

Wait, that's not more developer hype falling on its face again is it?

OH NO, NOT IMMERSIVE, I WANT TO PLAY SOMEONE WHO HANGS AROUND WAITING TO GET RESCUED. This isn't an RPG. It's an FPS. All FPSes expect you to swallow some at least partially unrealistic premise. Exploring down what is pretty much an elevator when you are stranded in the middle of nowhere with no guarantee of rescue is one of the least of these.

As I said, not meant to be your average FPS. If that's all you're expecting, good for you. The reason most of this disappointment is here though is because most were expecting more than "Yet Another FPS". Hence the complaints about the demo, the seeming lack of a sensible plot, the stupid mini-game hacking and so on.

Your comment about self-fulfilling expectations is simply wrong though. People wanted - expected - this to be better than just an average FPS. That's why there's the disappoinment. It would seem all you expected was a game where you could electrocute the same monster type over and over again.

 

[Claw]

Does Bioshock run on Windows 2000?

 

[JrK]

Man, codexers sure love their BioShock. I haven't played the thing but is it me or does the art style have something fallouty about it?

Yeah but that probably has to do with the 50's art and design. Also, some music of the Inkspots was playing in the demo so you'd expect more of that old stuff further in the game.

 

[Dmitron]

Bah, it's too large for my piddly local connection.

I'm missing out on the post-demo criticism\praise fun. Well, here's hoping there's more to this than the art direction and Big Daddies.

 

[Dark Matter]

Is it any likely that the reason behind the plane crash and all would be even partly addressed during the game?

I think so. I watched the Gamespot video review, and he says that that little mystery is one of the things that keeps you going forward or something like that.

 

[made]

Plenty of stuff to nitpick in the demo level: PC shooting a syringe full of blue stuff (plasmids) into his vein without any reason or knowing what it is. Some water conducts electricity, some doesn't. A glass tube surrounded by the ocean collapses and water masses starts pouring in on you from all sides creating a false sense of danger, until you realise that you can stand there indefinitely because the water level doesn't rise at all.

I'll probably play it just to see the story unfold, hoping I don't get bored by the gameplay halfway through. LOLELECTROSHOCK is only fun for so long.

 

[Jasede]

You're using Shagnak's penis-horns avatar, made. You ought to change it or you might be mistaken for Shag.

I don't really know if that is a good or bad thing, but whatever.

[Multi-dicked head hitting ass and leg!]

 

[Trash]

The only thing that really annoyed me in the xbox360 demo is something that has been bugging me a lot lately. Every line of text is nearly impossible to read on my non-HD television. I don't understand why developers can't seem to grasp that not everyone is playing games on the newest flashy lcd hd widescreen plasma fuckin' expensive telly's.

It kinda takes away the fun in console gaming when I have to get off my couch and push my head into the screen to get some idea of what I'm supposed to do. Dead Rising drove me nuts, GRAW annoyed the hell out of me and now this.


Otherwise a fun demo to play. It feels a lot like a streamlined and more action rich System Shock 2. Including the ghost scenes,whom I loved and some cool scripted events. The controlls on the xbox felt very fluid, but due to the tiny shitty text I'll get the pc version.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

Some water conducts electricity, some doesn't. A glass tube surrounded by the ocean collapses and water masses starts pouring in on you from all sides creating a false sense of danger, until you realise that you can stand there indefinitely because the water level doesn't rise at all.

Wow. After all the hype about how important water in such a scenario is, and how much they have worked on making it cool this is really a huge dissapointment.

 

[Dark Matter]

Some water conducts electricity, some doesn't. A glass tube surrounded by the ocean collapses and water masses starts pouring in on you from all sides creating a false sense of danger, until you realise that you can stand there indefinitely because the water level doesn't rise at all.

Wow. After all the hype about how important water in such a scenario is, and how much they have worked on making it cool this is really a huge dissapointment.

They most likely meant that they worked hard on making it look cool, as opposed to making it have a significant impact on the gameplay(they'll probably be a few water related puzzles at best, like lowering water pressure so some door can be opened or something generic and boring like that)

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

More proof that different playstyles and options in Bioshock are just LARPing:

If Bioshock has one notable flaw, it lies in the game's difficulty level, or lack thereof. On the normal difficulty level, it's just a bit too easy. It is still fun, but once you start getting a solid number of plasmids, you can tear through every Splicer in your way as if they were nothing. By the end of the game, I was using the default wrench on every enemy, not because I needed to save ammo, but because my plasmids made the Wrench so ridiculously powerful that it would have taken me longer to kill Splicers with a gun. I was rarely using many of the plasmids or alternate weapon types available to me — only the wrench, Electro Bolt and the occasional grenade and armor-piercing bullets for the Big Daddies. A game being easy isn't a tremendous flaw, but considering the wide variety of options available to you in defeat foes, it's rather wearisome that the straightforward smash-and-grab technique is the most effective. The game does offer a hard mode, however, for those gamers eager to up the ante a bit, but the differences between the modes are not quite enough to give experienced players a much harder time, although it does encourage the use of some of the lesser-used plasmids.

If a mainstream gaming site admits so directly that a game is too easy it must be indeed very bad.
I hate this kind of "I can beat the game easily without ever using one of my awesome powers but I do it nevertheless because its sooooo creative and sooo much fun" design.
What a huge dissapointment.
Of course, the reviewer still gives the game an excellent 9.x score. Funny how the only possiblity to get at least a few titbits of valuable information out of these reviews is to read and interpet them against the author's intention.

Seeing how Ive been looking forward for this game for 2 years, I have learned my lesson.
Hoping for mainstream games to turn out better than "meh, its quite ok but nothing brilliant" is futile.

 

[Monolith]

More proof that different playstyles and options in Bioshock are just LARPing:

If Bioshock has one notable flaw, it lies in the game's difficulty level, or lack thereof. On the normal difficulty level, it's just a bit too easy. It is still fun, but once you start getting a solid number of plasmids, you can tear through every Splicer in your way as if they were nothing. By the end of the game, I was using the default wrench on every enemy, not because I needed to save ammo, but because my plasmids made the Wrench so ridiculously powerful that it would have taken me longer to kill Splicers with a gun. I was rarely using many of the plasmids or alternate weapon types available to me — only the wrench, Electro Bolt and the occasional grenade and armor-piercing bullets for the Big Daddies. A game being easy isn't a tremendous flaw, but considering the wide variety of options available to you in defeat foes, it's rather wearisome that the straightforward smash-and-grab technique is the most effective. The game does offer a hard mode, however, for those gamers eager to up the ante a bit, but the differences between the modes are not quite enough to give experienced players a much harder time, although it does encourage the use of some of the lesser-used plasmids.

If a mainstream gaming site admits so directly that a game is too easy it must be indeed very bad.
I hate this kind of "I can beat the game easily without ever using one of my awesome powers but I do it nevertheless because its sooooo creative and sooo much fun" design.
What a huge dissapointment.
Of course, the reviewer still gives the game an excellent 9.x score. Funny how the only possiblity to get at least a few titbits of valuable information out of these reviews is to read and interpet them against the author's intention.

Seeing how Ive been looking forward for this game for 2 years, I have learned my lesson.
Hoping for mainstream games to turn out better than "meh, its quite ok but nothing brilliant" is futile.

That really sounds bad. Dammit.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

I'm currently at hephaestus, outside andrew ryans office. The game is superb.

 

[Oarfish]

I'm currently at hephaestus, outside andrew ryans office. The game is superb.

SILENCE THE DISCORD