Bioshock -- the "sequel in spirit" to System Shock 2

Just finished. GOTY so far for me, easily.

rhythm games come out in October

Wow! Elaborate plz! Is The Idolm@ster getting a US release? If so, I assume there won't be any problem importing it to the UK (I hear lots of titles don't have any region protection)?

What others are there? Aside from Guitar Hero/Rock band etc, because I'm pretty much already buying them. Corrr, I'm a little bit excited now!

yeah, sorry, just meant GH and Rock Band. I don't think Idolmaster is coming out in UK/US at all.

This is sort of a minor quibble, but I hate the smooth camera moves that are typical of first-person shooters. In a game like Gears of War you get the sense of the up-and-down movement of walking (and the difference of terrain) that you don't get in Bioshock and Halo and other games, and that always takes me out of the game a little bit.

yeah, sorry, just meant GH and Rock Band. I don't think Idolmaster is coming out in UK/US at all.

Aw buggerit. I'm still excited nonetheless!

Idolmaster has gamer pix on live marketplace, which is the only good sign I've seen. I blew some leftover points on them of course, in the vain hope that my sole purchase would help the game get a release over here. I don't think it works that way though.

Back to Bioshock - there's little more satisfying than blasting a splicer in the face, with a downed Big Daddy, via telekinesis!

Whoa, I need to try that! Replaying on hard now.

Hahaha, you're right, I got a one hit kill doing that. I also tried throwing a splicer at a Big Daddy, though I think it just made him angry.

Weirdly I think throwing a body is the most powerful attack in the game by far. Even the super-strong splicers, if you hit them in the head with a body they go down. Plus you get a nice shield while you're lining up your shot!

frame rate was fine in demo, full game I get past the demo bit and now my VC is crying.

I like Lowtax's review of the game.

Just over halfway through (I think), and I'm starting to feel a bit bored. Not getting new plasmids now, I'm just getting upgrades to the old ones. Think I've seen all the standard weapons too (I got the crossbow about an hour ago). And I don't expect to see many more new baddies either. Hope there are some fun new environments coming up, or I might not make it to the end (to be fair, I'm in Fort whatever it's called at the moment, and I've been doing quite a bit of back-and-forthing. So perhaps I'll get inspired again once I'm out of here, which should be soon).

I'll just say that you're very close to getting somewhere story wise...

Finished this last night. Will be starting again tomorrow :D

the demo doesn't work properly for me so can't realistically put the money down for the full version until they bring a patch out :( :( :(

http://www.penny-arcade.com/images/2007/20070829.jpg

Not bad game at all. Bit easy.

Do you mean to tell me that Bioshock is a pretty good game?!?!?!?!?!?!?

It is a bit easy.

True enough.

Isn't there a hard mode or something.

thats what she said

:(

Haha.

My friends who don't even own game systems are all "dude, Bioshock looks awesome", apparently it is a Thing?

my buddy who hasn't owned a game system since... oh, i was gonna say sega genesis but he had a ps2... anyway, doesn't play many games, was all "you got a 360? do you have bioshock?"

i am renting it tomorrow and we gonna play through it like it ain't no thang.

I think I'm about 20 minutes from the end now, and I haven't been wowed by anything in the last 6 hours. The big storyline event in the middle was great, and it felt like it was going to change the nature of the whole game. So when it didn't, and things just carried on as before, it was a huge disappointment. And the level design (which is probably the best thing this game had going for it overall) gets less and less inspired the further in you go.

No game of the year, this.

I guess it's hard to get the proper immersion level if you're playing for one hour a week or whatever.

Huh? Apart from the fact that that's bollocks, I've not been playing an hour a week anyway. I had a chunk of time off halfway through because I was out of town, but when I play I tend towards fairly long sessions.

"You can only appreciate this game if you clock it in four days, like I did" is the weakest defence of a title I've heard in a long time.

Hey, it's cool. BioShock sucks. There are a finite amount of weapons and plasmids. The entire nature of the game didn't change halfway through. What a piece of shit.

did you make the game or something??

I'm just fucking around. There have already been a couple of games out since I said "GOTY so far for me, easily," that I like better than this. There really wasn't all that much good this year before that. To anyone who think the last part of BioShock was weak (and the final boss admittedly is), wait until you play the last couple missions of Halo 3.

What is the thing tht happens halfway through the game?

mild spoiler

the golf club action and reveal?

end spoiler

that's right near the end of the game!

Oh sorry, there was supposed to be more space there. It wasn't much of a spoiler, but mods, could you either make it less obvious or take it out?

OK, so I have almost made it halfway through the game on medium and I was wondering whether I should start over and play on hard or beat the game with ease by playing medium? It's a really fun game.

Hard is too hard and medium is too easy, unfortunately. I say press on and then replay on Hard doing whatever with the Little Sisters that you're not doing this time.

good idea

I was disappointed by this game. Really nice set pieces interspersed with a whole lot of linearity. Genuinely didn't see the twist coming. Zero Punctuation review == spot on.

I'm yet to see a Zero Punctuation review that isn't. Except perhaps Peggle, but I sort of think he's OTM with that too. Maybe he just has that way with words and is actually talking a lot of bollocks I don't pick up on.

all his reviews (for the games i've played at least) have left me nodding in a, "this is exactly what i thought about this game" way. which is a bit annoying in the way i can only ever say "ME TOO!!!11 LOL" on seeing them.

Finally playing this now that I've ditched my crusty old laptop and built a respectable modern PC, and I'm right past...that part. Golfing and whatnot. Sadly, I went into the game knowing there was a "twist," and there were more than enough clues to more or less figure it out well in advance, but the other twist, the co-twist if you will...yow. Turns out the bit I was expecting was merely the "adding insult to injury" part of a larger "oh BALLS" moment. I hate having to be so oblique about this, but spoiling it would be absolutely criminal.

The gunplay isn't too satisfying, but the plasmids are great fun (especially the old OH GOD I AM ON FIRE/OH GOD I AM STANDING KNEE-DEEP IN ELECTRIFIED WATER trick, never gets old), and I really dig the Power To The People stations. I loved "fine-tuning" guns in Deus Ex, and this is more or less the same mechanic, except with crazy ridiculous steampunk contraptions like the gigantic cylinder/belt-feeding mechanism for the pistol capacity upgrade or the baroque monstrosity that is the fully-upgraded shotgun.

I guess this might have some spoilers. I'll cross 'em out for youze.

I can't believe it took me this long to play this but I finally beat it. I really didn't like the game that much until the middle of the game. I figured I'd end up having to kill Atlas, and I was reasonably sure that he was Fontaine, and i figured my "previous life" was somehow related to Rapture, but I didn't see all of that crazy retro-psychology shit coming. Really, really cool. I also dig it when games like this sort of cast light on their own limitations like the linearity. It feels like this game was confronting that linearity in its narrative, unlike Assassin's Creed which just tried to come up with excuses for its gameyness. This is self-referential art done RIGHT. I'm also glad that I didn't "know" about the "twist" because while I heard there was a twist, I thought it was related to the little sisters.

Anyway, I thought I would be lukewarm on this game but I ended up really loving it.

lol boss fight

I loved the game, but it was too short and replayability really isn't there.

Can't really see replaying it to harvest the Little Sisters, and get the alternate ending. But might replay it to get all the recordings - missed a few - and try for different plasmids & Tonics. And just to admire the scenery.

DG otm. Also, everything I said earlier still stands, this was an upsetting game not just because it was disappointing, but because it was so nearly amazing, before that disappointment kicked in.

loved this game. only thing i didn't care for was the lame-ass boss fight.

it just seem a shame that as technology gets better the games get more stupider

i mean system shock was the most complicated and that would run on a 386

it just seem a shame that as technology gets better the games get more stupider

i mean system shock was the most complicated and that would run on a 38

^^^whoa wtf again

Maybe I have low standards, but this game is blowing me away. I've never played a game with a world that's both this unique and this immersive. And the twist even impressed my wife, who couldn't care less about non-Rock Band video games.

Okay, jeez, that ending is embarrassing. How could they have spent so much effort on the story only to finish off with that?

Still, amazing game. Best FPS I've ever played. Which means it's the best out of, like, three games.