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

One could argue vs. It could be argued.

this guy sure can eat a lot.

scarfing all the hot dogs and cotton candy in sight for health. it reminds me of Streets of Rage.

haha yeah one of the only decent game mechanics in the fable series in retrospect was the "hey dude if you eat 25 apple pies a day, u gonna get fat"

wait did san andreas do that too? if so i guess they deserve the prize

they could take the far cry 2 malaria thing and apply it to games like this, where if you eat 40 bags of potato chips in a row to regain micro health, for the next three run and gun battles you stop every 20 seconds and your perspective shifts to a hunched over guy wheezing while you half black out.

Welcome to Cluckin Bell can I take your order

in the hall of heroes now and it's getting more fun combat-wise, but i still feel like they went to to create an interesting world just highlights how linear and game-y it is (so many invisible walls, locked doors, finding money in garbage cans and pineapples on dead bodies, etc).

it's weird that the mechanics of the game (ie shooting people) seem so separate from what the 'point' seems to be (exploration, telling a story?).

i completely agree. what if it had been an open-world, undirected myst-style thing where you just wander around and put clues together and then maybe break into the tower with some sierraesque inventory puzzle and maybe occasionally you shoot some dudes? right? "not being call of duty" isn't enough.

(meant to write "the trouble they went to...")

exactly, that would be amazing. and probably sell way less, i guess.

i would even accept an old-style fps with convoluted maps and keys and that sort of obviously gamey stuff. tack on the beautiful world and pretty good story and i'd be set.

all this said, i still really enjoyed the fuck out of this game, maybe my favorite gameplay experience since portal 2. which had its own linearity problems.

at least linearity in a game like Portal 2 makes narrative sense

what was the first game with a dude (or lady) on a comm device (or whatever) telling you what to do? at what point was it decided that that was a more immersive way to guide the player than keys or levels or hookshot points?

and then how long was it til omg the dude (or lady) on the comm device is actually the bad guy became a go-to twist?

is "i have no mouth and i must scream" the ur text of modern shooter design?? and did anyone else quit playing dead space 1 when dudes and ladies on the comm device kept being like welp the engine's busted go fix it, oh shit now you need some dilithium crystals, go get those, etc?

ha, it didn't bother me in Dead Space because it was so obvious that the real story was "walk down a dark hallway listening to weird noises and drones and wonder where/when the monster is going to pop out."

because there are so many civilians around in BI and it feels semi-random when they will ignore you vs interact vs instantly try to beat you to death, i keep thinking how could it would be if the whole game acted like the party level in Dishonored.

maybe i should give dishonored another chance. did you stay stealthy or go buck wild? i felt constrained by the game's prissy reminders to keep quiet.

stealth all the way, but i love that shit and try to do it even in non-stealth games.

(so many invisible walls, locked doors, finding money in garbage cans and pineapples on dead bodies, etc)

why are they still doing invisible walls in 2013 ffs

wouldnt be bioshock without invisible walls.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPMiqDqkWn8

I obviously am not a big shooter person given my complete ineptitude at aiming but I really feel like the mechanics of the genre have changed very little since... Goldeneye maybe? was gonna say Doom but that's not entirely fair

lol @ that video

have first person shooters gotten better (or 'more fun') since doom

i guess i mean the single player first person shooter experience specifically

doom 2 was the height of the genre and they've just gotten much, much, much worse since then

http://24.media.tumblr.com/0f78253fee579834f99f0d78f54f4576/tumblr_mkr3o8vRdu1qz4zf7o1_1280.png

that fucken guy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia

― 乒乓, Saturday, 30 March 2013 02:10 (6 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ebert died so bioshock infinite could live

i'm only a little bit into this, haven't even met the_girl yet, not that impressed. it's pretty but eh. feel like they needed to re-address the core purpose and possibilities of an fps as a storytelling device. the intro sequence gave me too many yeah-sure moments -- ok the lighthouse is a... rocket? and it automatically lands in... a church? with baptismal waters on all the floors? i get that they have to introduce the odd ideology somehow but come on.

already looking not as good as dishonored. weird-steampunk is a crowded field, huh. i got made as a bad guy right away; am i going to kill my way through the entire city now?

can't even take any 'games as art' discourse around this. because it talks about race openly? is that it?

it's because the story doesn't really make sense but does it while staring at you really intently

i do think it's an interesting conceit to have more than one mystery unfold -- the character's mystery of wtf this city is + the player's mystery of who the f the character is.

but i have only middling faith both will be resolved well.

not to sound like an aggrieved cornerite here but making the big evil city a secessionist racist religious cult built around the founders is way eye-rolly imo. why make it a flying city? just put an fps in south carolina in 1912 and call it a day.

Because a flying city is the polar opposite to an undersea base, and yet both are societies removed and cut off from society

wouldn't the polar opposite of an undersea base be another undersea base like directly across the earth from the first one

lol

yes but under ice

ice costs too much to drill

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u113/alfredofroylan/bioshockinfinite_zps2b73eade.jpg

oh boy. last guy is actually the least bad?

pathetic!

#JustSaying

I'm still kind of disappointed in the combat. The weapons are mostly indistinguishable crap (the Hailfire is an exception, though), and the two most interesting bits have some serious problems in their implementation. The skyrail/Handyman combination makes for a genuinely tense fight on hard, but doesn't appear nearly frequently enough (and what happened to enemies using the skyrails like in the trailers?), and use of the tears during combat more often than not boiled down to "hunker behind cover, summon turret/Patriot/Mosquito, repeat." And while I'm bitching, the boss fight in the bank vault is insanely difficult on Hard, with almost no opportunities to seek cover, replenish ammo/change weapons, and no tears of any kind.

What do people think of the anachronistic music? There's a surprisingly good "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" in there, and I definitely got a little of the "wait, what" feeling they were aiming for when I ran into the girl singing "Fortunate Son."

quite a few things to like in here but i'm not very impressed. it should have been an rpg.

i enjoyed the (annoyingly rare) skyline-based combat arenas. the corridor shooting was easy enough that i just blew through it. also i took a lot of stupid pleasure in charge -> jump backwards -> charge -> jump backwards -> etc.

The bad guys definitely used the rails in my game

After thinking about it, they must have been in my game as well, if only to explain how they were getting around behind my back (assuming they weren't just spawning out of nowhere). I never actually caught them at it, though. I can't help but wonder if that's tied in to the programming that won't let you look directly at Elizabeth without her scurrying off to the side- great in combat, annoying as shit when you're supposed to be listening to dialogue.

Bought this. Really loving the art design

eh this was a disappointment.

very pretty but much less convincing and involving than the setting in the first one. interesting enough story that inevitably gets up its own ass the further you get. and, biggest problem of all, a really dated fps driving it all.

so this game just seems pretty lame if the reactions in this thread are to be believed y/n?

I liked it. The setting's pretty cool, the combat is hectic and fun, and the story's interesting (if a bit silly and ham-fis
If you're fed up with the FPS genre you probably won't enjoy it, but it's a good game.