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

i hate the way bioshock lets you chip away at bosses like that. sure, they get some health regen when you die and respawn but then their alert state goes back to normal and you can get the drop on them. feels cheap? or like it's making an already easy game with flimsy gameplay even more ethereal?

found normal to be fairly easy but hard to be close to impossible.

close to the end now and it is back to being a slog. sorta feel like the story curve is too exaggerated or something - slow build, big rise to action in the middle with the fink section and then this sort of meandering end game i am in right now. also going from lockpicks being scarce and feeling like i had to choose carefully if/when to use them to the point where they are all over the goddamn place and i have like 30 of them is sorta stupid.

collector shit like the telescopes is super irritating as well, i know ive missed a few because they're just sorta plopped in pointless locations. and the production value on the kinetescopes is just fucking godawful, to the point where i have started to skip right when the opening credits roll because they are a) boring b) all but meaningless to the narrative.

also this fight the ghost in the graveyard shit is some goddamn weaksauce. not hard, just crazy annoying.

once i discovered jump -> charge -> jump back -> charge, repeat, repeat, all fights became meaningless.

but it's the pelvic thrust that really drive you insane

ha i feel the same way about crow trap

several times i have backtracked into what is supposed to be a pitched respawn battle and all the dudes are already dying because of crow traps i left there 45 minutes ago. also bucking bronco is the most useless thing in the world

i used undertow to throw people off of ledges a whole lot.

oh yeah, i suppose. i hadn't thought of that, mainly using it to grab snipers etc

I'm also thinking that the last vigor (the shield bullet return thingy) has shown up just in time for it to be annoyingly crucial in some late point boss battle that will be super annoying.

not really

improvements in the weapons and vigors was far to expensive (and looting every last trash can and corpse far too fiddly), you really felt like you were locked in to whatever you chose. i never fucked around much beyond the first few i got of either tbh; did just fine with possession and a carbine

*too expensive

i went the whole game with my perennial favorites, the shotgun and the sniper rifle (both good for someone who is not good at aiming at things quickly).

i have yet to upgrade any weapon ever. a bunch of the weapons are pretty stupid (looking at you volley gun), but i always hate the grenade launcher/rpg shit in shooters. mainly rolled with hand cannon and burst gun.

slow build, big rise to action in the middle with the fink section and then this sort of meandering end game i am in right now.

i stopped playing this game p quick but i'm sure this is accurate because it's exactly how bioshock and ss2 were. i dunno why that has to be so.

also bucking bronco is the most useless thing in the world

For me it was indispensable for Crows (leaves them exposed and helpless for a looong time after the first upgrade) and any time you're in a tight space or near a lot of melee enemies, like the parts with the Boys of Silence. I was only ever able to sneak past one once because their search pattern is so fast and unpredictable and running alerts them immediately, and on Hard their gang of masked weirdos can easily beat the shit out of you if you let them get close. I haven't been able to get much use out of Undertow, though, and almost never use traps because enemies seem content to take cover instead of chasing me.

The volley gun is kind of bullshit, but the Vox version, the Hailfire, is amazing- it's more or less the same thing but you can use it to airburst grenades.

The Boys of Silence strike me as being a big part of the earlier version of the game. They even have action figures for them, which is weird for a tertiary villain. It's like the toymakers flipped thru a catalog of character art design in 2010 and picked one just that looked cool.

Nice & pastoral:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OiwiZ0T6umo

i decided to play bioshock 1 before trying infinite and i hated it!

would read details

between this and half-life 2 i think fps games aren't for me :/ but i also hated the look of it, clowns and steampipes and LOL 50s anachronisms or whatever the fuck it is they're going for

lol. i think infinite looks better but bioshock looks more coherent -- it really feels like being trapped a mile underwater in someone's leaking hubris whereas infinite feels like a ride. BUT THEN given the limitations of video games maybe it is way easier in general to simulate claustrophobia than spaciousness? i'm not crazy about the 20s/50s muddle aesthetic either but i do like bathyspheres and diving helmets a lot. <shutupdifficultlisteninghour>system shock 2 by the way feels more like being on a crippled spaceship 6.7 trillion miles from earth than actually being on one probably does.</shutupdifficultlisteninghour>

fps-wise since these big Storytelling Classics have been failing you maybe you should play something quake-like where the reasons you're shooting people are three sentences long and only in the manual. altho idk haha i really like half-life 2.

what i've seen of system shock 2, i'd probably enjoy it a ton if there was an updated version. u might be on to something tho as im ok with cod or cs prob cuz they're pure shooters w/ no story

between this and half-life 2 i think fps games aren't for me :/ but i also hated the look of it, clowns and steampipes and LOL 50s anachronisms or whatever the fuck it is they're going for

― am0n, Monday, April 29, 2013 7:34 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark

it's not the greatest genre but these arent its best examples either. bioshock 1 is a challenge-free asset tour for dumbasses.

it really feels like being trapped a mile underwater

agreed, the water pouring in thru cracks and looking out windows was really well done. and the skyhook thing in infinite looks pretty crazy.

lol i never played quake but i had a roommate who would come home from work and play it for hours. apartment sounded like a damn warzone.

the telepath thing in bioshock reminded me of hl2's super gravity gun

There is an updated versions of SS2, sorta. the game is out at GOG.com and there's a buncha mods to d/l that you can update it by a decade

it's not the greatest genre but these arent its best examples either.

FYI this is crazy talk (about HL2)

Wellll, if the genre is just running and shooting things then I suppose this is the other end of the scale from Quake 3 Arena, but nearly anything else I can think of (storytelling, mechanics, design, atmosphere, setpieces) HL2 >>> anything else I've ever played

Half-Life is still better than its sequel. Dunno if that updated version was any cop though

There is an updated versions of SS2, sorta. the game is out at GOG.com and there's a buncha mods to d/l that you can update it by a decade

― Hockey Drunk (kingfish), Tuesday, April 30, 2013 3:46 AM

i saw those mods, they're pretty good. i might grab it off steam at some point

in the end, liked this quite a lot. some def problems (had 30 lockpicks for the last like 2 hours of the game and nearly nowhere to use them). i get the feeling that lots and lots of stuff just sorta didnt make the cut - really surprised to see the handyman barely get used. and yeah, once you get the pattern of open rift with rocket automaton/leave crow traps everywhere/find your gun and stick with it, the challenge is kind of not there anymore. the ending is overreachingish, and it could have been a lot better if it hadnt been 30-45 minutes of fps cutscene (wtf at that btw, i cant believe they didnt break that exposition up basically at all. maybe another "oh shit we have too much story to cram into the game" or something.)

but on the plus side, it's crazy long for a one player closed world game, and it does look pretty fucking amazing most of the time. and although its far from a difficult shooter, there is some decent requirement of thoughtfulness and strategy (more limited weapon/ammo drops would go a long way to encouraging this, which im sure hard/1999 mode put into effect). hooray for a non recharging health/mana bar as well. and yeah if it is kinda consequence free thx to the liberal revive system, eh, we all knew this was going to be heavy on story and easy rolling on gameplay anyway.

fuck a goddamn blimp battle though.

Sometimes I get the idea that their ultimate narrative desire could only be pulled off by an HBO series. There is so much stuff that feels cut or slotted in from previous iterations.

Also, Film Crit Hulk made a point I really like about how you can make the ruling faction actually out of American history, and do the false equivalence thing and put them up against something from French and Russian history and expect it to work:

...THE REFERENCE THEY’RE GOING FOR IS MOST DEFINITELY THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, WHEREIN THE VIOLENCE GOT SO OUT OF CONTROL AS TO LOSE A GREAT DEAL OF MEANING, BUT GROUNDING THAT ANALOGY IN AMERICA’S RACE ISSUE IS DEEPLY PROBLEMATIC FOR ALL THE REASONS YOU SAY (THERE’S A REASON WE LOOK AT DJANGO AS A FUCKING HERO). AND LORDY KNOWS THAT HULK IS SICK OF THE SAME KIND OF DISCUSSION OF “IT IS ALL RELATIVE!” THAT SEEMS TO CROP UP SO MUCH IN THE SOPHOMORIC UNDERSTANDING OF POLITICS THESE DAYS...

Emphasis mine

it's way worse than not voting (but a symptom of the same thing)

Oh wait, that bit is from here:

http://badassdigest.com/2013/04/03/hulk-vs-devin-vs-bioshock-infinite/

tim rogers wrote a lot of words about this game, it turns out

that's weird

OH MY GOD FUCK ZEPPELINS

I have successfully fucked all the zeppelins. Not sure if I like the ending or not; it does make (most of) the game make much more sense in retrospect, but even though it works logically, it still somehow feels kind of unearned. I'll have to think about it.

i liked all the whiz bang visual ending stuff and managed to not think about the content too hard, when i do i just get irritated.

Finished this over the weekend - it was certainly an impressively lavish experience but it's not actually much of a game, is it? In terms of what you actually get to do, it's a really basic shooter with very little variety in the enemies and weapons which never feel terribly powerful. By the end I was grimly slogging through the fights just to see where the story was going. I'm glad I played it and I guess I can admire the ambition behind it but ultimately I don't think the story actually says anything of any substance.

ok this is longer than the game: http://www.actionbutton.net/?p=3006

System Shock 2 now on Steam for like seven bucks

remember that it is my will that guided you here. it is my will that gave you your cybernetic implants: the only beauty in that meat you call a body. if you value that meat, you will do as i tell you.

thought that rogers piece was importantly otm every thousand words or so, which is about par.

i would have said it was in the five to six thousand word range. i just copy-pasted it into word to count, out of curiosity, and it is a long way from being in the five to six thousand word range.