toblix

BioShock - They weren't kidding...

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...when they said this really was a shooter. Jesus, there are more bad guys in this game than in Doom 3!

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So far, I'm about 30 minutes past where the demo ends and it's absolutely incredible.

I found the demo completely captivating, but, with the "proper" pacing of the full title, it's even better.

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There's no question. The cinematic quality is incredible. Even the enemy splicers' movements are designed to immerse you in the game, the way they ramble on about nothing and scrape their weapons along the ground threateningly. One part especially was, albeit from more traditional horror influences, incredibly well done.

It doesn't spoil any plot, but the actual moment will be made less scary if you read this:

You enter a frosted-over room with icy mist everywhere and as soon as you enter, there's a hiss and your screen goes white. When it clears, you look around and theres nothing there. You walk over to a shelf and pick up an item, and the same thing happens. When you look around, a splicer is standing directly behind you waiting for you to look at him before attacking (or so I gathered). It's kind of a low blow, but they pulled it off and it made me jump.

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Another thing. Until now the game has been 100% completely linear. What's the deal with that?

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Another thing. Until now the game has been 100% completely linear. What's the deal with that?

..good game design?

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..good game design?

Haha, not quite. The whole point of Bioshock is the open-endedness.

I was a little disappointed by this too, but I'm still on the first level and I image that it's still about teaching you the basics.

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I think the idea is that while the route you take is linear, the way you can approach it is open ended. Also I think there may be incentives to return to earlier areas if you want to.

I want this game :(

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Yeah, it's linear but it's never linear in the same way so I'm willing to forgive it a bit. There are scripted events, for sure, but the roaming Big Daddies can mix things up a lot in places. There's this one big firefight in this one place* that, when I got there, happened to have a Big Daddy and Little Sister going through. I got into the room and all the Splicers were going for the Little Sister while the Big Daddy was fighting them back. It was nice. Saved me some precious bullets and all I had to do was creep in from behind and plunder all the dollars and parts from the corpses.

*

I'm in the theatre now, and the atmosphere and environment is so fucking good. The "works of art" in the various rooms. The droning music in some of the hidden corners. The "statues" that come to life. And of course, the big showdown/battle while the speakers blasted Tchaikovsky's Waltz of the Flowers youtube.com/watch?v=QK3ELt0zPLg :clap:

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Well, I wasn't complaining about the game being linear, I was just under the impression that it would have a more SS2-like open structure. Hey, I love linear games.

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I think there may be incentives to return to earlier areas if you want to.

The pause menu (on 360 at least) tells you how many Little Sisters have yet to be captured in each section/level. And you don't actually learn how to catch a Little Sister until midway through the second section--there are 3 Little Sisters in the first (i.e. demo) section of the game alone.

The game also tells you that you can return to any area you like, in order to deal with any Little Sisters you may have missed previously, but I've not looked into how you do that yet. I'm hoping it's not through the wonderous mechanic of back-tracking... :frusty:

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I can imagine that I would suck playing this kind of game (I'm not very proficient with games like this) but I do want to play it sometime just because the premise sounds cool and it looks really amazing.

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Get the demo, Mel. If you don't enjoy that then you won't enjoy the full game; it's a pretty damned good introduction, but the full game is massively more sophosticated and varied.

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I'll definitely try the demo. I think the only place I'm falling short is the RAM.

:)

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Okay, am I misunderstanding something here? I just rode the second bathysphere, and...

...for some reason there's a counter that says x/3 gatherers or something, and I have to kill like six of these fucking daddies, and towards the end I'm just reduced to setting him on fire, dying, running back, repeating. What am I missing here? Is dying the new strafing? I used up all my ammo, all my medikits and all my money on this shit.

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Does anyone else feel they did a really poor job of explaining the whole plasmid/tonic/gene modification stuff? I mean, it's pretty terrible that even when the game has a built-in help system, I still couldn't find out what the fuck was going on with these slots that always seemed to be empty. How was I to know there were categories of these things? And suddenly I'm forced to replace one of them with telekinesis, just like that.

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Okay, am I misunderstanding something here? I just rode the second bathysphere, and...

...for some reason there's a counter that says x/3 gatherers or something, and I have to kill like six of these fucking daddies, and towards the end I'm just reduced to setting him on fire, dying, running back, repeating. What am I missing here? Is dying the new strafing? I used up all my ammo, all my medikits and all my money on this shit.

The big daddies are tough fights at the beginning, but (mild early gameplay spoiler)

you don't have to fight them. They only attack you when provoked, either by you attacking them first, or hitting their little sister. The only time you really want to fight them is when they have a little sister in tow, so you can exploit her for adam, used to buy health and eve upgrades, plasmids and tonics, and extra slots for plasmids and tonics. When you do fight them, try and be more strategic about it, using your abilities and the environment to do as much damage as possible. Experiment.

Plasmids are the active abilities, while tonics are passive abilities in three areas: physical, engineering, and combat. These plasmid and tonics can be swapped out for no charge at gene bank machines scattered through the game, or when you get a new one.

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you don't have to fight them.

I guess not. Although, what would happen if I attacked just the ones with little sisters when the other guys were around? Wouldn't I be in double trouble?

When you do fight them, try and be more strategic about it, using your abilities and the environment to do as much damage as possible. Experiment.

Yeah, my ability is setting the guy on fire, which seems to work somewhat. I still used all my stuff, though. I was very impressed with the AI, how he found ways to hit me. Usually I can just hide behind some pillar because the enemy can't find the correct spot to hit me, but these guys, it's like they're alive!

Plasmids are the active abilities, while tonics are passive abilities in three areas: physical, engineering, and combat. These plasmid and tonics can be swapped out for no charge at gene bank machines scattered through the game, or when you get a new one.

Yeah, I know that now, but the game never explained this to me properly, which is lame.

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Does anyone else feel they did a really poor job of explaining the whole plasmid/tonic/gene modification stuff? I mean, it's pretty terrible that even when the game has a built-in help system, I still couldn't find out what the fuck was going on with these slots that always seemed to be empty. How was I to know there were categories of these things? And suddenly I'm forced to replace one of them with telekinesis, just like that.

The only thing that confused me was that they didn't introduce the "Gene Bank" until the second level, but besides that, I think all the explanations are helpful and sufficient. Especially the little blurbs on the loadings screen. They give you tons of useful info.

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I guess not. Although, what would happen if I attacked just the ones with little sisters when the other guys were around? Wouldn't I be in double trouble?

I don't think so. I think they stay independent -- no pack mentality -- so you could be in the middle of a fight and another one might walk by, but I don't think it'd attack. At least, I have not seen this yet.

The Big Daddies that roam on their own are mostly useful for the "Hypnotize Big Daddy" plasmid -- gives you an instant bodyguard (though I find its effectiveness to be minimal).

‫‬‭‮‪‫‬‭‮҉

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I don't think so. I think they stay independent -- no pack mentality -- so you could be in the middle of a fight and another one might walk by, but I don't think it'd attack. At least, I have not seen this yet.

The Big Daddies that roam on their own are mostly useful for the "Hypnotize Big Daddy" plasmid -- gives you an instant bodyguard (though I find its effectiveness to be minimal).

Yeah, as far as I can tell, each big daddy is independent, as I've fought one and had another lumber in right after I'd finished off the first. Technically they weren't in the room simultaneously, but lets be honest here, these aren't the most enthusiastic giant-diving-suit-people we've ever seen. As long as they don't have a little sister they won't even bother growling at you if you approach them. They'll just kind of shrug out out of the way.

And you can use "Hypnotize Big Daddy" on a Big Daddy that has a little sister. He just kind of leaves her wherever she is.

On an unrelated note, while I was typing this up, this somehow slipped into my text box and reversed everything I typed, after I'd first read about it on Digg only hours earlier. Coincidence? :erm: I think so.

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Anyway, the moral is I should start that section over and this time take it the fuck easy with the killing.

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Hmm, I have an Athlon 3500, but my PC says it's 2.20Ghz.... I need 2.40?

I guess if I can run the demo it should be safe to purchase?

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Yes. :tup:

I'm expecting later patches and GPU drivers will improve the game's performance, but the demo is the best benchmark possible.

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The min. requirement is a 2.4GHz Intel processor. AMD's chips run at lower frequenzies, so what you need is an Athlon 2400+ or thereabouts.

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The min. requirement is a 2.4GHz Intel processor. AMD's chips run at lower frequenzies, so what you need is an Athlon 2400+ or thereabouts.

I know it means Intel, but I never got the difference between processors until now...;(

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