I managed to blackmail one of my few friends to lend me Bioshock because I was bored getting blown into bite size chunks on CoD4 multiplayer. I had watched some of the trailers and admittedly, gameplay videos on youtube and had also naturally read the wikipedia article and thought it sounded better than seeing the little grenade warning symbol for the fifty thousandth time and feel my entire facial expression droop with the knowledge that my legs are about to be amputated by shrapnel. Also IGN/Gamespot both said it was worth it.
The first thing that really woke me up after the PC installed it and I had skipped the introduction plane movie because I had already seen it on youtube, was the splicer killing that man then trying to break into my sphere. I was actually nervous. I went through the whole of Resident Evil 4 and didn't feel anything like that. Then I got it again when you are lying on the floor and the Big Daddy from the box art comes over to you. I thought I had done something wrong and was about to be drilled! Games that can involve your mind to that degree so near to the begining are placed on my plastic dvd rack (that I use for game boxes) of honour.
Continuing in to the game and meeting more mutants, I got stuck and read the manual on plasmids because I didn't know much about them. Once I realised that wasting all my pistol bullets on 10 splicers beside a waterfall was useless, I decided to load the previous save and enjoy the truly sadistic pleasure of vaporising them by electrifying the water and cracking their freakish skulls over the head with the wrench. Oh yeah, and the wrench fixes what I felt was the tiniest flaw in Half life 2. The wrench actually sounds and feels like it could do some damage. When you hit someone with it, the game engine conjures up a realistic sickening crunch like his jaw has just been relocated to his stomach whereas in Half life 2, the crowbar sounds like someone punching a cushion.
For anyone who has played Bioshock, I am sure they will remember a bit where you start the whole moral choice thing. Do I want to murder this little girl or spare her life? The game tries to make you do the right thing by making them say random comments like "I think its beddy time Mr B" in the cutesy voice you normally have to endure at a primary school nativity play from the girl playing Mary; mainly to to make you feel like they are the most innocent creatures on Earth and have gone a bit of the railway tracks of normal life but it's not their fault, and so should be not only spared but also given a big hug and a cup of hot cocoa. Even so, I couldn't bring myself to kill the brat so i spared her life and was happily rewarded with a bucket of cash, ammunition and ADAM from another one.
Eventually I realised that my ammo was only being seriously depleted with the Big Daddy fights so I decided to use a gene tonic which electrocuted anything you hit with the wrench and then quoted a Die Hard one-liner just before lamping the nearest one over the head. This inevitably resulted in me dying but the life restoration chamber right next to me made sure I could keep 1:hitting then 2:dying then 3:coming back and repeating steps 1-3 untill he succumbed to dented metal suit syndrome and I could then rescue the brat.
Several things that bugged me through the game included for one; the hacking feature. I don't see the point. It wasn't hard nor did it add to the atmosphere because I could be almost dead from splicers firing bullets at my eyeballs and be gasping for breath on screen, limping around in fear of a single poorly aimed shot from the game's equivalent of a blind kitten and then calm right down by pressing the hack button and calm right down, hack it and get back on top of things usually because it was a security camera or security bot and so I would have at least some protection. Another was the diaries. You pick them up though they have no useful information but you feel if you don't listen, then you are missing out on some vital gameplay aspect and you will die. Also you find yourself trying to listen to the damn things while in firefights with strangely dressed women who like saying stuff about other peoples wives and you can't hear it and it really makes you angry. I was the most unpopular person in the household for a few days because every time somthing interupted my ear-to-speaker listening of the diaries caused me to shout at them if they were real or if they were splicers, blow their heads off with the Tommy gun or shotgun depending on which was in my hand at the time, wasting entire ammunition dumps and therefore missing more of the diary. I know you can relisten to the diaries but that makes you feel like a person who can't remember the alphabet and has bed wetting troubles.
If you have played Bioshock or at least researched throughly on the web then you will certainly recall a bit where you brutally murder Jack Ryan with a golf club. This made me ponder when I sat down in the toilet and retreated into the unsanitory depths of my mind to have a nice think whilst shitting, about why Bioshock hasn't recieved the same controversy as GTA or Manhunt because it is quite disturbing. Maybe its because everyone who complains about violence in games don't play any good ones.
The in the end, I was treated to the great cutscene of the little children growing up holding my wrinkled hand on the deathbed and it was so bloody annoying that they killed the great villian instead of you. It is like on a game like Team Fortress 2 and you almost kill someone and then someone else gets the kill and you "assisted" which makes you sound like a ineffective useless twat. Fonatine was almost dead and I telling my useless character to "get up you wuss, it's only a scratch" like the Black Knight in Monty Python's Holy Grail when all the whinny runts come out of nowhere and kill the thing and I felt robbed of a bossfight. (though speaking of bossfights, there is a good one where you fight this truly twisted "doctor" and I smacked him around with a wrench then ran away to recover some health and the bastard went and healed himself so I went to his little healing machine and hacked it. Next time Dr Unsymetrical came to heal himself of bulletholes and wrench shaped bruises he was engulfed in a poisonous gas cloud and I did a celebratory victory dance around my chair!)
In conclusion, I felt that Bioshock is one of the best games of the year and having recently played it on my friend's nuclear powered hyperbox that he has named HAL9000 ( I'm not joking, when he was setting the computer up, he named the thing HAL9000 so he can smirk whenever he goes on "My Computer" in his sad nerdic fashion) with all full settings I think it is right behind Crysis in best graphics. I haven't played the 360 version and so I feel it not correct of me to label the console vesion as "lesser" though I do feel that way about the console and anyone who has had their xbox die the day after the warranty has expired will agree with me. I would recommend buying it or at least borrowing it for a few days/weeks/ depending on your gaming ability and also be sure to show any people you know under the age of ten the bit near the begining where a splicer gets his internal orgasns shredded by Big Daddy!!
(please give helpful critisiscm. I don't mind if its constructive or destructive as long as its helpful)
The first thing that really woke me up after the PC installed it and I had skipped the introduction plane movie because I had already seen it on youtube, was the splicer killing that man then trying to break into my sphere. I was actually nervous. I went through the whole of Resident Evil 4 and didn't feel anything like that. Then I got it again when you are lying on the floor and the Big Daddy from the box art comes over to you. I thought I had done something wrong and was about to be drilled! Games that can involve your mind to that degree so near to the begining are placed on my plastic dvd rack (that I use for game boxes) of honour.
Continuing in to the game and meeting more mutants, I got stuck and read the manual on plasmids because I didn't know much about them. Once I realised that wasting all my pistol bullets on 10 splicers beside a waterfall was useless, I decided to load the previous save and enjoy the truly sadistic pleasure of vaporising them by electrifying the water and cracking their freakish skulls over the head with the wrench. Oh yeah, and the wrench fixes what I felt was the tiniest flaw in Half life 2. The wrench actually sounds and feels like it could do some damage. When you hit someone with it, the game engine conjures up a realistic sickening crunch like his jaw has just been relocated to his stomach whereas in Half life 2, the crowbar sounds like someone punching a cushion.
For anyone who has played Bioshock, I am sure they will remember a bit where you start the whole moral choice thing. Do I want to murder this little girl or spare her life? The game tries to make you do the right thing by making them say random comments like "I think its beddy time Mr B" in the cutesy voice you normally have to endure at a primary school nativity play from the girl playing Mary; mainly to to make you feel like they are the most innocent creatures on Earth and have gone a bit of the railway tracks of normal life but it's not their fault, and so should be not only spared but also given a big hug and a cup of hot cocoa. Even so, I couldn't bring myself to kill the brat so i spared her life and was happily rewarded with a bucket of cash, ammunition and ADAM from another one.
Eventually I realised that my ammo was only being seriously depleted with the Big Daddy fights so I decided to use a gene tonic which electrocuted anything you hit with the wrench and then quoted a Die Hard one-liner just before lamping the nearest one over the head. This inevitably resulted in me dying but the life restoration chamber right next to me made sure I could keep 1:hitting then 2:dying then 3:coming back and repeating steps 1-3 untill he succumbed to dented metal suit syndrome and I could then rescue the brat.
Several things that bugged me through the game included for one; the hacking feature. I don't see the point. It wasn't hard nor did it add to the atmosphere because I could be almost dead from splicers firing bullets at my eyeballs and be gasping for breath on screen, limping around in fear of a single poorly aimed shot from the game's equivalent of a blind kitten and then calm right down by pressing the hack button and calm right down, hack it and get back on top of things usually because it was a security camera or security bot and so I would have at least some protection. Another was the diaries. You pick them up though they have no useful information but you feel if you don't listen, then you are missing out on some vital gameplay aspect and you will die. Also you find yourself trying to listen to the damn things while in firefights with strangely dressed women who like saying stuff about other peoples wives and you can't hear it and it really makes you angry. I was the most unpopular person in the household for a few days because every time somthing interupted my ear-to-speaker listening of the diaries caused me to shout at them if they were real or if they were splicers, blow their heads off with the Tommy gun or shotgun depending on which was in my hand at the time, wasting entire ammunition dumps and therefore missing more of the diary. I know you can relisten to the diaries but that makes you feel like a person who can't remember the alphabet and has bed wetting troubles.
If you have played Bioshock or at least researched throughly on the web then you will certainly recall a bit where you brutally murder Jack Ryan with a golf club. This made me ponder when I sat down in the toilet and retreated into the unsanitory depths of my mind to have a nice think whilst shitting, about why Bioshock hasn't recieved the same controversy as GTA or Manhunt because it is quite disturbing. Maybe its because everyone who complains about violence in games don't play any good ones.
The in the end, I was treated to the great cutscene of the little children growing up holding my wrinkled hand on the deathbed and it was so bloody annoying that they killed the great villian instead of you. It is like on a game like Team Fortress 2 and you almost kill someone and then someone else gets the kill and you "assisted" which makes you sound like a ineffective useless twat. Fonatine was almost dead and I telling my useless character to "get up you wuss, it's only a scratch" like the Black Knight in Monty Python's Holy Grail when all the whinny runts come out of nowhere and kill the thing and I felt robbed of a bossfight. (though speaking of bossfights, there is a good one where you fight this truly twisted "doctor" and I smacked him around with a wrench then ran away to recover some health and the bastard went and healed himself so I went to his little healing machine and hacked it. Next time Dr Unsymetrical came to heal himself of bulletholes and wrench shaped bruises he was engulfed in a poisonous gas cloud and I did a celebratory victory dance around my chair!)
In conclusion, I felt that Bioshock is one of the best games of the year and having recently played it on my friend's nuclear powered hyperbox that he has named HAL9000 ( I'm not joking, when he was setting the computer up, he named the thing HAL9000 so he can smirk whenever he goes on "My Computer" in his sad nerdic fashion) with all full settings I think it is right behind Crysis in best graphics. I haven't played the 360 version and so I feel it not correct of me to label the console vesion as "lesser" though I do feel that way about the console and anyone who has had their xbox die the day after the warranty has expired will agree with me. I would recommend buying it or at least borrowing it for a few days/weeks/ depending on your gaming ability and also be sure to show any people you know under the age of ten the bit near the begining where a splicer gets his internal orgasns shredded by Big Daddy!!
(please give helpful critisiscm. I don't mind if its constructive or destructive as long as its helpful)
