Bioshock

[lordsandro]

Hey I recently ordered bioshock, After taking interest in it due to a late steampunk obsession. I have only heard good things about it and have great expectations (i played the demo and enjoyed that too). The only thing that worries me is that I only hear good things from official reviewers (apart from yatzee of course) and every time this has happened I have come across a "covered-up" fault.

I thought the escapist forums may have a more varied view. So, What was your opinion? Care to share any opinions.

Note: Part of my motivation for this thread was that I wanted to see if by getting opinions from everyone I could get a thread which was in essence a very comprehensive review which would be difficult to achieve in one review alone.

Just play it on the last dificult ar you will be alfuly bored. The enemies are harder to kill and it is so more interesting.

The game is realy good. Yes you can not die, but on several occassions the game made me forget that simple fact.

 

[Kilo24]

...I only hear good things from official reviewers (apart from yatzee of course)...

Not an official reviewer.

Not sure what an official reviewer consists of, but whatever it is Yahtzee is most definately not it.

Some constituencies I can think of...
Regularly produces reviews of games? Check.
Paid by a gaming establishment to do so as a job? Check.
Contacted by a game developer in regards to his review? Check. (Peter Molyneaux, Fable 2.)

I don't quite know what criteria you're looking for that he doesn't satisfy. His reviews are not meant to be taken at face value, unlike most of the other reviewers (which you might be considering as a criterion.) They do inform about the flaws and upsides of a game however, which reviews are meant to do. He abandons a professional air, certainly. The reviews are not easily analyzed numerically. His opinions generally need to be inferred but they're still valid. I'd hardly consider any of those as invalidating him as an "official" reviewer.

 

[Internet Kraken]

Hey I recently ordered bioshock, After taking interest in it due to a late steampunk obsession. I have only heard good things about it and have great expectations (i played the demo and enjoyed that too). The only thing that worries me is that I only hear good things from official reviewers (apart from yatzee of course) and every time this has happened I have come across a "covered-up" fault.

I thought the escapist forums may have a more varied view. So, What was your opinion? Care to share any opinions.

Note: Part of my motivation for this thread was that I wanted to see if by getting opinions from everyone I could get a thread which was in essence a very comprehensive review which would be difficult to achieve in one review alone.

Just play it on the last dificult ar you will be alfuly bored. The enemies are harder to kill and it is so more interesting.

The game is realy good. Yes you can not die, but on several occassions the game made me forget that simple fact.

Even on the hardest difficulty the game isn't very challenging.

It's hard at first, but it gets really easy the further into the game you go. My wallet was bursting with money so I was able to restock medkits at every vending machine. Once you have the right plasmids and enough slots, you can take on pretty much every enemy with little trouble. I was able to run around beating splicers faces in with the wrench. All the challenge seemed to have left the game (though beating a splicers face in with a wrench is always satisfying).

The only reason I still feel vulnerable when I play the game is because it has great atmosphere.

 

[Legion]

The hardest part was fighting Big Daddies, but even they got easy once I discovered that electric gel destroys them. They can't even fight back. Once you hit them with the gel, you win.

True, but it does look frigging awesome.

I agree with everyone else who said good things about it.

The only fault is the "morality system" but even then, that's more of an issue for those who heard about it having one prior to gameplay as they would no doubt expect it to be a little more complex (wasn't an issue for me as the only thing I new about Bioshock prior to buying was what I played in the demo).

 

[Internet Kraken]

The hardest part was fighting Big Daddies, but even they got easy once I discovered that electric gel destroys them. They can't even fight back. Once you hit them with the gel, you win.

True, but it does look frigging awesome.

Almost everything in that game looks awesome.

The chemical thrower is an interesting weapon though. Electric gel is incredibly useful, yet it also has liquid nitroglycerin, which is worthless.

 

[Legion]

The hardest part was fighting Big Daddies, but even they got easy once I discovered that electric gel destroys them. They can't even fight back. Once you hit them with the gel, you win.

True, but it does look frigging awesome.

Almost everything in that game looks awesome.

The chemical thrower is an interesting weapon though. Electric gel is incredibly useful, yet it also has liquid nitroglycerin, which is worthless.

Agreed, as soon as I got the Ice Blast Plasmid I couldn't help wonder why it was there. Especially considering how many bloody tanks they had of it lying around. -_-

 

[AlphaOmega]

Combat is sluggish compared to most FPS

Still ace game.

 

[klakkat]

I would say the story is somewhat shallow, but maybe I've been spoiled by games with much more complex and well-written stories. If you haven't played those, then yes, Bioshock's story will seem very deep and well written.

The gameplay is pretty fun and varied enough it doesn't become tedious, especially with the entire arsenal of random ways to kill people. The shooting part is a bit slower and messier than many modern FPS games, but the sheer variety and style of killing methods more than make up for it. If you just want to explore these options, try it on an easier difficulty just for the spectacle sake (by that I mean, try it on normal difficulty. Easy difficulty is for those who've never played an FPS before). If you want a challenge and know which side of the gun bullets come out of, then you should play on at least Hard difficulty, because the game is pretty easy, especially towards the end.

The chemical thrower is an interesting weapon though. Electric gel is incredibly useful, yet it also has liquid nitroglycerin, which is worthless.

Liquid Nitrogen is the freezing stuff. Liquid nitroglycerin would have been MUCH more fun (its explosive... and unstable)

 

[gamergal126]

...I only hear good things from official reviewers (apart from yatzee of course)...

Not an official reviewer.

Not sure what an official reviewer consists of, but whatever it is Yahtzee is most definately not it.

Some constituencies I can think of...
Regularly produces reviews of games? Check.
Paid by a gaming establishment to do so as a job? Check.
Contacted by a game developer in regards to his review? Check. (Peter Molyneaux, Fable 2.)

I don't quite know what criteria you're looking for that he doesn't satisfy. His reviews are not meant to be taken at face value, unlike most of the other reviewers (which you might be considering as a criterion.) They do inform about the flaws and upsides of a game however, which reviews are meant to do. He abandons a professional air, certainly. The reviews are not easily analyzed numerically. His opinions generally need to be inferred but they're still valid. I'd hardly consider any of those as invalidating him as an "official" reviewer.

Except the fact that during the mailbag episode he says that he is a critic (there is a difference)

 

[Kilo24]

Except the fact that during the mailbag episode he says that he is a critic (there is a difference)

It depends on the definition of either word you're working with. A quick web search on definitions labeled a reviewer a critic (on a wiktionary page, so you might accept it or not.) And even the definitions as intended don't match, I see no pair of them which are mutually exclusive.

 

[Wayne Insane]

I like it.It wasn't the best game evar, and it definitly wasn't as good as System Shock 2, but I'm actually replaying it just now, so if you like Steampunk and unique shooters you should probaly get it.
And also it's pretty cheap on the internet nowadys.

 

[ajb924]

Bioshock was great... So many parts in the game were unforgetable, and the best part is the dark humor, i payed 60 bucks for bioshock and it was worth it! I cant wait till november cuz thats when the second 1 comes out

 

[Sneaklemming]

Bioshock although great - is at heart a corridor shooter ala DOOM3 or QUAKE4, but then again its hard to fault it for that, at least it makes less bones about pushing you into a corridor than HL2- and the Bioshock corridors look great

 

[Sneaklemming]

You might want to read this BTW http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.118105

 

[maddawg IAJI]

Proably one of the best Single player games out there. The Story and the characters really fit in well. The powers are useful (Of course you'll stop using them for puzzels around chapter 2.) in combat as they make up a large portion of your inventory. I will say this. Some of the powers are useless such as the Hypnotize power. It wastes a whole bar of eve and I ended up walking so fast that I lost my guardian.


(Hey this is just a something I heard but is it true that Bioshock 2 will have Multiplayer.)

 

[Dys]

I didn't like it.
The turrets (plumbing) was stupid, the guns were pointless (could not compete with plasmids) and the gunplay was very poor. The story felt like ss2 recycled, it's probably for the best to just ignore the 'moral' system, as it is something of an unfunny joke.

The only aspect of it that even remotely deserves the praise it gets is the atmosphere, rapture feels very eerie and the game world is very well made and designed.

 

[Barry93]

BioShock I found to be highly overrated, with that said, it's still really good. I thought the demo was "meh" but when I got the full game I was pretty good. Although it's not perfect, there's no inventory so you can't keep items for later on. I also found the game to be extremely easy. There's absolutely no penalty for death and that somewhat ruins the fun.

And like yahtzee said, it certainly did not descend from heaven and lead us to the promised land.

 

[Internet Kraken]

The chemical thrower is an interesting weapon though. Electric gel is incredibly useful, yet it also has liquid nitroglycerin, which is worthless.

Liquid Nitrogen is the freezing stuff. Liquid nitroglycerin would have been MUCH more fun (its explosive... and unstable)

I thought that I was mixing those two up.

But point is as long as you have winter blast, liquid nitrogen is useless. Even if you don't have winter blast it's still pretty bad. In my experience, winter blast is mainly used to quickly freeze turrets and bots for easy hacking. With liquid nitrogen you can't do that as it lacks the range of winter blast.

 

[Gamer137]

Good atmosphere, story execution, and story background, but bland gameplay and actual story events that occur. Basicly, it is good for a playthough or two to "get into" the enviornment, but does not have replayability. If you put the same plot and same gameplay in another game, and just changed the enviornment, that game would be crap.

 

[Chaosut]

Good atmosphere, story execution, and story background, but bland gameplay and actual story events that occur. Basicly, it is good for a playthough or two to "get into" the enviornment, but does not have replayability. If you put the same plot and same gameplay in another game, and just changed the enviornment, that game would be crap.

This was how i felt. The atmosphere and immersion were particularly the highlights of the, but the shooting and linearity made it fairly bland after a while.