Why does everyone love Bioshock?

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

I bought it for the PS3. Waited for it to instal. Fell asleep while it did. And no, I'm not joking. Played for a bit. Only got excited fighting the doctor. Got to where the flower women got gassed and put it on my shelf never to play again.

Yeah, exactly around that part the game feels really stretched out and repetitive. I took about a 2 year break right around there and just finished the game earlier this year. Once you get to the twist, the game picks up and the Sandra Cohen stuff is pretty cool.

 

[Justice4L]

I bought it for the PS3. Waited for it to instal. Fell asleep while it did. And no, I'm not joking. Played for a bit. Only got excited fighting the doctor. Got to where the flower women got gassed and put it on my shelf never to play again.

After that you just basically retrace your steps and go through the exact same environments, so you didn't miss out on much.

 

[Ritalynn]

Is there a point to a "i like ketchup, i hate mayo... Why does everybody like mayo so much.. it makes no sense!"

Seriously... Personal taste is personal taste. If alot of people enjoy it....it becomes a large title.

 

[Chased]

I stopped playing the first one around Arcadia, when I had to collect bits of a machine so I could progress further. I didn't find my play through that enjoyable up to that point, the whole "underwater dystopian objectivism" concept didn't click with me.

 

[weker]

It's all well and good that Bioshock has deep political elements but without fun gameplay I might as well read a book.

Well the main issue you felt underwhelmed was due to the gameplay, which is kinda surprising since Mass Effect and the Fallout series are much more basic and repetitive. With Bioshock you have weapon, plasmids, and ammo upgrades, which constantly change your playstyle. The different types of enemies you fight also add to the game play. Maybe you played on easy or maybe you just didn't challenge yourself enough by not going for the "Brass Balls" achievement.

 

[AFnord]

I think a large portion of it was that it tickled the hobby philosophical nerve in many players. The story is neither particularly deep or intelligent (though it is deeper and more intelligent than that of most other FPSs), yet the game was very good at making the player feel smart for understanding everything that was going on. It was tackling a few heavy issues in a very approachable way. This is much like The DaVinci code, or Inception, neither were deep or incredibly intelligent, but they were both exceptionally well crafted in that they made the reader/viewer feel smart, and people enjoy feeling smart

That, and the setting was cool.

 

[Rastien]

At the time when it was released it was a real breath of fresh air in the stagnent pool of call of duty clones and bland lets go shoot <insert race/religous group here>

I really enjoyed Bioshock none the less has a fantastic opening to a game and i genuinly felt dread and fear the first time decending into Rapture to have something trying to claw its way to me as im defenseless. Still remember being relived when i managed to grab old wrenchy to fight them off.

I then proceeded to "pimp my wrench" which made the first play through trivial but i had alot of fun with Bioshock hence the big daddy figure on my work desk hehe

 

[Pegghead]

People kept on praising the story when games like Fallout and Mass Effect's story is 10x better. They also have better gameplay.

"Better" in this case differing from player to player.

I loved Bioshock, hated Mass Effect for instance. As to why I liked Bioshock, funnily enough I wanted nothing to do with it at first (but same went for Half Life 2, my favourite game) just because I got some wrong impressions of the game and it just looked like a shockey, violent, horrifying trip. I actually explored a bit further, ended up buying it (this was when it was down to around the 30's I believe) and loved it. Great setting, spiced-up gameplay (slinging bees and hot tommy-gun lead into the rabbit-masked faces of some of the most dapper enemies I've seen in games...and gigantic drill robots to boot, what's not to like), a story that kept me wanting to play to find out what happened next (as well as the fun I was having) and nothing but sheer polish and care in the areas of atmosphere, music, style, writing and voice-acting.

It's not for everyone, nothing is, but my romp through Rapture is a trip I'll never forget. And hell, the sequel wasn't that bad (was it just me who really enjoyed the multiplayer?), here's hoping for Infinite!

 

[ChupathingyX]

well..it was pretty nice. but if you ever played system shock 2, you probably will only have a tired smile left for the consolized, dumped down experience that is bioshock. don't get me wrong, it's still a very good game. not great perhaps, but very good. a lot deeper than what console players usually get served. pc players who remember the hayday of deep games know what i'm talking about though when i say that it's not as big a deal as it gets made out to be nowadays.

Consoles didn't dumb down Bioshock...the developers did.

 

[weker]

Also, the ghosts were never explained.

The story, if you think about

Spoiler: it

Fontaine's horrible and very unlikely to succeed plan to get Ryan

doesn't make much sense.

Since when did ghosts need to be explained? There ghost the only thing explained about them normally in anything is their dead.

I don't know what you mean by the story doesn't make sense?

Spoiler

The only part I am confused about was why was jack sent to the surface?

 

[Justice4L]

It's all well and good that Bioshock has deep political elements but without fun gameplay I might as well read a book.

Well the main issue you felt underwhelmed was due to the gameplay, which is kinda surprising since Mass Effect and the Fallout series are much more basic and repetitive. With Bioshock you have weapon, plasmids, and ammo upgrades, which constantly change your playstyle. The different types of enemies you fight also add to the game play. Maybe you played on easy or maybe you just didn't challenge yourself enough by not going for the "Brass Balls" achievement.

I played on the hardest difficulty on my second playthrough and was bored out of my mind. Fallout and Mass Effect have deep worlds with amazing characters with so much to do. Bioshock is a corridor shooter with slightly wider, retraceable corridors. Mass Effect and Fallout have moral decisions that completely change the story. You can focus in guns or speech and much more. In Bioshock the only moral dilemma is whether to kill Little Sisters or not which just amounts to a different ending (all of which were pretty stupid). Whether you kill or save them, your game will still play the same way.

 

[White Deer]

I just liked to incinerate stuff,oh and the music was a nice touch too.

 

[SayHelloToMrBullet]

I agree that Bioshock did get a little repetitive during the middle bits but that in my opinion was because of the objectives - not the gameplay. I loved the experimental nature of the game and I was constantly thinking of new ways to take on an enemy. I just got tired of the objectives because for the first half it was essentially go here, do this, kill that - it was very boring and there wasn't alot of excitement. That being said I don't think there was anything extremely wrong with the gameplay itself.

Reasons I like it?
- Story (which I personally think is better than Mass Effect IMO)+ backstory
- Art style
- Experimental Combat
- Large maps (usually) with multiple routes
- Awesome characters and voice acting
- The world just feels real

Reasons I don't like it?
- Yeah it gets repetitive
- Ending (I really hate it because its just so sudden)

Honestly its the type of game that requires you to play to its strength. You may have found the winning combo of zap 'em and wack 'em, but if you keep using it over and over then yeah, that'll get dull real fast.

 

[AFnord]

well..it was pretty nice. but if you ever played system shock 2, you probably will only have a tired smile left for the consolized, dumped down experience that is bioshock. don't get me wrong, it's still a very good game. not great perhaps, but very good. a lot deeper than what console players usually get served. pc players who remember the hayday of deep games know what i'm talking about though when i say that it's not as big a deal as it gets made out to be nowadays.

Consoles didn't dumb down Bioshock...the developers did.

While this is technically speaking true, the developers dumbed it down due to the way console games are made. Not saying that System Shock 2 was an incredibly deep game either, but it was, from a gameplay point of view, deeper. System shock 1 was even deeper (from a gameplay point of view).

 

[DanielBrown]

Nothing personal, I just came across that clip and wanted to use it somewhere.

Anyways; I thought the game was better than average, despite it's flaws. It's certinly better than the generic brown shooter... and it's not like people haven't praised Fallout/ME like obsessed.

Spoiler: As a bonus

 

[octafish]

well..it was pretty nice. but if you ever played system shock 2, you probably will only have a tired smile left for the consolized, dumped down experience that is bioshock. don't get me wrong, it's still a very good game. not great perhaps, but very good. a lot deeper than what console players usually get served. pc players who remember the hayday of deep games know what i'm talking about though when i say that it's not as big a deal as it gets made out to be nowadays.

Agreed. The gameplay wasn't very fun either.

 

[Iwata]

I liked the atmosphere, the setting, and the gameplay. I think that makes for a good game in my book.

 

[chstens]

*Ahem*. NO! You are not the only one who thought it was "deeply average", you're NEVER the only one. I know of alot of people who doesn't like it, and the reason alot of people like it, is because it is a generally good game, regardless of your opinion of it. Your opinion is your opinion, but the only people your opinion matters to, are yourself or people in your close circle.

 

[Macgyvercas]

I played it all the way through but i didn't really enjoy it that much, too easy...you can't die! What is the point if death isn't the end? It's like assassins creed lol

Try playing with the Vita Chambers turned off. It's what I do.

 

[JoesshittyOs]

Fallout had a good story?

Funny, the one reason I hated the games was because there stories were drawn out messes.

OT: Because it was one of the few games that tried to convey a message instead of just a good story. Half Life has a good story. But it didn't really mean anything.

Bioshock got pretty deep at certain moments, more so that anything I've ever seen in most games.

well..it was pretty nice. but if you ever played system shock 2, you probably will only have a tired smile left for the consolized, dumped down experience that is bioshock. don't get me wrong, it's still a very good game. not great perhaps, but very good. a lot deeper than what console players usually get served. pc players who remember the hayday of deep games know what i'm talking about though when i say that it's not as big a deal as it gets made out to be nowadays.

This kind of comment about games being dumbed down has very much been getting on my nerves as of late.

First off, Bioshock was a spiritual successor to the old games, not a direct prequel. Similar universe, not the same games.

Secondly, nostalgia really takes it's hold on you in cases like this. There is a reason that games are being "dumbed down".

It makes them better. It makes the basic mechanics more deeply integrated into the game while getting rid of the ones that people seemed to have forgotten were tedious and mundane