Zero Punctuation: BioShock

[ZippyDSMlee]

Would you stipulate that there are more "casual" gamers on the consoles?
And because of the number of consoles V PC out there they have to "market down" to them in order to sale their products better?

Actually, I would not stipulate that. Unless you have some surveys/studies to point towards, my understanding/assumption is that the mix of casual/hardcore and in between on any platform is essentially the same, with mild variation. In my experience, the idea that console users are "kiddies", or majority "casual", is a self-important belief held by PC evangelists.

I think all of the platforms have strengths and weaknesses, and fulfill a niche, I just dislike this sort of scapegoating on "the other".

So because consoles have 5 or 10 times the amount of users compared to the PC it must have a even amount of hardcore and casual gamers?
If this were the 90s still I might believe you.... sadly with the mediocreness begin pushed by the industry as the best sht ever sorry I wont buy it for a minute, the industry knows it can take advantage of consumer unawareness and sale bargain bin games for top dollar and sadly the damn woolies will eat it up, I guess I have lost it and gone insane to see reality for what it is.

 

[Nanolathe]

Once this 'review' stated that the game was 'dumbed-down' for 'console-tards', that pretty much destroyed any credibility and apparent objectivity this review might have. It's this kind of 'elitist PC fanboy taint' that reduced my ability to even take the review seriously.

It's this kind of obvious 'elitist Console fanboy taint' that reduced my ability to take your views seriously. .

Games for Consoles have to be 'dumbed-down', not because we 'PC elitist Fanboys', as you like to call us, think all console players are retards (although a very few do hold this belief) but because the console genuinely cannot do some of the things a PC can.
Pour Example: TES4:Oblivion. That was developed for both PC and Console... what PC owners of the game got was a lazy, and I mean very lazy, port. The menus were claustrophobic, the constant loading (though not as bad as the console) were in strong evidence, especially when riding and countless other small niggling features that obviously serve console users and not PC users.

Luckily for us we have both free and very easy access to the construction set and the very files that make up some core parts of the game, we can make half the problems go away; menus have been made longer for instance to take advantage of the high resolutions and close user distance from the monitor.

That we have such a uniquely mod-able game is a blessing, but it does not change the fact that, because it's primarily console based, the game had to sacrifice some features that a PC user would cherish.

There are some areas that are unmodable however, leaving the game, while still one of the best Hack and Slash RPGs I could name, not quite what it could have been if it was a PC exclusive title.

Consoles also lack the power of a PC. Tell me do you think that a game like Supreme Commander would run on a Console? No. Would that game be ruined by the 'Dumbing-Down' that would have to occur to make it run smoothly on a console, sacrificing key features and graphics for enough runtime to handle the unit load? Very possibly, yes.

I'm not going to argue any more, but if you truly believe that a console is equal to a PC then, while you are mistaken, I'm sure I can't change your mind on a message board such as this.

 

[Geoffrey42]

So because consoles have 5 or 10 times the amount of users compared to the PC it must have a even amount of hardcore and casual gamers?
If this were the 90s still I might believe you.... sadly with the mediocreness begin pushed by the industry as the best sht ever sorry I wont buy it for a minute, the industry knows it can take advantage of consumer unawareness and sale bargain bin games for top dollar and sadly the damn woolies will eat it up, I guess I have lost it and gone insane to see reality for what it is.

I think you're missing the point. The sheer number of "casual" gamers on the PC dominates the number of "hardcore" PC gamers. You might not consider them "gamers" but they are people that play videogames, on a PC. In fact, if I had to put money on it, I would bet that the ratio on a PC of casual-to-hardcore is HIGHER than it is on all consoles combined. My reasoning being that people (by and large, forget PS3 marketing) buy consoles to play videogames. People buy PCs for a variety of reasons, including gaming, but some people stumble upon it after the fact. They bought a wordprocessor, and they ended up with videogames.

These are casual players. As in the other thread, think Bejeweled. Solitaire. Minesweeper. Casual gaming.

Edit: I just noticed your "5 to 10 times" bit. What? Are you serious? 5 to 10 times more console users than PC users? My understanding of the world is very different from yours. I'm not entirely sure we even live in the same one.

 

[Geoffrey42]

Consoles also lack the power of a PC. Tell me do you think that a game like Supreme Commander would run on a Console? No. Would that game be ruined by the 'Dumbing-Down' that would have to occur to make it run smoothly on a console, sacrificing key features and graphics for enough runtime to handle the unit load? Very possibly, yes.

Based on the minimum specs for Supreme Commander, I would have to say, yes, both the Xbox360 and PS3 could run the game. Would the control scheme need to be drastically changed? Yes. And as far as I know, no one has been innovative enough to really make a good console oriented RTS control scheme, but I put that down to lack of effort, on half-assed console ports of PC RTSs.

I'm not going to argue any more, but if you truly believe that a console is equal to a PC then, while you are mistaken, I'm sure I can't change your mind on a message board such as this.

Console != PC, and that's what I've been saying all along. But along the same lines, Console !> PC, and Console !< PC. They are different. Everything beyond that is personal preference, for different niche purposes. I still have not been convinced that a console game must inherently be "dumbed down" to survive on a platform.

 

[Kadayi]

The PC will always be the more versatile platform to produce certain sorts of games for because of the range of input as well as freedom the mouse/keyboard combo provides, coupled with decent hard drive capacity and graphical superiority. Fact of the matter is that consoles are locked systems with fixed limitations and subsequently the games developed on them are always going to be ham stringed by those limitations. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of great games on consoles, GT, ICO, Tekken, etc, but games like FPSRPGs aren't their strong point.

The core to Yatzees review is the fact that when you look beyond the graphics and setting at Bioshock it's not actually a progression onward in gaming design from it's predecessor System shock 2. In fact it's less than it in terms of complexity and that in itself is the shame to the game. SS2 was one of FPS RPGs genres finest moments, Irrational instead of trying to go beyond it in terms of game play in say the same way that Valve topped Half life with half life 2, went down the same route Ion storm did with Deus Ex 2:IW in removing much of the depth.

 

[Nanolathe]

I think you put it better than I did Kadayi, and a little less hostilely too. Kudos.

 

[UnaidedCoder]

Nobody ever said a game has to be more complicated than another for it to be better than it. The whole point of gaming is to have fun. People today just try to write off a game by looking at the technical layout (how many cars a freeroamer has, graphical performance, etc) but if you're so determined to evaluate a game based off reading technical builds and reviews, then quite frankly you don't even know what you want, or what you need to have fun.

 

[Nanolathe]

quite frankly you don't even know what you want, or what you need to have fun.

And you do? How can you know my mind better than I know it myself? I know exactly what I want and need to have fun. Bioshock does not fulfil these needs or wants.

 

[Geoffrey42]

you know my mind better than I know it myself

Yay! Quotes just barely in context are so much fun!

 

[UnaidedCoder]

And you do? How can you know my mind better than I know it myself? I know exactly what I want and need to have fun. Bioshock does not fulfil these needs or wants.

Never said i did. I'm talking about people who draw these conclusions based on what the game is on paper, not from conclusions they draw by playing the game. If you didn't find it fun after playing it and using that to draw the concusion, I'm not referring to you.

 

[The Eupho Guy_v1legacy]

Consoles also lack the power of a PC. Tell me do you think that a game like Supreme Commander would run on a Console? No. Would that game be ruined by the 'Dumbing-Down' that would have to occur to make it run smoothly on a console, sacrificing key features and graphics for enough runtime to handle the unit load? Very possibly, yes.

Based on the minimum specs for Supreme Commander, I would have to say, yes, both the Xbox360 and PS3 could run the game. Would the control scheme need to be drastically changed? Yes. And as far as I know, no one has been innovative enough to really make a good console oriented RTS control scheme, but I put that down to lack of effort, on half-assed console ports of PC RTSs.

Heh. would you happen to be a comedian by any chance? It might just be me being the slightly jaded PC gamer that I am, but experience tells me to ignore whatever minimum specs are printed on the box, and for Supreme Commander, that is definitely the case. Yes, Sup Com will run on those specs, but, I'll put it this way, my machine meets the recommended specs rather easily and it still sometimes drops to about 5 fps in large battles. One RTS port that appears to be doing ok is C&C 3: Tiberium Wars, but thats a completely different kettle of fish.

 

[Geoffrey42]

Heh. would you happen to be a comedian by any chance? It might just be me being the slightly jaded PC gamer that I am, but experience tells me to ignore whatever minimum specs are printed on the box, and for Supreme Commander, that is definitely the case. Yes, Sup Com will run on those specs, but, I'll put it this way, my machine meets the recommended specs rather easily and it still sometimes drops to about 5 fps in large battles. One RTS port that appears to be doing ok is C&C 3: Tiberium Wars, but thats a completely different kettle of fish.

I like to think I'm funny, but I'm not quitting my day job, THAT's for sure. And no, minimum specs are never quite enough for any PC game, but they do represent the bare minimum, and there will be people out there riding the line.

What bugs me a little in this whole discussion is that when discussing the capabilities of PCs, people tend to talk about cutting edge PCs. Most of the PC gaming community, myself included, are not running those hypothetical machines. Right now, my PC is about as powerful as a 360 (give or take). Based on the Steam hardware survey, I'm not alone in running a rig in that range.

For the sake of argument, if we plotted the performance distribution of PCs used for gaming, I'm going to bet that we'd get a bell curve. I'm also going to bet that with "performance" increasing from left to right, the graph will be right-skewed (most mass on the left, with a long tail out to the right). If I showed you a picture of that, and asked you which part of the graph would be a useful basis for comparison against something else, where would you point? The 66% encompassed by +-1 SD? Or the 0.1% at +3 SD?

I <3 my PC, which was built lovingly with my very own hands. But, I love my consoles too. I just get irritated when people start blaming consoles for ruining their PC games.

 

[The Eupho Guy_v1legacy]

I like to think I'm funny, but I'm not quitting my day job, THAT's for sure. And no, minimum specs are never quite enough for any PC game, but they do represent the bare minimum, and there will be people out there riding the line.

What bugs me a little in this whole discussion is that when discussing the capabilities of PCs, people tend to talk about cutting edge PCs. Most of the PC gaming community, myself included, are not running those hypothetical machines. Right now, my PC is about as powerful as a 360 (give or take). Based on the Steam hardware survey, I'm not alone in running a rig in that range.

For the sake of argument, if we plotted the performance distribution of PCs used for gaming, I'm going to bet that we'd get a bell curve. I'm also going to bet that with "performance" increasing from left to right, the graph will be right-skewed (most mass on the left, with a long tail out to the right). If I showed you a picture of that, and asked you which part of the graph would be a useful basis for comparison against something else, where would you point? The 66% encompassed by +-1 SD? Or the 0.1% at +3 SD?

I <3 my PC, which was built lovingly with my very own hands. But, I love my consoles too. I just get irritated when people start blaming consoles for ruining their PC games.

I <3 my PC too, although a friend built mine, the prospect of wrecking rather expensive hardware was enough for me to ask someone else (plus that's his job)

I agree that the emphasis should be placed more toward the median of computer hardware, but I think the perception is that its easier to talk about the cutting edge because a)It looks better and b)It is easier. As long as there are differences in hardware, there will always be idiots saying "Mine is better than yours" which is easier to do when you take a look at the biggest and best, not something that might be a year or two old.

I really don't have a problem with console ports on PC, mainly because they aren't games I usually play, I'm more of a strategy fan, although with the current batch of RTS games I've played, (Supreme Commander not included) I might have to start looking at other genres for new games as most of the current RTS games haven't impressed me much

 

[Kadayi]

One RTS port that appears to be doing ok is C&C 3: Tiberium Wars, but thats a completely different kettle of fish.

C&C:TW came out on the PC firstly, the Xbox version is the Port.

Nobody ever said a game has to be more complicated than another for it to be better than it.

Than it's predecessor? In System shock 2 you had a limited inventory system which actively impacted upon how you played the game and what equipment you could take with you, and what you had to discard as you progressed through the environments. The system was smart in that you couldn't discard that all important key card necessary to get to the next level, but it did mean you had to live with the choices you'd made regarding your weapons etc, and that impacted upon how you approached certain obstacles, and provided another form of challenge. When a game allows you to carry everything, and you've acquired everything, then you've lost that whole decision making process.

 

[Nargul]

While I agree with most of the points stated in this review, such as the game being way to easy and the likes I have one major gripe with it: The supposedly 'dumbing' down for the consoles (being a long time PC and console gamer myself that statement just doesn't sit right with me). There have been and are plenty of console games with functioning inventory systems in place.

I rather think that this dumbing down (game being too easy/inventory screen missing/etc) is a result of the developers trying their hardest to keep you immersed and in the game itself, rather than watching a loading/inventory screen 50% of the time. One of the developers said in a GT Interview that, at one point in development, they discussed Vita chambers (among other things) and reached the conclusion that not having to load and getting an instant revive would be beneficial to the game. I have to agree with you on this one, though, they went way overboard with it and made the game too easy in the process.

p.s.: I thoroughly enjoyed all your reviews and hope you keep going with this, because your style is awesome.

 

[The Eupho Guy_v1legacy]

I know, I was talking about PC -> Console RTS ports before that, or the possibilities thereof, What I said there was a continuation of that. What I was trying to say is that RTS is possible on a console, with C&C 3 an example of that. Another would be Starcraft on the Nintendo 64. (This is directed at Kadayi, btw)

 

[Nanolathe]

I think that we should get to the core of what a game is supposed to do. Forget everything else and answer just one question:

Were you entertained?

That is the measurement that PC games should be put on. Everyone's opinion is different but, to me I was not entertained by Bioshock; the plot, though a breath of air, still had that old familiar staleness to it. Imaginative? sure. Predictable? You bet. The graphics are what I expect. so that's not really a plus or a minus. The AI was freaking stupid. I expected better. Gameplay; The review used the words "Same sidetracking shit used in SS2", I'd go further and say that it's the same sidetracking shit most games pull. Predictable in the extreme. I don't mind being slowed down, what I don't like is when I know exactly when and where, I'm going to be slowed down. Last but not least; is it a crime to ask developers to, even if they are trying to copy an older successful game, to add just a hint of innovation?

If I could use a phrase to describe Bioshock it would be: "Same old, same old."

 

[soladrin]

hwo the fuck do i watch it? i feel like a total douchebag/retard now, but wtf, no matter what i do, i dont get a vid to watch :S

 

[Geoffrey42]

I really don't have a problem with console ports on PC, mainly because they aren't games I usually play, I'm more of a strategy fan, although with the current batch of RTS games I've played, (Supreme Commander not included) I might have to start looking at other genres for new games as most of the current RTS games haven't impressed me much

Have you tried Company of Heroes? I can't say that it does anything special or impressive, except that I think it is well done.

As per console ports on PC, some are just bad. I think "phoned in" is a good way to describe it. For example, in the Blazing Angels PC demo I played, the tutorial level was directing me to use various XBOX controls to perform actions. Disgusting.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

The PC will always be the more versatile platform to produce certain sorts of games for because of the range of input as well as freedom the mouse/keyboard combo provides, coupled with decent hard drive capacity and graphical superiority. Fact of the matter is that consoles are locked systems with fixed limitations and subsequently the games developed on them are always going to be ham stringed by those limitations. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of great games on consoles, GT, ICO, Tekken, etc, but games like FPSRPGs aren't their strong point.

The core to Yatzees review is the fact that when you look beyond the graphics and setting at Bioshock it's not actually a progression onward in gaming design from it's predecessor System shock 2. In fact it's less than it in terms of complexity and that in itself is the shame to the game. SS2 was one of FPS RPGs genres finest moments, Irrational instead of trying to go beyond it in terms of game play in say the same way that Valve topped Half life with half life 2, went down the same route Ion storm did with Deus Ex 2:IW in removing much of the depth.

Dark messiah tried to step outside the grave the publishers had in mind for it (it was arx 2 till ubi got done with it) I have a feeling that after being bought out 2K made it clear to make BS into a "as simple as you can make it" console game.

All in all it could be worse,I have not played stalker yet as I do not know whitch patch is best,I heard the newer ones nerf the game 0-o