Zero Punctuation: BioShock

[RevolutionMan]

By definition from the gaming industry

Care to provide a source?

If I were an industry, being profit oriented and all, I might classify people by the amount of money they spend, or the amount of time they invest in my products. But that's just me...

The source would be some long lost reading material in XBM and in the archives of Gamespot. It was long ago when I read that, but I can tell you that the industry classifies customers in many ways. Casual and Hardcore by hours and popularity of the chosen games. Despite me knowing that they do demograph people by how much money the spend as well, I fail to understand that very thing. How can you call someone Hardcore if they spend 50-60 bucks every three days on a new game? That's just stupid, and almost none of the new games are even worth that much. That's not Hardcore.

Sorry you're begging the question [http://begthequestion.info/] there. You might share that opinion [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion], but it's hardly the authoritative, industry-wide accepted definition handed down by the gaming gods from on high...or anything.

Does it have to be handed down by gaming Gods for you to accept it? The very plain fact of the matter is, you're trying to save your console loving ass from being labeled "casual." Consoles are the very death of gaming, mark my words. They killed the arcades, and because everyone in the gaming industry loves money, they're going to kill PC gaming. More specifically, the 360 is going to kill gaming because "it's easier to dev on the 360, then port to the PC."

As for the casual argument, XBM and Gamespot reported it from the horse's mouth. That would be a bunch of developers, Microsoft and so on. It's the widely accepted opinion, but I couldn't say that when I was asked for a source. You wouldn't have believed me, and you probably still don't. You don't have to take my word for it, but you're constantly having your intelligence insulted by the mainstream gaming industry, which would include but it not limited to Bethesda. But I guess the insults do have some merit since the collective IQ of "gamers" these days has been lowered thanks to the Halo loving frat boy freaks. They remind me of the Ork hoards from Warhammer40k. WWAAAAAGGHHHHH!!!!

 

[RevolutionMan]

RevolutionMan
they a re going in the wrong direction for FO3 they need to make a huge game not a 20 hour RPG lite fest, if they can pull off the game play it should make for "half" a FO game, if not tis just another raped IP that hollywood mistreated again....oh wait I meant "the industry"....

rofl, I thought that was your forum sig, I was trying to remember, "When did I write that? OH!" But yeah, I agree. Fallout's original games are classics. And if you've kept up with the interviews, they keep contradicting themselves and saying yes to things they said no to, before. It's crazy, but I think they have no clue what they're doing. Fallout isn't a TES game, it's not as easy to make as that. Content and story is by far the most important things to Fallout, and Bethesda is not known for either. Bethesda = Graphics, Bloom effect. Fallout = Story, Content. They just can't do it, you know? And they think they're going to prove us all wrong by going ahead and making the game and putting it out there, but it doesn't work like that. Commercially, the game will succeed because of the wal-mart noobs not knowing any better. And the Elf-loving TES fans. Fucking elves...

 

[Bertsura [deprecated]]

Sounds about right. They really killed the difficulty with some of the design decisions.

 

[Jacques 2]

Ok, so on one hand I can save and reload when I die, and on the other I can skip the loading screen and appear in a game given excuse for my return to the world of the living after having died. I honestly really like the vita-chamber concept, it makes decisions more permanent that way, and it does take away some of the risk involved in playing which leaves more opportunity for blind experimentation, exploration, and simple fun nonsense. I'm a big fan of Deus Ex, but playing it on realistic I die practically ever 5 corner turns into the game, mostly because I like to experiment and try the unorthodox and the game was meant to be played in an orthodox way, like all games, granted it gave a lot of different ways you could go whereas most reduce it to a choice of corridor or side corridor.

I don't play games for the challenge, not that I don't like a challenge, but it's simply that I don't need one in order to have fun. As such I don't have a big problem with cheating in single player, even on the first run through. If I'm stuck in a corner and a cheat offers a way to get over the hurdle, then cheating it is, better that then acting out of rage and throwing various items around after failing for the 50th time. Once a game gets frustrating, it's no longer fun for me, it's just a tedious activity that's not worth doing.

You can call me a "casual" gamer and slot me in the same place as people who play Peggle, but at that point, you're just a deluded game nazi who can't get over the size of their e-penis. It's a game, you don't get paid for winning, you don't get fame or fortune, unless you happen to be a halo addict that has learned to aim well with your thumbs and you're playing tourneys on the weekends. Just take it easy

 

[werepossum]

I've watched this a dozen times now and I still laugh so hard I'm wiping away tears. As a PC gamer I'm skipping Bioshock because of the Sony DRM and very limited user "rights", but this review makes me want to buy a copy so I too can laugh at it. Yahtzee is my favorite game reviewer, even ahead of Morgan Webb (who's got a pretty face, a great rack, excellent legs, and a near-equal mastery of sarcasm. She doesn't have those little graphics though!)

And I hate to second the heresy, but I didn't find System Shock 2 to be that good originally. It wasn't scary, and it was damn repetitive and contrived. Whee! I get to pass through this area again!

 

[Jacques 2]

Sony DRM? Since when does Sony have anything to do with Bioshock? Or since when are the user rights limited than any other game?

 

[Alex Karls]

Sony DRM? Since when does Sony have anything to do with Bioshock? Or since when are the user rights limited than any other game?

Sony own and distribute and oversee (via contacting their servers) the DRM in BioShock. Durrrr.



BioShock is 2007's lesson in how to fuck your franchise for the Xbox tards.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4508664361400518462

Watch it.

Gape.

Decide to never play a K. Levine title again.

For those of us not quite willing to watch 1.5 hours of IDGA presentation, could you skip to the chase and tell us what you want us to glean from that video?

 

[Chilango2]

I have no idea what Sony has to do with it, but I will say that the DRM on Bioshock is truly a horror to behold, and one of the primary reasons I did not buy it. Perhaps a year or two from now, if the promises to undo the DRM on the game once its been out awhile come to fruition.

 

[BizRodian]

Dead on with the review. In fact, I've checked out a few of your other reviews and you have been dead on with everything. We have very similar tastes.

Playing Bioshock was like playing System Shock 2 with less features but prettier graphics. Now, I think it was well worth my time and money spent... but it's nice to see that other people can see this as well. It's kind of sad that this totally reycycled is getting so much hype. But of course, we have the larger market of the X-Box and the industry desire to please all that market to thank for that.

 

[Katana314]

I just want to ask. Was anyone else NEVER SCARED AT ALL playing this game?
It's freaking ridiculous. FEAR was laughable to me. Resident Evil 4 just had bizarre monsters that made me raise a confused eyebrow. Bioshock was supposed to have a creepy atmosphere but really...to me, didn't.

It feels wierd, but in Portal I did get the slightest sense of loneliness and fear from one of the songs. S.T.A.L.K.E.R., while very few events are scripted, REALLY managed to get a jump out of me in multiple scenarios.

 

[maxjae]

I just want to ask. Was anyone else NEVER SCARED AT ALL playing this game?

The first fight with a splicer scared the bejeezus out of me. He kept hitting me, obscuring the screen with damage effects, so I didn't get a good look at him til he was dead. I was jamming down on the right trigger like my real life was on the line, trying to kill whatever the hell was hitting me. I should also mention that I was high at the time, which probably contributed to my fear.

Then there was another part in the medical pavilion, where you grab an item off a desk and splicer spawns right behind you, and doesn't do anything til you turn around and see him. That was pretty scary.

Other than those two places, the game wasn't scary. It didn't occur to me that the game was supposed to be scary at all; it felt more like science fiction than horror.

 

[override367]

Personally I think it's down to developer laziness. Let's look at Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (1, not 2, which was gutted and not made by Bioware). It had everything, great characters, great storyline, an inventory system that worked well, character customization and everything, and indeed you COULD automate the way your character developed. I mainly looked through my character stats and did it that way rather than the automation, but it was nice to have the option...and yet because it was released on Xbox rather than PC, I get the feeling a lot of people here would claim it was "dumbed down."

Actually Kotor's storyline isn't that great if you look at the whole thing, Kotor 2 on the other hand had an enormously nuanced storyline, it's very rare in a game that major aspects of the plot aren't directly told to you. Dark Kreia formerly being one of the jedi masters who taught Revan, and being the mother of handmaiden for example, no where is this told directly to you in the game, it's not integral to the plot anyway but the fact that the primary villain has such a deep history and back-story that she certainly doesn't tell you about is fantastic. Much of this information is Kreia talking about others, but she's really talking about herself. Stuff like this is far more skilled writing than simply throwing a giant plot twist into the game. A really good story doesn't have to rely on Mnight style twists, Kotor 1 went that route, Kreia turning out to be the villain in Kotor 2 isn't so much a plot twist as "well this makes perfect sense with her established character", and in the cut content one of the endings was you and her heading off together as an uberteam determined to find and help revan fight whatever menace he/she was fighting.

It's very clear the plot was chopped up in points, but Kotor 2 had a fantastic writing staff and a great plot, just like their later work on the expansion to neverwinter nights 2 (motb has a great morally gray plot, no matter which path you take, somebody gets the shaft and someone else doesn't. Even the "bad guys" genuinely believe they are doing the right thing, and their point of view isn't hard to grasp. They are for all intents and purposes fighting for a good cause, but if they succeed it could have terrible consequences.)

I'd dare say Obsidian writes better plots than Bioware, now only if they were always allowed by their publisher to finish their games... NWN2 was about a year too early and kotor 2 easily needed another 3-4 months. NWN2 MOTB seems polished from start to finish, and it's excellent.


Bioshock was indeed fantastic, the lack of an inventory system hurts it somewhat but the plot was great, I'm going to agree that this trend of "choice" meaning the difference between Jesus and Jeffery Dahmer is kind of lame, which is why I ranted so much just now about Obsidian, for all their games' flaws they genuinely seem to be getting that concept.

 

[GloatingSwine]

Bioshock was indeed fantastic, the lack of an inventory system hurts it somewhat but the plot was great, I'm going to agree that this trend of "choice" meaning the difference between Jesus and Jeffery Dahmer is kind of lame, which is why I ranted so much just now about Obsidian, for all their games' flaws they genuinely seem to be getting that concept.

Actually, of all the criticisms you can level at Bioshock I don't think the lack of an inventory is the strongest, or even, actually, valid at all.

What it needs is a way to see at a glance how much ammo you've got and how many crafting items you've got, but an inventory screen that shows you everything you've got wouldn't be a clever way of doing that, because it would end up hugely cluttered with all sorts of nondescript and unintuitive crap which you would have to manually arrange into a discernible order like some kind of anally retentive OCD sufferer who catalogues his socks. If I wanted to play a menu block shuffling game, I'd play Tetris. Inventory management is not to be mourned, it is to be buried at a crossroads with a stake through it's heart.

What it needs is for the weapon select screen to show you all the ammo for each weapon when you hover over it, and a screen which shows you all the crafting recipes you know and the items for them in the same way as the U-Invent machines already do.

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

Actually Kotor's storyline isn't that great if you look at the whole thing, Kotor 2 on the other hand had an enormously nuanced storyline, it's very rare in a game that major aspects of the plot aren't directly told to you. Dark Kreia formerly being one of the jedi masters who taught Revan, and being the mother of handmaiden for example, no where is this told directly to you in the game, it's not integral to the plot anyway but the fact that the primary villain has such a deep history and back-story that she certainly doesn't tell you about is fantastic. Much of this information is Kreia talking about others, but she's really talking about herself. Stuff like this is far more skilled writing than simply throwing a giant plot twist into the game. A really good story doesn't have to rely on Mnight style twists, Kotor 1 went that route, Kreia turning out to be the villain in Kotor 2 isn't so much a plot twist as "well this makes perfect sense with her established character", and in the cut content one of the endings was you and her heading off together as an uberteam determined to find and help revan fight whatever menace he/she was fighting.

It's very clear the plot was chopped up in points, but Kotor 2 had a fantastic writing staff and a great plot, just like their later work on the expansion to neverwinter nights 2 (motb has a great morally gray plot, no matter which path you take, somebody gets the shaft and someone else doesn't. Even the "bad guys" genuinely believe they are doing the right thing, and their point of view isn't hard to grasp. They are for all intents and purposes fighting for a good cause, but if they succeed it could have terrible consequences.)[/quote]

Have you even played KOTOR? The storylinge for that game, and the characters, are all vastly improved over the second one. In KOTOR2 you have Atton the Han Solo knockoff, Kreia the Bastila knock-off, Mira the Mission knock-off, the wookie, HK-47 again,the other droid, Handmaiden the love interest, Disciple the love interest. That's it.

 

[beddo]

I believe that the depth in a game can be found to a large extent in the player. While Bioshock?s ?moral? choice may not have had the impact they wished I viewed it in another way, as I will explain.

I felt that I had to ?save? the little sisters not for the ?Adam? they posessed but to remove them from slave-like marauding existence, maliciously forced on them by a synthetic symbiotic relationship with the blameless but somewhat contrite Big Daddies.

 

[[HD]Rob Inglis]

I've watched all the reviews so far, up until Jan. 7 2008, and I have to say...they are all fantastic. As for this game, I really enjoy it. For difficulty, I just turned the vita-chambers off, as the PC version has this option. If you do this, it's actually pretty difficult and a lot more fun. If you're to lazy or don't want to, as some others have stated, then don't complain about it; you're choosing to make it easy. The animated cartoons really add to the reviews, the clever humor that they employ is fun for almost everyone. As for Bioshock, some people like it, some don't, that's just the way things are.

 

[tsukihanyou]

Here's the thing:
No game is perfect. It's impossible to find a game that has every aspect that makes a game perfect. Find one with an amazing story? The combat system is going to suck. Find one with good combat? Then, the story is going to suck. You can't have everything. It's either going to be too easy or too hard. He said the game WAS GOOD! Quite possibly the best game of the year. (I wouldn't know because I can't play it. My computer would explode. -.-). He had to point out the bad things because no one laughs when he's being nice to a game.
No, I'm not some PC Elitist (*points to the part where her computer explodes*). But, I'm also not a console elitist. I have a PS2, which isn't even mine. A Wii, that isn't mine. I don't play the Xbox. I just play games. Strange concept, right? Why does everyone have to turn every game into an all out war?

 

[[HD]Rob Inglis]

Exactly. Good point. Very true. Answering your statements in order. Computers are confusing. All I know is that big screen=more fun.

 

[Bombader]

I finally rented this game out and found it awesome, and found myself chuckling when I agreed with Yahtzee as I played. So many inside hummer within the review, and the good ending was like that of a Disney movie, while bad one felt bleh.

It had to be one of the best story wise shooter since half life 1, though I felt the weapon arsenal kinda lacked at some points, and the lack of inventory could have been fixed if they took out the jump button, which was almost never really used at all.

 

[BlueMage]

I have no idea what Sony has to do with it, but I will say that the DRM on Bioshock is truly a horror to behold, and one of the primary reasons I did not buy it. Perhaps a year or two from now, if the promises to undo the DRM on the game once its been out awhile come to fruition.

Um ... what? Ok, sure, there's a bit of registration malarky to go through when you install but .... after that ... what? Where? I'm sorry, I've seen NO indication that DRM has ANY effect on the gameplay.

Perhaps, if you maintain your machine properly, you won't need to reinstall it constantly. Surely you can install a game right the first time.